Next morning I got the god’s eye as well as a splendid specimen of a musical bow with the gourd attached, the playing-sticks, etc., all of which were taken out of a cave near the dancing-place.  There was another cave near by, into which the principal men are accustomed to go to ask permission from the sun and moon and all the other Taquats to make their feasts.

The morning saw the feast concluded in about the usual way.  Tobacco was smoked over the seed-corn on the altar, and sacred water was sprinkled from a red orchid over everything on the altar, including the sacred bowl and the flowers on top of it, as well as over the heads of all the people present, to insure health and luck.  This is done on behalf of the Morning Star, because he throws blessed water Over the whole earth, and on the corn and the fruit the Coras eat.  The flowers are afterward taken home, even by the children, and put in cracks in the house walls, where they remain until removed by the hand of time.

The people of Santa Teresa and San Francisco, at certain rain-making feasts, fashion a large locust (chicharra) out of a paste made of ground corn and beans, and place it on the altar.  In the morning, after the dancing of the mitote, it is divided among the participants of the feast, each eating his share.  This is considered more efficient even than the dancing itself.

It is evident that the religious customs of the canon of Jesus Maria are on the wane, mainly because the singing shamans are dying out, though curing shamans will remain for centuries yet.  As the Indians now have to perform their dances secretly, the growing generation has less inclination and little opportunity to learn them, and the tribe’s ritual and comprehensive songs will gradually become lost.

My shaman friend in San Francisco complained to me that the other shamans did not know the words of the songs well enough.  Tayop (Father Sun) and the other gods do not understand them, he said, and therefore these shamans cannot accomplish anything with “los senores.”  It was like sending a badly written letter:  “the gentlemen” pass it from one to another, none of them being able to make out its meaning.

In the mean time my efforts to obtain anthropological specimens were more laborious than successful, because it was very difficult to get anyone to show me where they could be found.  To make things worse, suddenly another man dreamed that I had enough “heads,” and so I was not permitted to search for them any more.  But I did not intend to content myself with the few I had secured.  I had made arrangements with a Cora some time before to show me some skulls he knew of, and after much procrastination on his part I at last got him to accompany me.