stick-swallowing

Updated: May 12, 2025

These sticks are still used to some extent and may be obtained by the collector. The ceremony of stick-swallowing has led to serious results, so that now in the decline of this cult a deceptive method is often adopted.

Jesse Walter Fewkes - Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American: Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,: 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898,: pages 519-744

In Tusayan the stick-swallowing ceremony has been practically abandoned at the East Mesa, but I have been informed by reliable persons that it has not wholly been given up at Oraibi. The illustration above referred to indicates its former existence in Sikyatki.

Jesse Walter Fewkes - Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American: Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution,: 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898,: pages 519-744