The Hopi weavers when at work invariably keep a blanket full of moist sand near them in which the splints are buried. This keeps them flexible, and the moist sand is better than water.
A reddish-brown native dye is made from Ohaishi (_Thelesperma gracile_), with which the splints are colored.
Unfortunately, the introduction of aniline dyes has almost killed the industry of making native dyes, but there are some few conservatives--God bless them!--who adhere to the ancient colors and methods of preparing them.
It cannot be said that the Hopis are devoid of musical taste, for in the early morning especially, as the youths and men take their ponies or flocks of goats and sheep out to pasture, they sing with sweet and far-reaching voices many picturesque melodies.
Of the weird singing at their religious ceremonials I have spoken in the chapter devoted to that purpose.
To most civilized ears Hopi instrumental music, however, is as much a racket and din as is Chinese music. The lelentu, or flute, however, produces weird, soft, melancholy music. Their rattles are of three kinds, the gourd rattle (ai-i-ya), the rattle used by the Antelope priests, and the leg rattle of turtle shell and sheep's trotters (yöng-ush-o-na). The drum and hand tombe are crude affairs, the former made by hollowing out a tree trunk and stretching over each end wet rawhide, the lashings also being of strips of wet rawhide (with the hair on), which, when dry, tightens so as to give the required resonance. The hand tombe is as near like a home-made tambourine as can be. It has no jingles, however. Another instrument is the strangest conception imaginable. It consists of a large gourd shell, from the top of which a square hole has been cut. Across this is placed a notched stick, one end of which is held in the performer's left hand. In the other hand is a sheep's thigh-bone, which is worked back and forth over the notched stick, and the resultant noise is the desired music. This instrument is the zhe-gun´-pi.
They do not seem to have many games, so many of their religious ceremonials affording them the diversion other peoples seek in athletic sports. Their racing is purely religious, as I have elsewhere shown, and they get much fun out of some of their semi-religious exercises.