10. The possibility of inducing the clouds above to let go of their precious rain drops could not be ignored in such circumstances as those on Easter Island. Not only was it vital to get drinking water but it was also necessary for the agriculture, the foundation of society. There were some sources of water on the island, like the swampy lake inside the volcano cone of Rano Kau, but it was not easy to go there, and it was not of the same high quality as fresh rain. Not once in his readings for Bishop Jaussen did Metoro mention 'making sunshine' (if such an idea could have been expressed as haka ao or as hakaao). Neither are such terms to be found anywhere in my Polynesian word list. Why should it be necessary to coerce Sun to come out? He always did, he could be relied upon. "It was 4 August 1968, and it was the feast day of Saint Dominic, patron of Santo Domingo Pueblo, southwest of Santa Fe. At one end of the hot, dusty plaza, a Dominican priest watched nervously as several hundred dancers arranged in two long rows pounded the earth with their moccasined feet as a mighty, collective prayer for rain, accompanied by the powerful baritone singing of a chorus and the beat of drums. As my family and I viewed this, the largest and in some ways the most impressive Native American public ceremony, a tiny cloud over the Jémez Mountains to the northwest got larger and larger, eventually filling up the sky; at last the storm broke, and the sky was crisscrossed by lightning and the pueblo resounded with peals of rolling thunder." (Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code.) |