AUTHOR'S PREFACE
In an Analytical survey of costumes which have been for centuries the ceremonial raiment of a particular group of people one must also set forth those distinguishing traits of the group which have developed through environment and heritage, with whatever coloring has resulted from the external influence of encroaching foreign cultures.
The dramatic instinct is an inherently human trait. It is conspicuous in the lives of even the lowest savages. Its first manifestation is the desire to dress for an occasion of worship. The worship generally takes the form of a prayer expressed in action, which is an attempt through the potency of costume and ceremony to coerce or solicit the interest of the spirits who supposedly have made themselves felt in the forces of nature and whom primitive man conceives of as a pantheon of supernatural powers. The spirits possess the secrets of the perplexing problems of life and death, and must be approached through supplication, compulsion, or sorcery.
I have selected the Pueblo Indians of Arizona and New Mexico because they are an outstanding example of a native culture still existent and for that reason deserving of generous and detailed investigation. Moreover, in my opinion, they are the most advanced of any native community in all North America in the
perfection of dramatic-religious costumes. I here present a full and comprehensive account of the characteristics of this dramatic-religious dress as it evolves from their geographical location, their mode of life, and their beliefs and manifestations—those elements of their civilization to which they have clung despite several hundred years of corruption and suppression by the white man. I have attempted, by word and sketch, to build up a picture of the ceremonial costumes which have resulted from this civilization.
There are not many more years during which it will be possible to make such a study. The decline has already set in and the contemporaneous state of Pueblo culture is one of decay and disintegration.
V.M.R.