Snake Dance

Arts of the Americas

Modeled 1896, cast c. 1897

Hermon Atkins MacNeil
American, 1866–1947

The vast array of ethnographic material at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago piqued Hermon Atkins MacNeil’s interest in Native American culture, and he traveled to the West in 1895 to experience it firsthand. This sculpture depicts the Snake Dance, a Hopi prayer for rain in which priests run from the high mesa to the plains while grasping handfuls of snakes. MacNeil achieved a new level of dynamism that reflected the thrill of the spectacle, as described by his friend, the author Hamlin Garland: “They had rushed four miles at top speed, but they mounted the trail toward Walpi with incredible celerity. As they passed me their long hair waved up at the sides in a peculiar and beautiful fringe. I have never seen anything finer in the way of motion.”

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Hermon Atkins MacNeil (Sculptor)
Title: Snake Dance
Place: United States (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: Modeled 1896
Medium: Bronze
Inscriptions: Signed on side of base: H. A. MAC NEIL. Sc.Fond.Nelli.ROMA Inscribed around side of base, front: THE RETURNING OF THE SNAKES Inscribed under center of the figure, on base: THE MOQUI / PRAYER.FOR.RAIN
Dimensions: H.: 57.2 cm (22 1/2 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Edward E. Ayer
Reference Number: 1924.1350

Erwin Millard Breithaupt, Jr., “The Life and Works of Hermon Atkins MacNeil” (master’s thesis, Ohio State University, 1947), p. 51.
Judith A. Barter, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890–1940, exh. cat. (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago; New York and Manchester, VT: Hudson Hills Press, 2003), 25–27, 29–30, 41, cat. 56, fig. 22 (ill.)

Paris, International Exposition, 1900, as Danse des serpents.
Art Institute of Chicago, Window on the West: Chicago and the Art of the New Frontier, 1890–1940, June 28–Oct. 13, 2003, cat. 56, as The Moqui Runner (The Moqui Prayer for Rain—The Returning of the Snakes).

The artist to Edward E. Ayer, Chicago, by 1924; given to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1924.

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