This painting depicts three dancers with snakes and a fourth snake, on the ground. The dancers shake gourd rattles with one hand while holding live snakes in the other. They dance with snakes in their mouths, then release them as sacred messengers who carry their prayers to the Underworld in hopes of abundant spring rainfall for summer crops. Snakes represent lightning because they move in a zigzag pattern. The black zigzag patterns on the kilts also represent snakes. Both snakes and lightning are traditional Pueblo symbols.
The style of the modern school of American Indian painting is a combination of the symbolic and the naturalistic. Here the artist focuses on details of clothing, face-painting, texture, and dance movements. However, the figures themselves are symbolic, presented flat against a plain background frozen in motion. There is no horizon line and no indication of time or place.
Among the Pueblos, painting on the walls of kivas and on pottery has a long history. Painting on paper is a Euro-American tradition introduced to the indigenous people of the southwestern United States around 1910. Inspired by the intellectual Anglo community in and around Santa Fe, painting was taught at the Santa Fe Indian School, a boarding school for boys from many different tribes. The works usually represent traditional dances and ceremonies, animals, and scenes of daily life. These paintings were made for sale to those outside the Indian communities.
Very little is known about Oqwa Pi (Abel Sanchez), the artist of Snake Dance. He was born at San Ildefonso Pueblo in 1899 and painted primarily from 1920 until 1935. He served as lieutenant governor and governor of his pueblo for a total of eight terms.
