A NAVAHO FIRE DANCE. By ALBERT B. REAGAN

Transcription

1 A NAVAHO FIRE DANCE By ALBERT B. REAGAN N the night of November 5, 1923 I witnessed a Navaho Fire Dance 0 at Steamboat Rock, Arizona, in the Navaho country. This was the ninth night of a Mountain Chant on which occured the spectacular public exhibition known as the Fire or Corral Dance.' We arrived after the first dance, a fire dance, had been completed. Within a pine and cedar twig enclosure were five hundred Indians sitting in a wide circle around a large dancing area surrounding a huge central fire. Each group of families also had a small fire of their own. The corral had its entrance on the east. Two actors now entered through this opening. They were dressed in dance kilts and red moccasins. (In all other performances of the night the actors were barefoot.) One had a wide, loose strip of cloth over chest and back put on poncho-wise: strips of beaded cloth were also suspended over chest and back to the waist, these varying from slender cords to strips an inch or more in width, the center one having small mirrors sewed to it. Both actors wore conical caps, with imitation buffalo horns projecting forward at the base on each side. From the hat and horns feathers were suspended, and strips of bright cloth were tied around the elbows and at the knees. Each one also carried in each hand a much feathered arrow with a large stone head. These two danced to the left around the central fire to the song of a group of musicians seated to the southwestward. At every third accented wold in the chanted song they presented the arrows to the fire and then to the audience. After they had circled the fire six times, two sick persons, a man and woman, were brought from a nearby group and placed on a blanket southwest of the fire, which they faced. The two actors, already in position between them and the fire, now danced first facing each other, then facing east and west, then north and south, and finally east and west again. They then made a peculiar hawk-like noise as each spat on his arrow and rubbed it between his lips. Then with another hawk screech, each threw his head back and swallowed his arrow, thrusting it, head and shaft, down his throat for eight inches. After dancing for a considerable time, uttering weird noises, they withdrew the arrows and applied them to the persons of the patients. 1 For parallel accounts of the Fire Dance see WashingtonMatthews,TheMountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony, BAE-R 5: ,1887; Franciscan Fathers, An Ethnologic Dictionary of the Navaho Language (St. Michaels, Arizona), 1910, pp. 376,419, passim.-editor. 434

2 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST, N.s., vor.. 36 [REAGAN] PI.ATI:. 8 Performers of the Navaho Fire Dance.

3 REAGAN] A NAVAHO FIRE D'INCE 435 The actor on the north, facing westward, laid his arrow on the feet of the northerly patient, the arrow pointing to the north; then reversed it. He laid it in the same fashion on knees, abdomen, chest, shoulders, and head in turn. Then he pranced backward a few steps and waved his arrow skyward to each of the cardinal directions. The two arrows were again swallowed, after which both actors placed them as above, one on the woman, the other on the man. They then repeated the backward and forward dance facing each other. Waving their arrows at the fire, they passed out of the enclosure, passing north of the fire. In a few minutes they returned accompanied by the file of fifty-nine Indians in citizen's clothing. These, who were chanters, danced around the central fire, at every sixth step waving at it a bunch of twigs held in one or both hands. After circling the fire twelve times they seated themselves in an east-west line to the southwest of the fire while the two arrow dancers resumed their dance as before. As soon as these participants filed out, whistling, peculiar noises and singing without announced that the next set was ready. At a signal from within, fifty-five men filed in and around the fire, chanting, gesticulating, prancing, and turning this way and that. They waved gourd rattles and woven rattles (shaped like horse-radish graters) protruding from clasped bunches of twigs. As in the earlier group, there were two special performers, dressed much like the first pair but barefoot and, in place of the arrows, carrying in each hand a double triangle mounted on a central stick and feathered at each angle. These they waved as the arrows were waved in the preceding dance. After circling the fire six times, the main body of performers seated themselves, the two principal actors remaining standing some ten feet north of them. While the seated men chanted, this pair danced six steps forward with a light, gliding, pacing step, and seven in reverse order. Dancing six times first to the east, they repeated this to the south, north, south, and again to the east. They then advanced to the fire, with a wave presented the triangles to it, and departed by the north side of the fire. The sick persons were not brought forward for this performance. This dance was followed immediately by another arrow dance in which eight special actors took part. Four of them faced the others, each wheeling about so as to dance toward the four corners of the earth. They then placed their arrows on the afflicted parts of the patients, and swallowed and withdrew them as the two arrow dancers had done earlier, after which they left the enclosure followed by the other actors. As soon as they were outside, a procession filed in, headed by a masked

4 436 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [N.S., 36, 1934 actor and accompanied by the triangle-bearers. These performers all threw vigor into their actions ; the special dancing being very similar to the earlier performance of the triangle-bearers, except that the masker took a vigorous part. Thus they danced abreast, facing the east, south, west, and north, then east again; then prancing off into obscurity. The next performance involved a rising sun and moon. In this the two special actors had large, shield-like feathered disks in front of their breasts. The disks were some eighteen inches in diameter, with eagle tail feathers extending from their margins like rays. On the face of each disk were painted in black eyes, mouth, and vertical lines for ears, to represent the features of sun and moon respectively. Further, in addition to the disks, each carried feathered triangles which they used in a fashion similar to that of the triangle-bearers described above. Sun and moon dancers then alternated with masked performers several times; the former occasionally dancing face to face as the arrow-bearers had done. They were replaced by the triangle-bearers and maskers, who, in turn, alternated for fourteen successive sets. This was varied from time to time by the triangle-bearers waiting until the chanters had circled the fire the required number of times and seated themselves. The triangle dancers then cantered in with a hopping, tripping, graceful step, performed as before, and retired. There was then a lull of a few minutes, after which for more than an hour the special performers used triangles or wands. The dancing was similar to that of their earlier appearances; sometimes dancing abreast, sometimes face to face. This was followed by a diversion in which one of the actors was a female (or a man dressed like a woman) : first as a little girl, then a young woman, and finally as a man with powdered face through which his mustache showed. These danced many sets until the audience grew tired. The cactus actors followed. They carried sticks three feet long to which finger cactus was profusely tied. There were two of these performers in the first four sets, who danced facing each other like the arrow-bearers. Then came a set in which eight took part, dancing four facing four. The performance of the setting sun and moon, which followed, was like that of the rising sun and moon save that the rayed disks were now SUSpended on their backs. Lightning was represented in the dance that followed by lazy tongs which the special actors carried in front of them. This device, when pressed, would plunge forward some eight or ten feet. At every turn, at every gesture-position in the song, and when presented to the fire as a closing act,

5 REAGAN] A NAVAHO FIRE DANCE 431 it was thrust forward while its bearer posed in strutting posture. These actions were repeated many times. The next performance involved bull-roarers. The four actors each carried a long pole from the top of which a small board was suspended by a cord (their leader had also a bull-roarer on a buckskin thong) which they whirled to produce a grating, buzzing noise. The lightning performance was then repeated, followed by several minor ceremonies. Just before dawn four actors, carrying little trees, came into the enclosure and, after circling the central fire, proceeded to the two patients who had again been placed forward on blankets. After dancing a few minutes, they performed over the patients much as in the arrow dance. A group now filed in to dance vigorously around the fire for twelve circuits, gesticulating and waving their twigs toward the fire, to the earth, and to the heavens. (The special performers were absent.) Then they filed to the southwestern quarter of the enclosure where the patients still reclined on blankets. Here they formed a screen around the latter, while chanting and waving cedar and piiion twigs. They then seated themselves so as to form a triangle open toward the fire. In the open space in front of the patients there was a dish in which a feathered disk was made to dance vigorously during the whole of the chant, (We noted that two medicine men, sitting opposite one another, waved their hands in unison to the time of the music, while all the other participants waved up and down the bunches of twigs they carried. A string extending from the hand of one medicine man to the other, invisible in the half-darkness, caused the disk to dance.) The final performance was the fire dance from which the whole ceremony takes its name. Forty-seven men, nude except for breech-clout, entered th,e dance space and danced, pranced, hopped, and squatted around the central fire many times, acting as though in search of something. Each one carried a long, wrapped bundle of cedar bark. At last they got so close to the fire that one of the actors bundles caught fire. This he threw toward the east outside of the corral. He lit another and threw it outside to the south, another to the west, and a fourth to the north. Then all lit their bundles and beat one another with them. The torches burned out, they rushed from the dance enclosure, and the audience gathered the charred remains to use as medicine. The sick couple were then taken outside and the dance was over. BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY PROVO, UTAH