CEREMONIALS AND RITUALS
The Pueblo peoples, ancient and modern, grew up under a hard
environment; shadowed ever by the specters of famine and
thirst, they were exceptionally impressed by the potencies of
pitiless nature and the impotency of their own puny power;
and, like other risk-haunted folk generally, they developed an
elaborate system of ceremonies and symbols designed to placate
the mysterious powers.—J. W. POWELL.
The three motives which lie at the bottom of Pueblo Indian ceremonies
(quite wrongly miscalled dances by American onlookers) are: the desire
for rain, which brings fertility and hence abundant crops; for the cure
of illnesses, more often in case of epidemic disease; for success in
war. How natural are these desires may be judged from the first of them,
by anyone who has travelled even a little in Arizona or New Mexico, and
who will certainly reëcho in his own heart the prayer for rain. To drive
along a shadeless road and notice on the one side green stretches of corn
or of alfalfa, while on the other are nothing but desert wastes in which
cactus and sage alone can live, is the most graphic object lesson of what
a moderate supply of water achieves. I recall a region near Bernalillo
(the Tiguex of Coronado) where a pitiful bunch of cattle was staggering
over a great area, on which not even a blade of parched grass could be
seen, while a dry arroyo tantalized them with a suggestion of where water
ought to be. On the other side of that sterile ditch were other cattle
and horses, plump and glossy, wading deep in luscious herbage. Such an
experience gives one sympathy for a people who recognize in water the
nourisher of all life, and who adore the spirits that live in fountains,
lakes, and rivers. But much sympathy will hardly help us to interpret
the ordered form of any ceremonial we may be allowed to watch. If it
is borne in mind, however, that every Pueblo ritual, however named, is
fundamentally a prayer for rain, since without water there can be no
increase of life, all observation and study will be simplified.
The staple food of the Indians, in this infertile land, is maize, which,
because it was so preëminently their staff of life, is universally known
as “Indian corn.” It does not suffer from the long, dry summers, and
requires almost no care. Bancroft writes of it:
The maize springs luxuriantly from a warm, new field, and in
the rich soil, with little aid from culture, outstrips the
weeds; bears, not thirty, not fifty, but a thousand fold; if
once dry, is hurt neither by heat nor cold; may be preserved
in a pit or a cave for years, and for centuries; is gathered
from the field by the hand, without knife or reaping hook; and
becomes nutritious food by a simple roasting before a fire.[225]
No wonder, then, that corn dances figured equally with the snake dances
as prayers for rain, throughout the Indian country.[226] This cult was
further developed by a selection of colors to harmonize with the six
regions of the world. Since the colors for direction as given by Mrs.
Stevenson for Zuñi agree with the names of the original Corn clans of
Ácoma, I venture to use her designation:
yellow for the north, blue for the west, red for the south,
white for the east, variegated for the zenith, and black
for the nadir. White corn is intensely white and there are
remarkable varieties of the variegated as well as several
shades of purple and of black corn. The same colors are found
in the beans, which are grown in the cornfield.[227]
The visitor will see in every home neat piles of the corn in all these
colors.
All authorities are agreed that North American ceremonialism reached its
apogee in the southwestern Indian, and that the hopelessness of getting
any one of them to unravel for the American its inner significance is
profound. Yet the rites, far more than traditions or myths, will, if ever
fathomed, probably be found to hold the key to their beliefs and to the
secret of their daily life.
Alexander classifies the rites as follows:
1. The smoke offering, constituting a kind of ritualistic definition of
the Indian’s cosmos.
2. The sweat-bath or purification, which is likewise the spiritual aspect
of a healing rite.
3. Fasts and vigils for inducing visions.
4. Shamanistic rites that may inspire and possess the human agent of
divinity.
5. Communal ceremonies or “dances,” of which the white visitor never sees
the sacred and probably most significant part, but only their dramatic
expression. For example: eight days of most secret and exhausting
ceremony precede the snake dance, which the white man may witness as a
spectacle, just as in a theatre, on the ninth day.
6. The ceremonial rites in honor of the ancestral dead, or of those more
recently departed whose good-will and active help are desired.[228]
This custom suggests to the student of comparative rituals the Parentalia
of the Roman religion, not of course a conscious correlation, but
the common instinct of very unlike races to honor or appease their
forefathers. It may add interest to state also Kroeber’s conviction that
the so-called ancestor worship among the Pueblos bears not the slightest
relation to that of the eastern Asiatic belief. If we translate the
K’at’sina cult as of the “ancients,” we must understand by that word the
dead of all time, including those of last year.
It is the dead as a generality that are prayed to by the tribe
rather than the individual departed. If there are two systems
of beliefs and feelings about the ancestral dead that in some
respects are as far asunder as the poles it is those of the
Chinese and the Pueblo dead.
He who can sympathetically understand the import of an Indian ceremonial
will alone solve the mystery of what has been bequeathed by immemorial
ancestors and of what reigns supreme to-day. To guard their ritual is the
jealous care of the older generation. Not only is secrecy imposed by the
ruler of their fraternities, but it is in fact their last weapon, whether
of defence or of revenge, against the unwarrantable abuse of power and
privilege which white over-lordship has wielded over its so-called
“wards.” It is as if the Indian said:
You have taken our lands and our freedom of self-government;
you have forced upon us gods we neither understand nor love,
and an education that teaches us we may deceive and later be
absolved. Nothing is left us but our antique heritage of ritual
and that we will keep inviolate though we lose our lives.
One who has lived long among them told the writer that he had learned
most from watching and listening to some old men who had come to look
at a symbolic design made by a young Indian artist. For a while there
was silence; then one man began to point out certain things, then
another and another spoke, adding details, forgetful of their white
friend silent in the background, till a long and complex tale had been
quite unconsciously revealed to the listener. A familiarity born of
years of sympathetic study of their traditions and folk-lore must be
acquired before anyone can dare say he sees the deeper significance of
their ceremonials. Like the dances of all primitive races, those of the
Pueblos are essentially religio-sociologic in character, and present very
subtle intricacies. Nothing “happens.” Everything is started by some
personal agency, and everything has sex, and all is dramaturgic.[229] Dr.
Fewkes is unquestionably right in saying that “the explanation of these
observances, while the most fascinating and most valuable study, is most
liable to error.”[230] “Back of every Indian ceremony is a story, and for
every possible adventure of tribal life” there are tales and songs which
are a part of daily existence, but which are especially celebrated by
the festal “dances.” It follows that the Indian religion is a dramatic
one, full of action and color that express to the lay mind hidden truths,
just as in early Christian days the painted story on church walls was a
picture Bible for those who could not read.
[Illustration: THE INHERITED DANCE COSTUME
_Fr. O’Sullivan_]
Mary Austin says that most songs are for “occasions,” and that so blended
are movement, melody, and the muffled beat of the _tombé_ that “the
Indian will say indifferently, ‘I cannot sing that dance,’ or ‘I cannot
dance that song.’ They are as much mingled as the water of a river with
its own ripples and its rate of flowing.”[231]
There are various aids to all ceremonies, such as the sprinkling of the
sacred meal, and the use of pollen in prescribed ways. The ceremonial
pollen is gathered from hundreds of plants according to very rigid rules.
But the chief method of bringing man into harmonious relations with
“those above” is through fasting,[232] self-castigation, and prayer, a
discipline followed by bodily purification. The well-being of man is
so dependent upon water that its use, both actual and emblematic, was
apparently made in very early days an established part of all religious
ceremonies. Perhaps nothing more amazed the Christian missionaries than
to find the Indian, in order to free himself from sin and make himself
fit to appeal to his gods, using the rite of sprinkling the face and head
with medicine water, very closely akin to “holy baptism.” The weekly
sweat-bath, the frequent head-washing with soapsuds made from yucca
roots, and the purging induced by emetics are strictly enforced before
or after almost every ritual, and have probably been a prime source of
physical healthfulness in the pueblos.[233]
It follows that the lustration of snakes at Hopi before the snake dance
is a logical part of that ceremony, for the snakes are the “elder
brothers” of their clan, and since they are brought in from the field,
covered with dust, their cleansing is an essential preliminary to their
totemistic share in the dance. After taking the snakes back to the
fields, the men on their return to the pueblo go through the vomiting, or
inward purification, before sharing the feast that ends the ceremony of
several days.
There are ceremonial hunts, as well as those for the gaining of essential
food, and the races at their _fiestas_ were not merely an expression
of athletic prowess or primarily a struggle for individual supremacy.
Indeed, the adult Indian seems to do nothing purely for fun.
Since Ácoma has succeeded better than most of the pueblos in preserving
her ancient way of life, it is far more difficult to penetrate her ritual
than that of any other. We are told by Lummis of the impression, at the
time of the great festival, of a mystery in the surrounding air—of an
alert anticipation or watchfulness for magic, good or evil—and how in
hidden crannies of her most inaccessible cliff one may find plume sticks,
because “the feathers of the eagle’s breast symbolize to the natives
that, as the eagle soars by means of these feathers into the very eye of
the sun, so may their prayers ascend to the sacred precincts of ‘Those
Above.’”
We know of three important ritual celebrations at Ácoma: namely, the
Fiesta of San Estévan, patron saint of the mission and now of the pueblo,
on September 2; that of All Souls’ Day; and the winter solstice rites,
commingled with Christmas. A fourth that occurs at the time of the summer
solstice, on San Juan’s Day, June 24, is in most pueblos an occasion of
serious and elaborate ritual, but at Ácoma it is so much more like a
madcap race and game that it is described in the chapter on games. All
festivities are announced by the town crier some days in advance. It is
worth noting that, though the days for both of the solstice ceremonials
are appointed by the head _cheani_, called together by the war captains,
it is evident that they are determined by the observation of the sun’s
“turning back” in June, from which moment six moons are counted. In fact,
the only reckoning of time is by the moons from solstice to solstice. In
some tribes each month has its poetic name, derived from the appearance
of the moon.
Of all investigators, the one who has best succeeded in giving us
some hints about their present ritual customs and beliefs is Dr.
Parsons.[234] All who are interested in making more than the most
superficial acquaintance with Ácoma rituals should consult her printed
articles.[235] Professor Espinosa has also collected a valuable number
of folk-tales and anthropological data. To these two sources the writer
acknowledges her great indebtedness for the facts given in this section
of the study. Dr. Parsons went to Ácoma in January, 1917, accompanied
by a native Zuñi who knew her well and who had relatives at Ácoma. Even
with such an introduction, and though she was hospitably entertained by
an Ácoma household, she had “to contend against extreme distrust of the
whites,” and with much difficulty finally differentiated herself from
“the ordinary picture-taking tourist.” But their special aversion was to
any representative of the national government “from whom every ceremonial
or detail of life is to be hidden.” So that even after they had begun
to trust Dr. Parsons, the story-teller of the moment would break off
suddenly at a critical point to be reassured that none of what he had
said would be forwarded to Washington. Of a second visit in 1918, Dr.
Parsons says, by way of preface, that “information is so difficult to get
that, fragmentary as it is, it should be presented,” both for its own
value and because the only way to learn something from the Pueblo Indian
is to know something beforehand.
Before mentioning the public ceremonials, it is well to note in passing
certain individual rites, classed as “crisis ceremonialism,”[236] by
which is understood the transition from one stage of life to another.
Birth, adolescence, the initiation into fraternities, marriage, funeral
and mourning, each has its ordered recognition by definite rituals.
One not shared by white people, called “ceremonial friendship,” is a
beautiful relation between two persons who have become fast friends
but have no kinship of blood. Always a voluntary choice, it may begin
in very early childhood, or at any later period; it is most frequently
seen between two men, much more rarely between two women, and not seldom
between a man and a woman. In the last case, it constitutes a relation
of brother and sister with no possibility of marriage, nor would either
dream of marrying into the clan of the other. _Saukin_ is the Ácoma word
for friend. In Zuñi these friends are called _kihe_, and there is a
solemn ceremony performed to consummate it. Dr. Parsons could not be sure
of the same custom at Ácoma, but she saw a woman make a present of a bowl
to a Zuñi visitor to whom she had previously given a meal. “We are now
friends,” said the Ácoma woman—although Zuñi claims never to make _kihe_
with other pueblos.
Espéjo in 1580 mentioned the snake dance at Ácoma, but did not say
anything about the snakes being carried in the mouth as at Walpi, which
is so extraordinary a sight that he could hardly have overlooked it; and
Mrs. M. C. Stevenson[237] in her vivid and important account of the snake
ceremony of the Queres pueblo at Sía, expressly says that the Sía priests
held the snakes in their hands. The Hopi, in fact, assert that the Queres
never have put the serpents in their mouths, as they themselves do. In
1895 several Snake and Antelope priests at Hopi told Fewkes that portions
of the snake ceremonial still survived at Ácoma, but he could not confirm
this from anyone acquainted with Ácoma rituals.[238] In 1918, according
to Dr. Parsons, there was but one Snake clansman left at Ácoma, and I
was told in 1922 that he had since died. On September 2, the feast day
of the patron saint of Ácoma, a dramatic representation is given of the
coming of St. Stephen to New Mexico.[239] Visitors are apparently made
more welcome at this time than at any other during the year. The church
is wide open for prayers in early morning, and then there follows a
religious service. After this comes the drama, and then a long programme
of dances, foot races, and other games.[240] The ceremony is chiefly
pagan but here, as everywhere in the Indian country, the name of the
saint is given whose day coincides in the Christian calendar with that of
the ancient _fiesta_—another adroit adaptation of the early padres.
[Illustration: ÁCOMA ON FEAST-DAY OF ST. STEPHEN
SEPTEMBER 2
_Fr. O’Sullivan_]
The celebration of All Souls’ Day at Ácoma and Laguna is unquestionably
an inheritance of early Catholic training, albeit at Zuñi Dr. Parsons was
told that it was a ritual of their own race, and not one engrafted from
any other. At nightfall in Ácoma on November 1 or 2[241] the informant
of Dr. Parsons “guessed” that parties of possibly as many as ten boys
go about the streets calling out “_Tsalemo, Salemo_,” at the same time
ringing a bell. This custom, according to Professor Espinosa, is a purely
Spanish one, and the words used as they beg for food are an Indian
corruption of the first words of an “invocation undoubtedly taught their
ancestors by Spanish padres: ‘_Tsalemo, Saremo, Oremo, Soremo._’”[242]
The boys are given food, and other food is taken to the cemetery and
placed at the foot of the wooden cross standing there, near which the
war chiefs are on guard. By next morning all the food has disappeared.
Dr. Parsons[243] speaks of the “Mexican prayer: _Padre Spirito Santo_,
Amen” as part of the celebration, but, according to Professor Espinosa,
“these Indian vocables are regular phonetic developments of the first
three words of the Catholic ceremony: _por la señal_.” The current
familiar pronunciation is _pol la seña_. Professor Espinosa gives the
whole prayer as the Indian mumbles it, with the Spanish words below, as
follows:
_Polasenyá_ _ela Santa_ _kulusi_ _lenuishta_
_Por la señal_ _de la santa_ _Cruz_ _de nuestros_
_inimiku_ _liplansiniola_ _ios_ _inimipali_
_enemigos_ _libranos señor_ _Dios_ _en nombre el padre_
_eleho_ _eleshpintu_ _Santu_ _amikiasusi_
_del hijo_ _y el espirítu_ _Santo_ _Amén Jesús_
The celebration in December is longer, and in certain respects more
elaborate, than either of the others, though it is less like a pageant
than the _fiesta_ of St. Stephen, and, as has been said elsewhere,
it is a curious complex of pagan and Christian customs. The whole
celebration is known in Mexican as _fiesta del Re_, but in Keresan it is
_Koachansiwatsask_. It is preceded by the warrior dance called _hoinawe_.
Dr. Parsons was not allowed to witness the preparation of the songs
composed for the occasion, which took place in the estufas. The men were
summoned to the dance by officers, who walked through the three avenues,
crying out their summons.
Four Circuits are made, one officer following another through
“North Row”; “Middle Row”; and “Last Row,” for the custom
characteristic of other pueblos of calling out the orders from
the house-top is not found in Ácoma.
Beginning on December 16, the church bell is rung every morning at nine
o’clock, and mass is said by the _sextana_. Everyone counts the days
until the 22nd when there is a grand rehearsal of the dances at night in
the clan house of the Sun. From then until the 30th there are continual
dances and exchanges of gifts. On Christmas day the so-called “Comanche
dance,” in which costumes like those of that once-dreaded enemy are worn,
takes place in the church at the foot of the altar. This dance must be of
Spanish origin, for a similar ceremony takes place in Seville cathedral
before the altar on December 8 for the celebration of the Immaculate
Conception, and again at the Feast of Corpus Christi. The open plaza
called _Kakati_, where a cross-street runs from North Row to Middle Row,
supplies the stage for all outdoor dances. No whites are allowed to see
the masked dances at Ácoma or Laguna, although these take place in the
open plaza. The dance Dr. Parsons did see was maskless, to celebrate the
installation of officers, and was called “unfinished.”[244]
From the 26th to the 29th, Comanche dances in which children may take
part are frequent in the plaza. The _Kachale_ come out, and there is the
_pasku_, or butterfly dance. Meanwhile, the _Kasik_ and his “brothers”
and “uncles,” that is, the younger and older members of the Antelope
clan, meet in their house a group of ten, probably the _principales_.
(This house was back of the _estufas_, and Dr. Parsons did not ascertain
whether it was the clan house or a ceremonial house.) Here was held the
discussion about the men eligible for election on the following day, when
all the men meet in the _Komanina_ (a long house near the church, where
the officers hold court).[245] So anxious was Dr. Parsons’s host to have
her leave town at a certain time, before the dances were finished, that
she felt sure there was some ritual too sacred for her profane eyes.
This merely suggestive sketch of the ceremonials which are to the Indian
the most intimately important occupation of his life may be closed with a
summary by Mrs. Stevenson, who says:
Their sociology and religion are so intricately woven together
that the study of one can not be pursued without the other, the
ritual beginning at birth and closing at death. Their religion
is not one mainly of propitiation but rather of supplication
for favor and payment of the same, and to do the will of the
beings to whom they pray. This is the paramount occupation
of their life. All other desirable things come through its
practice.[246]
[Illustration: PROCESSION OF THE DANCERS, ÁCOMA
_Fr. O’Sullivan_]
When, therefore, the Christian missionaries made the astounding and
appalling announcement to the native dwellers that they were under the
awful doom of eternal punishment, they aroused, by adding a supernatural
terror, a superhuman determination in the breast of the Indian to rid his
land forever of the blasphemous invaders. When this proved impossible to
effect by force of arms, they apparently yielded to “conversion,” but
only to cherish the more sacredly their old rites and beliefs, so that,
gradually fusing the two more or less, they have to-day an inextricable
complex of ritual.
What does the American government think it is likely to gain by a
suppression of these moral and social laws, with their ancestry of
centuries?
NOTE.—While this chapter was in proof, there came to hand
_Manito Masks_, by Hartley Alexander. This small volume gives
a subtle and illuminating epitome of “the three key-forms of
Indian aesthetic—Rhythm, Song and Spectacle.” From these,
in combination with subordinate _motifs_, the Indian weaves
his symbolic and dramatic ritual wherein is depicted all the
mystery of man’s life and death.