THE

DANCES OF THE JEMEZ PUEBLO INDIANS.

By ALBERT B. REAGAN, Mora, Wash.

HE Jemez pueblo Indians are a semicivilized tribe residing in the northwestern part of New Mexico, about sixty miles southwest of Santa Fe and fifty miles north of Albuquerque. They, like their pueblo neighbors, differ in many characteristics from the nomadic tribes, devoting their attention principally to the cultivation of the soil and the raising of stock. They live in houses built of stone or sun-dried brick.

They have a division of labor, the women doing the house work, the men the work in the fields.

Their civilization dates back to a period anterior to the arrival of the Spaniards; and, owing to their isolation and manner of living, they still retain their ancient language, customs, superstitions, and religion, though all of them talk the Mexican language and are adherents of the holy Roman Catholic church.

These Indians are religious in the extreme; every move, every voluntary act, even the smoking of a cigarette, is performed with some religious end in view. They are worshipers of nature, and they endow each object with its counterpart spirit. The sun, moon, stars, clouds, lightning, rainbow and snake are their chief objects of worship. Symbols of these objects of worship are painted on their dancing regalia and in their dwellings, secret apartments, and religious halls. In front of these symbols they pray and sprinkle corn-pollen or meal, usually morning, noon, and evening, they believing that the symbols have the power to carry the prayers of the children of men to the deities they represent.

Halls are built by these people for the purpose of worship, and many of their dwellings have secret religious (dark) rooms in them; besides, many of the houses have blind closets. In the latter the things of a religious character, which the Jemez does not desire the public to see, are stored away and sealed up till needed again in religious worship. In the dark room are the altars, the idols, and many symbolic drawings and paintings. In this room also, lying beneath the sacred symbols, are bunches of the downy eagle feathers, so sacred to the aborigines of the region. Among these bunches of feathers, bowls of sacred dust-corn pollen and meal-are setting. In this room the "family worship" is carried on, and in it the oldest woman of the family sprinkles the sacred

dust three times a day in front of the symbols and idols, the latter being crude figures of men and animals, carved out of wood or stone.

The halls of worship are large, rectangular, flat-roofed buildings, the inside walls of which are decorated with symbolic paintings of the greater and lesser deities of the Jemez tribe. Before these sacred emblems the "cacique," or sun priest, sprinkles the sacred dust, and prays both at the beginning and at the close of any special ceremony. In front of these same paintings the dancers and clowns train themselves for special occasions, and from their presence they emerge from the building to dance and perform before the public in the plaza, and to their presence they return at the close of the public ceremony, to be sprinkled with the sacred meal and to receive the blessings of the gods.

While United States Indian farmer at Jemez, in 1899 and 1900, I visited each of the halls of worship (estufas) at will, being with the Indians in them as many as six nights in the week. I also examined the blind closets and secret rooms in their dwellings, and visited their open-air performances held during my sojourn there. Thus was I enabled to see many things of interest.

Among these

were their dances. Observations on these I give below.

THE MASKED DANCE.

One morning soon after I went to Jemez an "Ahoo, ahoo, ahoo, ahoo, ahoo," broke the stillness of the morning air. A masked sun-dance was commencing. The "Ahoo, ahoo, ahoo," grew louder and louder and became a more basic, hideous sound, as sixteen strange-looking creatures issued, one after another, from the passageway in the roof of the rectangular sun-house. They were the clowns that, according to the Jemez belief, represent the principal gods, the sun, the moon, the morning star, and the evening star, on all special religious occasions. All of these clowns were gaudily dressed. All had conspicuous head ornaments, and all wore circular masks some eight inches in diameter. On these were painted the gods they respectively represented, together with paintings of clouds, of lightnings, and of snakes.

The arms of these clowns were naked. They wore leggings and moccasins tinged in red. Their yellow-painted bodies were wrapped in richly colored blankets or robes, on which were embroidered, in characteristic colors, figures of the sun, of the moon, of the great stars, of the good and evil snakes, of the rainbow in the west and the rainbow in the east, and of the four pillars of clouds - the steps from earth to heaven-all making a fantastic display.

The head ornament usually consisted of eagle feathers so arranged on a buckskin covering as to represent the spread tail of a bird with reverse side presented to the front. Back of this fan of feathers were paintings of the greater gods, whose outlines were formed with tiny images, beads of turquoise, and shells of various kinds.

The masks, with respect to the figures painted on them, were four of a kind. The symbol which the wearer represented occupied the central position on the mask. These central figures consisted of a disk surrounded by concentric bands in the sun and moon drawings and by points in the star symbols. The disks of all the figures were red, except those of the moon, which were white. The inner band of the sun was black, the outer was composed of rays of red alternating with outer spaces of yellow. From this outer band there projected darts in red; one to the right, one to the left, one toward the heavens above, and one toward the earth beneath. The white disk of the moon was surrounded by a wide yellow ring. From it four groups of peculiar-looking figures projected, one toward each of the four cardinal points when the mask is laid flat on the ground, with one of the groups extending in a cardinal direction. The Jemez Indians suppose that these groups represent the rays of the moon. Each group consisted of two yellow figures inclined at a small angle from the perpendicular and from each other. Each of these terminated at its outer end in a blue disk. The whole looked much like a half-burned cigar, the blue disk representing the ashy end. The stars were four-pointed. The points of the morning star were black, those of the evening star yellow. The disks of all the central symbols were god faces. The eyes were triangular in shape, the mouth rectangular. Both the eyes and the mouth were painted black. The outer figures on the masks were at the right and at the left of the central emblem. The drawings on the one side were the counterparts of those on the other. The four pillars of clouds, painted black, projected out and extended as a succession of steps along the rim of the mask almost from its lower part, as the mask is worn, to its upper part. From these cloud-pillars, or "steps from earth to heaven," as the Jemez believe them to be, four figures, painted in striking and characteristic colors, extend, one from each cloud projection in toward the controlling symbol. The upper figurere presented the bolt lightning; the next lower a red, zigzag-bodied snake, having a blue head from which a horn curved backwards like a goat's horn. This figure is the emblem of evil. It is the Indian devil, Sawah. The

third from the top was a sinuously curved yellow figure which terminated in three green buds. It was drawn to represent the flash or heat lightning, which the Jemez believe is the god of bloom. The lower figure was zigzag, a blue-bodied snake, having a green head, with horn turning backwards, similar to that of the red snake above described. This snake is the representative of good. It is considered by the Indians as the producer of rain, as being the genius of the watercourses.

As soon as the god representatives had descended from the roof of the estufa they began to dance and crow-hop about, keeping up their ear-grating "ahooing" all the time. This they did for about ten minutes. Then they began to march around the village, if march it can be called. They advanced in a long, drawn-out column. Some crow-hopped it along; some jumped like a man, others like a frog; some walked with a cane, mimicking an old man; the cane was tri-colored in red, yellow, and green. Some, leaning forward on short canes, walked on all fours. Others strutted about like a turkey-gobbler. Occasionally all stopped a moment to pose. In this act they usually stood half erect, threw their hips backwards, contorted their bodies, and brought their heads in a position so that the circular mask presented a full front to the god of day, or to his place of rising. At the same time they prolonged the "ahooing" and gave it an emphatic accent. In this manner did they march and pose till they had encircled the whole village and