West by Southwest Ernie Bulow

NAVAJO FIRE DANCE NAVAJO FIRE DANCE

THE GROUP THAT SET CEREMONIAL ABLAZE THE GROUP THAT SET CEREMONIAL ABLAZE

PAINTING BY WESTERN ARTIST W. R. LEIGH

The Fire Dance is part of a much larger Navajo curing rite known as the Mountainway. The full ceremonial lasts nine days, and on the last night, a huge corral of pinion branches is constructed and a giant bonfire is built in the middle. The participants are smeared with white clay and carry long bundles of cedar bark, which set ablaze in the darkness. Roman Hubble, scion of the Ganado Hubbells and sometimes tourist guide, wrote this:

DANCE OF THE DESERT “Flames crackle from the huge pile of cedar logs, and leap, arching to the sky. Tom-toms thump monotonously through the chill night. Firelight flickers on the silent and blanketed circle of spectators. Slowly, nervously, Navajo braves dance into the light of the fires, their bodies painted a deadly white. They come limping,

Ernie Bulow

West by Southwest

by Ernie Bulow

FIRE DANCERS SHOWING OFF THEIR LONG TORCHES stamping, twisting to the beat of the tom-toms. They carry cedar bark torches, but they do not light them in the bonfire. They are afraid.

They are enacting a legend that goes back to the time when men and animals spoke the same language. A friendly god thought it should not be so. He wanted the potential men to have a fire of their own, to distinguish them from animals. So he dispatched coyote to a high mountain top, where the fire was kept, to steal some of the flame…he stole fire with the cedar bark torch tied to his tail.”

When the Corral Dance is performed for a patient there are of course many more parts to it; the bonfire, with singing and shouting, is just the big finale.

Like major ceremonials of all tribes, there are only certain times in winter the Corral Dance can be done. For Navajos, the Enemy Way (known as the squaw dance) is the only summer ceremonial. Mike Kirk must have been a silvertongued devil to talk tribes into even partial or modified presentations.

In later years Ceremonial added some other parts of the ceremony, like making a yucca grow seemingly from nowhere. There are also dancing feathers and other tricks. Having seen these performed, I can’t imagine what spectators could see from the bleachers.

There is another rite, sometimes confused with the Fire Dance, that is part of another ceremony, the Scalp Dance. This is the summer observance called the Squaw Dance—which actually has nothing to do with the actual ceremony, the Enemy Way, the only Navajo chant that can be performed in the summer. At the close of the Enemy Way, men daubed with clay perform a scalp dance.

The Fire Dance obviously can’t be presented in the daylight, but the participants, nearly naked except for a breechclout and the clay, are exotic in their own right.

This number is a real crow pleaser when they turn off the lights and set fire to the stacked cedar limbs. The usually large group lights their bundles and cavort around the big blaze, sending showers of bright sparks skyward. THIS GROUP LOOKS STRANGELY BORED.

- ernie@buffalomedicine.com