The Navaho Fire Dance or Corral Dance: A Brief Account of its Practice and Meaning

By Berard Haile

The Fire Dance is the ceremony performed during the ninth night of the Mountainway. The purpose of these last night's rites is to accumulate power, to help to restore the individual patient; to give strength to the spectators who have gathered in big crowds during the last night and to convey fertility to soil and animal and abundance to crop and game. The signal features of the Fire Dance are the erection of the sacred enclosure, the kindling of the huge central fire, and the performance of group dances, executed by medicine men who have been ceremonially invited from far distant places. Some of these dances are exclusively part of the Mountain Way, as for example the dance of the fire dancers whose task it is to replace a burned-off feather by a new one, a trick which symbolizes "restoration". Other group dances are taken from the Shooting-Chant (the Whirling Feather) or from the Nightway (the Masked Dancers). Berard Haile bases his account partly on personal observations, partly on the word of informants, and, to some extent, on the description of the ceremony of the Mountain Chant as given by Washington Matthews.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barakaldo Books
• Release date: May 8, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839744662

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The

NAVAHO FIRE DANCE

Or

Corral Dance

A Brief Account Of Its Practice And Meaning

Berard Haile

Table of Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 4

DEDICATION 5

ILLUSTRATIONS 6

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7

INTRODUCTION 9

The Meal Sprinklers 11

The Mountain Boy Reports 15

Valley Boy’s Report 20

The Last Night 21

The Dark Circle of Boughs 22

The Fire Dancers 26

The Feathered Arrows 28

The Corral 30

First Dancers 32

Arrow Swallowing 34

Ye-i Group 37

Shootingway Dances in 40

Whirling Tail Feather, A Shootingway Specialty 41

The Pole Which Does Things 44

Specialties of Mountainway 48

Firebrand Dancers of Mountainway 51

Maturing Yucca Fruit 54

Beautyway Dancers 56

The Smoking Owl 57

The Young Spruce Group 60

The Footrace 62

A Reunion 64

Why the Corral Dance? 65

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 66

DEDICATION

To

MOST REVEREND VALENTINE SCHAAF

First American Minister General

of the

Order of Friars Minor, O.F.M.

Since its

Foundation in 1209

ILLUSTRATIONS

by

Jean Margerite

Paul Scales

Bruno Butz

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Courier

Plumed Wands Set in Front of Hogan

Babe Floats Around

Porcupine Man

Badger Man

Turkey Man

Ye-i bichai Mask

Conical Hogan

The Corral

Fire Drill

Feathered Arrow

Bighorn Man

Ground Squirrel Man

Marmot Man

Fire Within The Corral

Arrows of First Dancers

Big Fly

Ye-i Group

Humpback

Hide Rattle

Beaver Man

Whirling Tail Feathers

Bull Roarer

Pole That Accomplishes Things

Man Leading Bear

Weasel Man

Pine Squirrel Man

Yucca Plant

The Smoking Owl

Owl Man

Young Spruces

Ye-i bichai Specialties

INTRODUCTION

The Navahos call it Mountain-topway which we have shortened to read Mountainway. This means that this ceremonial, in all of its phases, has prime reference to events which occurred on mountains, as well as to mountain residents, like the bear, the porcupine, beaver, turkey, and others. Upon further search, however, I found three branches of Mountainway, a male, female, and a cub branch. Ordinarily, the bear and his family is primarily in mind, when men speak of cubs. Wolves and coyotes may have cubs, but they are roamers of both mountain and valley. The bear, however, is at home in the mountains and therefore, the three branches of mountainway will concern themselves with the he-bear, the she-bear, or exclusively with the cubs.

There is also a Jicarilla Mountainway, the name clearly indicates that the Navahos must have borrowed this ceremonial from their Apache cousins. Residents of the Jicarilla country call it the bear Dance, though the Jicarillas themselves have a different name for it. The Jicarilla account features the bear and the snake, but how much of this the Navahos have adopted is a matter for conjecture as I have no Navaho account of this Mountainway branch.

In 1884 Dr. Washington Matthews, of the U.S. Army, published an account of the Mountain Chant, as he called it. He does not mention which branch of Mountainway he is describing, but I have made use of parts of his description of the Fire Dance because, essentially, specialties exhibited there are identical in all branches of Mountainway. But I could not follow him in the version he gives of the origin of Mountainway. Briefly, he describes the capture of a Navaho by the Utes from whom he escapes and teaches his people the Mountainway ceremonial. This is a rather sudden climax especially as no mention is made of having learned the ceremonial from the Utes. At any rate, since a man is said to be the author, we may accept it as an account of the male branch of Mountainway.

In later years the writer succeeded in getting an account of the first War Dance. This definitely stated that the two girls who appeared there as dancers were sisters. The older sister was inveigled to marry Bear Man who had taken the form of a beautiful young man. The younger sister