In Quest of El Dorado

by Stephen Graham

We went to "Pablito" and "Emily," fanciful names of an Indian and his wife. Their true names they will seldom divulge. They gave us a room and blankets—in case we could snatch a few hours of sleep now and then. Pablito's house was a strange hive of activity. It had a long corridor which led to a bake-house, and through our room and along this corridor went a procession of squaws carrying pumpkins so heavy we interceded now and then to help them, and carrying tubs of "chili con carne"—roast meat and chili—and of frijoles (beans).

At eleven we all lay down to try to sleep, the girls chaffing one another a great deal. I had expected to meet Wilfrid Ewart and the poet Witter Bynner at the Zunyi Dance, and we heard they had arrived. But in these first hours they eluded us. I do not know whether it was the expectation of meeting Ewart or Bynner or merely the spirit of the age, but the two pretty nieces, of which perhaps Betty was the more vain (though who can say?), insisted on curling their hair at one in the morning. They had brought curling tongs with them, and so relit the oil lamp and heated the tongs in the glass chimney and laboriously curled each beautiful lock. We men watched them from the floor, with half-closed eyes. Then we got up also and sallied forth into the ice-bound streets and visited the shrines again.

By that time the Indians had feasted their guests and all the dances were in full activity. Where before in the hall of a Shaleco house had been the drone and the stillness of prayers before a shrine there was now the gayety of marvelous ritual dances and Nature ballets.

The Shaleco and the Mudheads were dancing together. I imagine that Shaleco is the Spanish name for the Bird-god of the Zunyi Indians. Chaleco is Spanish for a vest, and the chief characteristic of the Bird-god is his beautiful embroidered vests which hang over interior hoops and fold over one another. The Bird is nine or ten feet high. Imagine, therefore, how high the rooms in which he dances! He is an astonishing bird. He wears a sun halo of eagles' feathers, he has horns of turquoise color, and at his throat is a voluminous black ruff of thickly clustered little feathers. Black holes are his eyes, and his beak is a long, straight, cleft piece of wood which opens and shuts and clack-clacks in menace or in mirth. The embroidered vests below are of turquoise color fading toward green. Inside all this, of course, is a hidden Indian, hidden in all except his moccasins.

The Mudheads, in contrast to the Shalecos, were almost naked and were ugly. Their bodies were painted mud color (adobe color), and they wore over their natural heads a mask of misshapenness. They looked like badly made men of mud—as if some journeyman had made man. There were knobs on their heads, finger holes for eyes; they had protruding, bottle-neck mouths. They wore no jewelry, but round their middles hung a slit kilt of black material, and as they danced their bare, mud-colored hips slipped in and out.

I was told they represented in mythology the offspring of a brother and sister. Their function, however, was that of clowns. I took their real symbolism to mean, human beings in the presence of the Nature god, absurd and ugly. When the Shalecos had returned to the mountains I noticed that the Mudheads took off their masks and danced seriously and beautifully again.

But in the strange midnight the Shalecos in the dance constantly chased them. There was something whimsical in the expression of the Shaleco, especially when it leaped forward dancing from the shrine. It ran like a bird and squeaked and clack-clacked as it ran. Katharine Voigt took the attention of the Shaleco directly she entered the first hall. Was it her bright red tam-o-shanter or her curled locks? I cannot say. But he flew at her across the room so that she retreated whilst the Bird, with the lightest of turns, had checked its speedy advance and was returning to the shrine, and the four Mudheads present were mumming and spluttering and step-dancing back and forth in ungainly gestures, and the chorus of singers and drummers at the back of the room kept the throb of time. Scores of Indians watched from the sides, scores crowded the doorways, the light of the large lamps above was warm and bright, and the dancing never ceased.

We went from house to house. At another house a band of Zunyis were dancing a Navajo dance in honor of the Navajos present. At another the Longhorns were dancing. The Longhorns had mitered heads of red and blue, masked, hidden faces, black feather-ruffs at the throat like that of the Shaleco, but bare body and legs and beautiful brown moccasins. They carried in their hands spears of horn and a bunch of twigs. In their dance the chief movement was a running forward with bent knees, like a Roman soldier spear in hand. But they smote no one till the dance was over next day. Then I believe they smote every one they could.

In another hall danced a buckskin-headed child of dawn with a white taperlike point on the height of his head and a crimson diadem set with silver conches about his brows; a beautiful and serene figure, and one of the most delicate of the dancers. It was in the house where he was dancing that I met the poet Bynner, tired and yet spellbound. "This is the most beautiful of them all, I think," he said. The dance was pure poetry to him.