Westward hoboes

by Winifred Hawkridge Dixon

TAOS WOMAN.

KOSHARI: RAIN DANCE: SAN YLDEFONSO.

One koshari was tottering and blind, steering himself with a cane, and the brusque aid of his companion, a fat young rascal who would have been funny in any language. He, poor soul, no longer amusing, contented himself with rushing about on his withered legs, and uttering feeble yelps in concert with his colleague. The dancers followed, all young men,—some in their teens,—and began a solemn march around the village preceding the dance. Necklaces of evergreen wreaths comprised their costume from the waist up, two eagle feathers topped their hair, short white hand-woven skirts reached to the knee, with an occasional fox skin hanging behind, and at the side red, white and green tassels of wool. The limbs and bodies were painted; at the ankles tortoise shells rattled, and gourds in their hands shook with silvery precision. In moccasins edged with skunk fur, they stamped in light, unvarying rhythm, first on one foot, then the other, wheeling in sudden gusts, not together, but in a long rhythmic swell so accurately timed to undulate down the line that each foot was lifted a fraction higher than the one in front. They sang quietly, with the same shuddering little accent their gourds and feet maintained, at intervals stressing a note sharply, in absolute accord. Two women, young and comely, in the heavy black squaw dress and white doeskin leggins of the Pueblo woman, squatted midway before the line of lithe dancers, and beat, beat all through the day on their drums, while all through the day, lightly, sharply, the moccasined feet were planted and lifted, with a snap and re-bound as if legs and rippling bodies covered not sinews, but springs of finely tempered steel, timed to hair trigger exactness. Their lean faces wore an intent look, hardly heeding the antics of the koshari who gamboled around them, standing on their heads, tumbling, shouting, and pulling each other’s tails like monkeys. About evergreen trees planted in the center, they pivoted to all four points of the compass. The dance varied little. The song, the tombés, the shivery gourds and shells, the syncopated beat of each tireless foot on the earth became a background to the color and picnic movement of the village, drowsy in the sunshine, steaming with the odors of people, dogs, jerked beef, cedar smoke and buckskin, whiffs of lilac, fresh willow, snowy sprays of wild pear, and a wet breeze from the Rio Grande.

Because rain in that parched country is literally life, the Indians hold this rain dance too sacred to admit as participants any women save the two who beat the drums. “Tomorrow,” said the fat young koshari, “nice dance. We dance with the girls then.”

RAIN DANCE, SAN YLDEFONSO.

They stamped in light, unvarying rhythm.

I dare not claim any authority for the interpretation of the costumes of the Rain Dance. Several natives of the pueblo, including quiet-eyed Juan, the governor, gave us various versions which did not tally in every particular. We had learned that an Indian’s meaning of a lie, which he is fairly scrupulous in avoiding, does not include the answers to questions touching his cherished customs and the private code of his race. The evergreen, all agreed, stood for fertility or verdure; the eagle feathers, with their white and black tips, for the black and white of slashing rain and lowering clouds; the yellow fox-skins represented the yellow of ripe corn; the red and green tassels at the waist the flowers and grass of spring; the white tassels, snow or hail. The symbolism of the thunder clouds was repeated in the black and white of the skunk fur moccasins; the gourds echoed the swish of rain, and the drum-beats the rumble of the thunder; the tortoise shell rattles at the ankle meant either rain and wind, or were a symbol, like the shell necklaces most of them wore, of the ocean, which all desert tribes especially revere, as the Father of all Waters.

During the dance the fat and impudent koshari honored me with a command,—“You take me and my chum for a ride?” Fat and very naked, covered with melting grease paint, and ferocious in horns and tail, he was not the sort of companion I would have chosen for a motor drive, but a refusal might have prompted him to expel us from the village. On a fête day, the lightest word of a koshari is law. He clambered in, and moved over to make room for his chum, a loathsome and mangy old fellow, with rheumy, sightless eyes, whose proximity filled me with disgust. Tottering with age and excitement, his first move was to clutch the steering wheel, and when I had disengaged his claws, he grasped the lever with an iron grip. Meanwhile, thirteen brown babies, some of whom had been bathed as recently as last year, climbed into the tonneau. We whirled around and around the plaza, the children shouting, dogs barking, the fat koshari bowing like visiting royalty to the cheering spectators, uttering shrieks in my ear to take me off guard, kicking his heels in the air, or sliding to the floor as a too-daring visitor tried to snap his picture, while koshari senior occasionally seized the levers and threw us into reverse, nearly stripping the gears.