Evening Star Newspaper, August 18, 1936, Page 9

Navajos Pray to Saint and Pagan Gods Santo Domingo and Ancient Dieties of Forefathers Get Sacrifices of Irdians in Rites. This is the third of a series of stories on Najavo Indians, RY THOMAS R. HENRY, Staft Correspondent of The Star. SANTO DOMINGO New Mexico, August 18.—Blue and gold Saint| Dominic’s niche in the wall of the 300-year-old pueblo church is empty today. The plaster saint has been carried forth on its yearly pilgrimage into the weird places of the old gods of the four winds and the goiden harvest. A few yards below the ancient kiva | yonder the statue rests in a green | shrine made of cedar boughs, 10| eandles burning before it. Gentle eyes of the medieval scholar | and preacher look from the open front of this vernal temple over a dusty, mud-brown oblong plaza lined on three sides by continuous, one-story adobe houses with blue doors. The rooftops are crowded with red-skinned women in scarlet and purple mantles and men with broad, copperish faces and high cheek bones wearing tunics of yellow, blue, carmine and white— with a considerable intermixture of white women in blue denim trousers popular in the cow country this Sum- | mer, and white men in boots and | sombreros. | Dance in Intricate Patterns. | On the sun-baked floor of the plaza | are the dancers—young men, bare and | painted to their waists; bare-footed | women in black dresses, youths and | maidens, toddling little boys and little | girls. Each carries a green cedar bough. In the hair of each is a tuft of corn husks. Weirdly, monoto- | nously, interminably they dance, flat- | footed and in intricate, ever-chang- ing patterns. They sing all the while & wild, weird prayer, accompanied by | the endless beating of a drum, gourd | rattles, the tinkling of their belts of shells. A little to one side stands the | chorus, about 50 of the elders of the | Pueblo arrayed in tunics of all colors | of the rainbow, who sing as the| younger folks dance and keep the time Tor their dancing. The other salnts are left alone in the stillness of the pewless adobe church. Not for them the wild chant | of the rain gods. Only for holy | Dominic, patron of the village, this | Midsummer pilgrimage to the strange places below the kiva. But just back of the church out of sight and hearing of the weird chanting, a Mexican or- chestra is playing, “The Music Goes "Round and 'Round.” “Come get yes hot dogs fer a nickel,” a barker from Santa Fe is shouting. And around the church costumed Indian women are squatted on the ground, selling dec- orated pottery and souvenir ash trays. It's & country carnival dayv up here where good Santo Domingo has lelt the other saints in the cool stiliness of the mission church. But down be- low the kiva— An ancient of the village, standing belore the green bough shrine, sounds s blast on a battered bugle. The dancers fall into marching formation, bearing loaves of bread, squashes and melons. They file past the statue of §t. Dominic and each leaves the of- fering on the candle-lit altar. This is piled high with the plenty of the harvest. The largess is the offering to the biue-and-gold saint in his high Bpanish hat of Coronado's day for THE EVENING STAR, WASHINGTON, Santo Domingo pueblo is perhaps the largest and most unadulterated prim= itive ceremony, anthropologists are agreed, which still takes place in the southwest. The pueblo is miles off the automobile road and only of late years has any tone of modernism bro- ken into the weird symphony of painte ed dancers with wolf tails dangling and the beating of the drum and the chanting. But there is one bit of timeliness about it—the grave awk- wardness of the 4 and 5 year olds at the end of the line, who try to keep in step with their elders while they beat the air with their little cedar branches and who are indignantly scolded for their missteps. Painted men and women go through the endless gyrations in the most reverential seriousness. The aura of haunted ancientness is over the sun- baked plaza. From the kiva roof men whose bodies are painted with white stripes watch the ceremonies with critical eyes. Around the green bough shrine of St. Dominic gather Three Navajo chieftans who lived during the prime of the tribes. ‘Granado Mucho, chief of a band; Tiene-su-se, third war chief, and Mariana, second war chief, Photo courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. plentiful crops and rain. With sym- bolic gestures the dancers have been making the same appeal in the plaza | to the ancient gods of the Pueblos for | the same favors. Rites 400 Years Old. For nearly 400 years the people of this primitive pueblo, in the heart of the barren hills between Albuguerque and Santa Fe, thus have been appeal- ing to therr patron saint and the deities of their forefathers together | for the blessings of Tain and the yel- | low corn. And before the gentle St. Dominic came for century before cen- tury they had been making the same supplication to the desert gods. For here is one of the oldést agricultural civilizations on earth. The dry flelds around this pueblo were yielding har- vests of silk-vester ears when Caesar was conquering the Gauls and blue- painted savages camped in reed huts on the site of London. It has been, by and large, a prosperous civilization of a pre-eminently gentle and peace- ful people. It has reached its height and was declining when Coronado’s horsemen first penetrated the New Mexico hills and the black-robed ! friars came with their image of St. Dominic. Times have changed. The Indians of Santo Domingo pueblo no longer need pray for rain, except for the sake of their cattle in the cactus- | covered hills, for irrigation ditches | full of muddy water from the Rio Grande keep green the tall corn fields which surround the quaint, dusty old | town of 3,000 inhabitants. But prob- ably nowhere else in America are the | ancient ways more faithfully and | colorfully followed. The great corn dance, the gala fes- tival of the year, started at sunrise. Then the villagers assembled in the | plaza and went in procession to the | cross-surmounted adobe church. The image of the patron saint was taken from its niche in the wall and carried | reverently to the cedar bough shrine which had been set up the evening before. In the gray dawn the dancing and singing started. There were two groups of dancers and two of singers. One of each continued for an hour or | more, when they were ready to fall | from exhaustion. Then they dropped | out and the others took their places. Thus the strange ceremony went on from sunrise to sunset. | The kiva marks the dividing line between the old ways and the new, | which only St. Dominic crosses. It is | a round adobe building to which there is no entrance except by way of the | roof, through which protrudes a lad- der. This, almost equally with the Christian church built by the friars, is the holy place of the village. It is the shrine of the ancient mysteries. None but the initiated may enter or know the secret ceremonies which take place there. Once past the kiva and one is 2,000 years from hot dog barkers and pretty Mexican girls and their beaus stepping to “The Isle of Capri.” There is nothing secret about it, but cameras are barred and so are notebooks by the stave-bearing Indian policemen who stand guard before St. Dominic’s green shrine. This annual corn dance of the | | (Copyright, the gray-headed ancients of the vil- lage whose own dancing is over, eye- ing the sky for passing clouds which may indicate that St. Dominic and the old gods together are about to answer the rain supplication. Curi- ously enough, it is reported, drench- ing rains often start before the cere- mony is over—but they didn't this year. The wild ecstasy of the dancers grew during the hot atternoon. The gaudy-hued tunics were drenched with sweat. The chief marshal of the cere- monies, a slender Indian who carries and beats time with a heavy flag pole surmountéd by orange plumes and wound about with white deer- skin, showed no signs of weariness under his heavy burden. With each change of alignment the chanting became more vigorous and more weird. And then, as the sun sank red be- yond the corn flelds, they bore St. Dominic—the good Santo Domingo |who had blessed their forefathers | with golden harvests—back to his niche in the adobe church again and the company of his fellow saints out of the haunted time realms of the old gods. 1936. by The Newspaper Co Evening Star ) ‘Wheat Crowds Soybeans. HARBIN, Manchoukuo (#)—Wheat seems to be crowding out the soy- bean in this region. As millers and grain-dealers checked their stocks this Spring they found only half as many soybeans, and twice as much. whea® on hand as at this time last year. USE YOUR EISESAV) BUT NOT FOR AN N ICE BAG is a poor substitute for an ice cold bottle of GUNTHER'S BEER. GUNTHER'S is refreshing, cooling and stimulating - - it puts you on your toes. Don’t let the heat get you--get GUNTHER'S. IT TASTES GOOD...It IS GOOD... IT HAS TO0 BE GOOD TO BE GUNTHER'S! D. C. 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