Christmas Eve in Louisiana and a Look at Christmas Eve Past

Christmas Eve 2012 on Canyon Drive, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Last year, my mother and sister and I were in Santa Fe for Christmas. The folks at the Silver Saddle Motel were so kind to invite us and some other motel guests to join them on the traditional farolito walk on Canyon Drive.

Today, Christmas Eve in Lafayette, I remembered how special it was to enter the St. Joseph Apache Mission Church in Mescalero, New Mexico, during Christmas season last year. My mother and I visited the church once when it was empty, and we also attended Mass. 

St. Joseph Apache Mission Church, Mescalero, New Mexico

What a beautiful space.

So today, it made sense to me to attend a Mass this year also.

St. Mary Mother of the Church, Lafayette, Louisiana

A new friend is in the choir at St. Mary Mother of the Church, so that's where I went.  Heard graceful song and breathed deeply of the exotic frankincense.

St. Mary Mother of the Church, Lafayette, Louisiana

 
... and then, I thought, what the hell - no I mean heck, because, shhh, we're in church! - what about going to midnight Mass?

Our Lady of Wisdom, Lafayette, Louisiana

For this, I selected Our Lady of Wisdom Church on St. Mary's Boulevard, on the University of Louisana - Lafayette campus.

I'm so glad I did.

Our Lady of Wisdom, Lafayette, Louisiana

The church was full but not overcrowded. The altar is an open one where there is seating in front and in back. Or better said, the altar is set perpendicular to the attendees.

Our Lady of Wisdom, Lafayette, Louisiana

The music, vocal and instrumental, was exquisite, and the acoustics or sound system or both, superb. Violins, cello, deep drums, soaring voices en masse and solo and twinned. It was possible to close one's eyes and simply dwell in the sound .... there were a few moments where it felt like being in the lapping water in the hot springs of Truth and Consequences.

Our Lady of Wisdom, Lafayette, Louisiana

The reader had a mellifluous voice; the priest(s) chanted the liturgy. The incense and its attendant smoke rounded out the sensory experience for the eyes, ears, and nose.

Our Lady of Wisdom, Lafayette, Louisiana

 

What a satisfying Christmas Eve in my new land.
    

New Mexico Lit: Apache History

I've spent most of my year in New Mexico re-reading my cache of classic, paperback sci-fi novels. With that project complete (and the books now dispersed to the universe), I've turned my attention to New Mexico-centered literature.

Recently, I visited the Mescalero Apache Cultural Museum in Mescalero. The helpful curator there recommended a number of books on Apache history, some of which I include here: 

• Cochise, Edwin R. Sweeney
• From Cochise to Geronimo, Edwin R. Sweeney
• The Apache Indians, Frank C. Lockwood
• An Apache Life, Morris Edward Opler
• I Fought With Geronimo, Jason Betsinez
• Making Peace with Cochise [journals of the peace talks], J.A. Sladen
• Mangas Coloradas, Edwin R. Sweeney 
• Merejildo Grijalva : Apache Captive, Army Scout; Edwin R. Sweeney
• The People Called Apache, Thomas Mails
• Watch For Me on the Mountain, Forest Carter

There were many more on the curator's list, including some by well-known author on the Apaches, Eve Ball. Fortunately, the Alamogordo Library has a large collection of Southwestern materials, so I've created a to-read list.

Edwin R. Sweeney is from St. Charles, Missouri, by the way. I heard that when he was a young'n, he announced to his English teacher that some day he would write a book about Cochise, with whom he was fascinated. The teacher was a little skeptical, given the lackluster attention he gave to English in the classroom. 









  

The Jingle Dress Dance

Jingle dress dancer, Mescalero parade, Mescalero, New Mexico

There were jingle dancers at the Mescalero parade in July.

Here, a woman tells the story - several stories, in fact - about the history and meaning of the jingle dress dance.

An excerpt:

One of the most profound elements of Jingle Dress dancing is its spiritual power, which originates as an energy generated from the sound of the cones that sing out to the spirits when dancers lift their feet in time with the drum. The very act of dancing in this dress constitutes a prayer for healing, and often spectators, musicians, and other dancers will make gifts of tobacco to a dancer and request that she pray for an ill family member while she dances. An example of hidden spirituality and ritual within a public forum, the ever-unfolding story of the Jingle Dress Dance is unique in Indian Country. There is little fanfare and no public announcement when the Jingle Dance is performed as a healing prayer, only a quiet circulation of family members from dancer to dancer, a whispered request, and a quick nod of thanks by both parties.

Jingle dress dancer, Mescalero parade, Mescalero, New Mexico

The Little Girl Who Rides the Train

In the Mescalero parade, I saw this banner: 

.... followed by this train float:

... and I was very curious.

The Little Girl Who Rides the Train

In Apache, Besh Binun gu deh' za yén roughly translates to "the little girl who rides the train." Besh is the Apache word for iron. In the Apache language, there was no word for train, so the closest approximation is "moving iron."

The Little Girl Who Rides the Train's personal story is an important part of Chiricahua Apache history. As a child, she was one of about 500 people who were domestic prisoners of war for 27 years, loaded onto cattle cars of a train and taken from Arizona to Florida (to start), as punishment for Geronimo's protracted resistance against what he believed to be the annihilation of his people. 

The Little Girl Who Rides the Train got her name because she was born in captivity (1906) and spent so much of her young life on trains, going from one prison hold to another.
   
She was also known as Edna Teenah Comanche. Ms. Comanche contributed her story to those of others in the telling of the Chiricahua imprisonment. Chiricahua Apache Enduring Power, by Trudy Griffin-Pierce, is one book that resulted from the oral histories. From Fort Marion [Florida] to Fort Sill [Oklahoma], by Alicia Delgadillo and Miriam A. Perrett, is another. Both of these are online in their entirety.


Geronimo and the Apache Resistance, presented by the PBS series, American Experience, tells the story of what happened before, during, and after the long political imprisonment.

The "little girl who rides the train" sounds like a light nursery tale, but it's really about a time of dislocation and uncertainty.

The Little Girl Who Rides the Train, Edna Teenah Comanche, died in 1999. Imagine. A woman who died less than 15 years ago had been a domestic prisoner of war in the United States for the first seven years of her life.

Because of a float on a parade, I learned all of this.

The Slowest Parade in America

Mescalero Parade, Mescalero, New Mexico

You know you're in a slow parade when

• It stops in front of you and the first unit's occupants get out so they can take pictures of the units following
• You can walk up to the front of a unit and take photos, then to the side, then the other side, and then the front again, all at a leisurely pace
• The classic-car section of the parade appears to have had enough (maybe ran low on gas?) and it leaves the parade early via a highway exit
• There's so much of a gap between one unit and another that people think the parade is over and leave

The Mescalero Apache summer parade in Mescalero, New Mexico, is that parade. The parade celebrates the Mescalero maiden puberty rites, and also coincides with Independence Day festivities.

Advance planning

This is what I saw when I thought I found the perfect spot for parade watching. It was kind of a hot day, and the breeze blowing through the shaded underpass looked like the perfect spot. My hunch was reinforced by the sight of all of those who had come before me to stake their territory.

My homestead is marked by the green chair in the foreground. 

Mescalero Parade, Mescalero, New Mexico

By the time the parade started, it looked like this: 

Mescalero Parade, Mescalero, New Mexico

Biology

Arriving early at a parade route makes it easy to find the best parade-watching spot and also the best parking spots. Arriving early at a parade that is scheduled to run about two hours means you'll likely have something to drink and maybe to eat, also. The yang to these yin is that it will be necessary to relieve yourself.

I was lucky. The first time I had to go - before the parade started - I walked up to the Senior Center, entered, walked down the hall, and used the restroom.  When I emerged, I discovered that the building was about to be closed up, and I was politely shooed out.

Later, during a lull in the parade, I walked up to the police station, entered the vestibule, then through another door, down the hall and to the restroom. When I emerged, a police woman who had been outside was now in the vestibule and she told me I wasn't really supposed to be there, that the door between the vestibule and corridor was usually locked.

Whoops.  


The medicine woman

One of my parade neighbors was a medicine woman, based in El Paso. She and her relatives have attended the Mescalero rites for eight years.

A congenial woman, she told me about two large women's gatherings, one already having occurred in El Paso this year, related to the sun; the next would be in Mexico, related to the moon. Both sounded exciting.

But do not get between this woman and pencils thrown out to the parade attendees. Someone could get hurt. 


The wax and gold

In Ethiopia, there is often more than one level of interpretation for what someone says or writes. The wax (sem) is the superficial message.  The gold (werk) is the true meaning of what was said or written. In its poetic form, this is called qene.

My first processing of the Mescalero parade was that it was just a parade, albeit with Apache notes.

But one of the floats had a sign referring to Edna Teenah Comanche, "the little girl who rides the train." Tracking down this reference a few days later took me down a path that gave me a greater appreciation of symbols that rolled by me in the parade, but which didn't make much of an impact at the time.

So there's more to come about this parade. 

In the meantime, a slide show:



  #30

The Tularosa Ditch Wars

Acequia in Tularosa, New Mexico

I've talked before about the Tularosa acequias and the battles between the Spanish-speaking Tularosa settlers and the Mescalero Apache.  

Marc Simmons, a New Mexico historian tells the story of the Tularosa Ditch Wars, which were waged between the same settlers and English-speaking later-comers, who stole their water upstream.

Here's Mr. Simmons' story, printed in the Santa Fe New Mexican. An excerpt:

... in the early 1860s, a new band of Hispanic pioneers arrived. They were from the Mesilla Valley and El Paso, where a Rio Grande flood had washed away their homes and fields. Wanting a new start and willing to work for it, they founded the community of Tularosa. Other settlers from Socorro soon established the neighboring village of La Luz.

The people built adobe homes, dug irrigation ditches to tap the river and organized a municipal government with an alcalde, or mayor. They also had occasional run-ins with the Mescaleros.

But life was generally serene, and the desert blossomed with orchards and a huge vineyard. Travelers considered Tularosa an oasis.

Trouble loomed on the horizon, however. ..... 

Water still gets stolen in New Mexico, I hear, and not too far from Alamogordo, either. Could just be rumor, though.

4th of July in New Mexico

The smell of sulfur saturated the air from so many personal fireworks having been deployed.

4th of July fireworks, Alamogordo, New Mexico

I took a walk down Scenic Boulevard at dusk. Many families had put out lawn chairs in their front yards in readiness for the city fireworks display to come. 

4th of July fireworks, Alamogordo, New Mexico

Children threw down poppers on the sidewalk for their mini explosions.

4th of July fireworks, Alamogordo, New Mexico

I returned to my apartment and carried a chair around the corner of my building to get a good view for myself.

4th of July fireworks, Alamogordo, New Mexico

A neighbor down the street had the radio on loud to hear the music that accompanied the display.

4th of July fireworks, Alamogordo, New Mexico

It was good to sit outside. The breeze that had started out warm turned a little fresher, which was pleasant.

Earlier in the day, I attended the Mescalero Maiden Ceremonials. The Ga'an dancers wore garments with the American flag on them. American flags that lined the ceremonial arena were at half mast to honor the Arizona firefighters who died a few days ago.  Out in the parking lot, there was an American flag with an image of Geronimo imprinted over the stripes. 

When the Alamogordo fireworks ended, it was so nice to fold up my chair and walk around the corner to my apartment. 

Red Paint Powwow, Part 5: Gaan Dancers

Gaan dancers from Mescalero. Alamogordo, New Mexico. Credit: John Bear

The Red Paint Powwow is an annual event in Silver City, New Mexico, hosted by the Chiricahua Apache. I attended the powwow on Saturday, January 19, 2013.

It's probably irreverent to say this, but I'll say it anyway - the Apache Gaan dancers are the coolest-looking.

Also known as Ga'an dancers, Crown dancers, or Mountain Spirit dancers, all of their dances are considered sacred.

Gaan dancers. Credit: SFMOMA

Amendment: I get the impression that in some venues, they modify their song and movements so as not to compromise the dancers'  responsibility to protect the sanctity of the Gaan rite.


The story

An excerpt from Native Peoples of the Southwest, Trudy Griffin Pierce, University of New Mexico Press, 2000, ISBN: 0-8263-1907-6:

"One of the most important holy beings for Apaches is White-Painted Woman, also known as Changing Woman or White Shell Woman. Her sons, Killer of Enemies and Child Born of Water, triumphed over the evils of the world personified as monsters, making the world safe for humans. The Mountain Spirits ensure the well-being of the people by protecting them from epidemic diseases and enemies. The Mountain Spirit Dancers or Crown Dancers "become" these sacred beings in the same way that the Hopi who dance specific katsinam become those katsina spirits. ... Their heads crowned with wooden slat headdresses, four Mountain Spirit Dancers and a clown wield their wooden swords as they dance around the fire. The bull-roarer, which is whirled on a length of string to produce a distinctive, resonating sound, drums, and singing accompany their dancing among the Western Apache. The bull-roarer is not used among the Eastern Apache."

Not mentioned above is the vocal sound made by some of the dancers at different intervals - to me, it sounds similar to, but not exactly, like a western screech owl. 

In the video below, from an Arizona event, you can hear both the bird (?) call and the so-called "bull-roarer." You'll hear the bird vocalization while the dancers first come out. You'll hear the start of the bull-roarer at :51.

The dancer with the bull-roarer is The Clown. From Native American Culture: About Apache Dances, an excerpt:

"There are five Crown Dancers, including four masked dancers representing the directions of north, south, east, and west. The fifth dancer is the clown, who protects the others by driving away evil spirits with the sound of his humming bull-roarer, a thin piece of wood suspended from a string and swung in a circle."

To fully address the role of the Clown in Navajo, Apache, and indeed, many cultures (though perhaps not specifically referred to as a clown), I'd need to just hand over a book. Or books. Tony Hillerman centers one of his books around clowns in Sacred Clowns.

As to Apache tradition, in this excerpt from The Clown's Way, by Barbara Tedlock:

"The Jicarilla Apache, however, did not see this sunlight world purely good, but as containing disease; the clown that led them out of the dark earth (thought of as perfectly spiritual and holy) was equipped with a “horrible non-human laugh” which scared way the sickness on the earth’s surface. In this origin story we learn a basic curing technique which is still practiced today by clowns in many tribes. Just as these Apache clowns kept smallpox and other epidemics away from the people with their sudden terrifying laugh, the Assiniboine, Plains Cree, and Plains Ojibwa clowns scare disease out of the people. Navajo clowns during their Mud Dance all of a sudden stop dancing and rush up to a sick person and lift him high above their heads, sometimes tossing him into the air.”

I'm wondering if the rodeo clown derives from the Southwestern Indians' use of the clown in their spiritual tradition. After all, the purpose of the rodeo clown is to protect the riders from the bulls or horses, is it not? Huh, this resource implies not, but when I read the full description, it would seem the rodeo clowns share much in common with that of the Indian clown, although without the spiritual dimension.

Gaan dancers, 1887. Credit: First People

The crown

Another excerpt from Native American Culture: About Apache Dances:   

"The dancers decide what symbols to put on their crowns. Symbols often honor forms in nature, and many crowns include the Apache cross to signify the four sacred directions. Some crown headdresses are adorned with eagle feathers, because the eagle is sacred to the Apache. ..."

 

St. Joseph Apache Mission Church, Mescalero, New Mexico

My understanding is that the crown itself evokes antlers.



I liked how the St. Joseph Apache Mission Church in Mescalero incorporated traditional crown design.  















Noah Nez, the Native Skeptic, offers a thorough overview on Gaan dancers from both a personal and academic perspective. I found several of the sources for my post by visiting his essay.


My experience

The Gaan dancers are dramatic. With their bodies painted white or black, with contrasting color symbols, masked faces, the crown, swords, and the bird call .....whew. Very cool.

The emcee did not instruct the audience to forego photography during the Gaan dance, which he did for the gourd dance. I filmed the dancers as they came into the arena, and the gentleman next to me, a gourd dancer, asked that I not film them. I chose to honor his request, out of respect for him. I had watched as he'd very carefully placed his gourd-dance items into the specially-made wooden box, one at at time, each in a prescribed spot and placement. I saw memorial flyers on the inside of the box lid, honoring two deceased individuals he obviously held in esteem.

I'm looking forward to the summer, when the Mescalero Apaches allow non-Apaches to be guests at part of the girls' puberty rite in Mescalero, and when the Gaan dancers will perform.

Mescalero, New Mexico: St. Joseph Apache Mission Church

St. Joseph Apache Mission Church, Mescalero, New Mexico

The St. Joseph Apache Mission Church is a stunning construction, inside and out. It has a majestic presence that draws one's eye from Highway 70, as you drive through the Mescalero Apache Reservation.

St. Joseph Apache Mission Church, Mescalero, New Mexico

The church has been undergoing a long restoration project, which is almost complete.


 

About 350 families are members of the church.

My mother and I attended Mass today .... (I've attended Mass three times in two months in New Mexico, which is about the same number of times I've attended Mass in the last 15 years) .... the service was in English, but there were two songs in Apache.

After the service, the congregation typically repairs to the parish hall for refreshments. Today there was actually a full lunch comprised of tortillas, Indian bread, beans, cake, and various stews that congregants brought in. Delicious, and the church members welcoming.