EAGLE DANCE OF THE MESA GRANDE (DIEGUENO) TRIBE*

Anonymous

San Diego, Cal., Oct. 14

The past month has witnessed the disappearance of one more link in
chain between the remnant of Indian life in Southern California and the

t. The eagle dance has been held for the last time.    It was performed only

pommemoration of the death of a chief, and the last chief of the Mesa Grande
he is dead.

With old Cinon Duro, or, to use his Indian name, Mata Whur, "hard rock,"
wealth of the traditions of the Southern California Indians was also buried,
epting for fragmentary records gathered by a few ethnologists. This ancient
thad no son to whom he could intrust the sacred mission; he was over 100 and
practically outlived his own descendants.

In 1860 he had four sons. This to itself is an illustration of

Llizing influences, a fact which is further emphasized at the spectacle of

A4ances, when the gap between the little group of eight or ten dancers, all
* ninety, wiry, athletic, tireless, and the lounging spectators of their

rpeople, young fellows, none of them over forty, is especially noticeable.

Even at his extreme age Cinon's death was an unexpected shock to his

F1e, coming accidentally through a fall from a horse. This was one year ago,

his burial rites were solemnized both in the Catholic faith, which the

religiously observes, and the ancient nature worship which is his reli-
None appreciated the tragedy of his race more than this ancient chief,
,last words were "Mo-some' Hoomow-no-some" (It is finished; the tribe

nished).

The Catholic services were followed by the fiesta for the dead which
seven days and nights.  Almost immediately preparations were begun for
agle fiesta, the mark of honor to the last hereditary ruler of a people

,,boast it had been that "when the hills were young they had played upon

.crests." This fiesta was to be given in one year when the brown Sept-
hills and turning oaks and willows would mark the anniversary of his

The celebration was the gift of the Duro clan, old Cinon's own, to
ister clans and to all the tribes of Southern California. Its welcome
extended to the white visitors, and a large number of these availed

ngton Post (newspaper), October 20, 1907.

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themselves of the opportunity for a closer study and recording of the customs
of the passing people. Over 500 Indians were present, representing the Pala,
San Ysidro, Inaja, Rincon, Santa Ysabel, Mission, and Agua Caliente tribes,

coming from the seashore, the desert edge, the fertile valleys to the north,
and far southern mountains.

For fully a month before the last three days of the fiesta practice
dances were held in groups of three nights each at the old rancheria, a large
square inclosure of brush-built ramadas with an open plaza in the center, at
one end of which was a carefully leveled circle of earth, beaten hard by the

tramping of many bare feet; the dancing floor of the ancient Indian ceremonials.

He also carries two clapping sticks and is elaborately painted with

markings of white and blue. He pauses and bows before old Antonio, brother of

the chief, who beats time with a rattle formerly made of dried deer skin inclos-
ing deer toes, but now deteriorated to a baking powder can filled with pebbles.

Then the dance begins, a group of squaws intoning a low musical chant.

The solemnities of the night were prefaced during the afternoon by
the tatahuila, or whirling dance; a dance really joyous in character and in

contrast with the somber fierceness and tragedy of the night ceremonies, seem-
ing almost the comedy of dances. There is but one principal performer and an
attendant who resembles the funny man in a circus act, leading the dancer to
fresh exertions and exploits.

This man enters the circle first with smiling countenance trotting

around the ring and rattling his clapping sticks. Then kneeling in the center
of the circle he strikes an attitude of invocation, holding it immovably for
perhaps five minutes, while the real dancer appears, clad only in the pluma,
or feather skirt and head dress of eagle feathers.

Faster and faster he whirls, crouching, leaping, sidestepping airily,
his flying feather garment seemingly bouying him up in the air. Under and
over clap the time-beating sticks, higher he leaps, whirling about several
times before touching the earth, an astonishing exhibition of strength and
agility.

Ever whirling, whirling, a veritable dervish, he passes about the
circle with a marvelous sureness of direction. All this time, at intervals,
the family of Cinon toss handfuls of money and yards of calicoes upon the

dancing floor, which are gifts eagerly gathered in by their guests. For from
half to three-quarters of an hour the athlete, a man of some fifty years,

continues his strenuous exertions, and then at their height stops suddenly,

quietly, and walks steadily from the circle - a performance in itself not the
least of his feats.

The purple dusk settles into the star gemmed blackness of the

night. From far and near the people of the mountainside and the strangers
gather.  Cowboys in leather chaps-and ji'ngling spurs jostle alike their

Indian comrades, gay with cerise and green handkerchiefs, and young city
fellows in khaki. Matrons in calicoes, girls in white shirt waist suits,

businesslike women with notebooks, and Indian maidens with scarlet ribbons
entwined in their glossy locks, all mingle with one common interest.

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An ethnologist from a distant city stands by the adjusted mechanism
r phonograph, which is to perpetuate the existence of the quaint aborigi-
hanting, the ancient language from the primeval Yuman stock, the heritage
Fed and forsaken by the last of its possessors. Outside, beside the rest-
tethered ponies, automobiles chug and chir, a strange juxtaposition of
nes.

At the calling cry of a summoner a line of ancient figures file in
war regalia. Standing before the seated group of cantadoras, the women
ad grown old beside them, they begin a slow shuffling step, grunting a
itrongly accented, "mh-m-m-hm!" with each heavy thud of the bare feet.
are led by the centenarian, Antonio, and his shrunken form, and the
tic dignity in his drawn, parchment-like face is the epitome of the
,inexorable drama.

And now mingling with the utter barbarism of the dancers' voices

a gentle underbreath of tone, droning, almost inaudible, like insects

umdswmer afternoon. It gathers in volume with a steady swelling rhythm,
usical, with slight minor inflections. The voices are as one voice, a
brytone quality that slides easily and accurately through the many
Wte changes of the theme.

[' Higher in the scale, louder and more intense grows the resonant

~ plaintive and heart piercing in its weird modulations of thirds and

,that is never cognized in our modern system of notation, the primitive

&ry of the nature people. Fiercer grows the movement of the dancers,

crouching, with outthrust arms and wild bursts of guttural melody;
-passionately the swaying climbing cadences of the singers rise, in
-~accents of twos and threes, the essence of the elemental.

From the midst of the turning, twisting figures one deplumed dancer
nd with his staff, scatters living coals from the bed of fire about
ing floor. The old warriors circle about this central figure, back

-their bare feet treading the glowing embers, occasionally stooping

them in their hands and placing them to their lips, a veritable
Ing incantation.

Singers and dancers alike are wrought to a frenzy of exaltation,

scene is awe inspiring even in this its last expiring gasp, when on

all ceases, a thick, utterly motionless silence falls upon the entire
then the old men walk slowly about uttering a peculiar indrawn neighing

the war dance is finished.

As usual, the first two days and nights of the fiesta were by fore-
working up to the final pitch of the last night.   Then the sacred

ld be killed with great ceremony, mysteriously and without pain, and

spirit would carry the last communication from the living to the dead.

The spectators move cautiously about, looking at one another with
smiles and conversing in low tones, while a huge oak log fire is
.1t in the center of the beaten earth of the vacant circles. Then

ppears marching with solemn tread about the blazing logs and keeping
his rattle to a plaintive reiterated monotone of chanting.

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Gradually he is joined by groups of the relatives and friends of the
dead chief, all singing the mournful, low-toned refrain and moving in single

file about the fire with a curious twisting step which throws the body far to
one side and then the other. Forty or fifty people join in the procession,

young and old, gay gallants with brilliant neckerchiefs and their grandfathers
in overalls, old women and girls, some of them bowed with grief, the tears
streaming down their faces, and all with a settled solemnity of aspect.

Then as the burden of this mourning becomes unbearable it is all
hushed at a signal, and the announcement is made that at the rising of the
morning star the sacred eagle will be killed by magic, painlessly, by the

Indian medicine men, who will thus show their superiority over the white medi-
cine men.

The bird is borne in by the four hechiceros or medicine men, each

of whom is hideously painted and garbed elaborately in the feather skirts and
headdresses which are a mark of rank in the tribe. The leading conjurer,

Narciso, a powerfully built man, carries the eagle about the inner circle,
close to the flaring, smoking blaze of the fire.

The bird stares straight ahead with wide-open, curved beak and

lolling tongue. It is for some reason strangely stupid. Its feet are bound
together with cords, but it makes no movement to attack its captors with its
powerful beak.

Even when with shrieking and muttering incantations and medicine

men strike it with their feathered wands and blow tobacco smoke into its eyes
it does not heed, but stares inscrutably back into their contorted faces,

perhaps beyond into the vista of its fast-approaching destiny when it shall

be traversing the star-strewn path of the Milky Way, "the pathway of departing
spirits," on its heavenly mission.

The witch doctors seemingly exhaust every effort in the working of
the charm; they breathe heavily as though spent with exertion, grimacing,

crouching. With mystic passes they point their wizard wands at their helpless
victim, and at length, when more than one white spectator has turned away, the
fine head suddenly lifts and is thrown back-as though in a final struggle for
its swiftly departing-life, sinks slowly from side to side, and then hangs
limp upon the feathered breast. The messenger has departed.

The dead body is carried in triumph by one and another during the
interminable figure of the dance. A raw chill creeps into the air. The

remaining spectators gather their wraps more closely about them. The fire
becomes a smoldering heap of embers.

Low on the eastern horizon the long night watch of the stars is

paling before a gray creeping tinge of light. The dancers halt. The head men,
the capitans, pluck the large feathers from the bird for the making of dancing
skirts.

The denuded body is wrapped in red cloth, and a grave is dug in the

warm earth underneath the spot where the fire has burned all night. Reverently
the old men kneel about the tiny grave. Softly the mourners chant as the bird
is lifted to the north, the south, the east, and the west.

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Then as the grave is filled and smoothed by the old hands of the
eling men, the white-haired Antonio lifts his arms to the skies, a last

h priest to an ancient rite speeding the departed messenger, pleading that
row, sickness, hunger, and death might not visit the pueblo, and invoking
power of the great eagle god, who brought the people for many moons from
far south across the mountains and the desert, in that far past time when
earth was young.

And so has the fiesta of the eagle dance passed.

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