The Return of the Gods

In the big New Mexico pueblo of the Zunis, largest of all the Indian pueblos, met the chiefs of the six clans. The matter before them was of great solemnity: How did the Zuni gods chance to be residing in a white man's kiva, and what were the white boys doing with them?

The white boys were members of the famed Koshare troop of Boy Scouts in La Junta, Colo. Founded in 1933 by a railroad contractor named Buck Burshears, the Koshares (Pueblo Indian for clowns) have made a specialty of re-creating Indian dances, faithful to the last feather and as accurately chanted, stomped and hopped as scholarship and rehearsal can make them. Koshares are the pick of all La Junta scouts; they spend hundreds of dollars on their costumes and go on tour each summer in their own especially equipped bus, netting as much as $50,000 a season. Their headquarters is a $150,000 kiva, or ceremonial house, roofed by a lace-log pattern of 620 poles.

Whipped to Manhood. But the Zuni chiefs knew nothing of all this. What had brought them together and what they passed around among themselves was a picture clipped from the Denver Post showing groups of two of their most potent gods, the Mudheads and the Shalakos, among the white men. After due deliberation, the chiefs sent a delegation to the Indian Commissioner in Gallup, N. Mex., 33 miles north of the pueblo, to protest against the sacrilege and to inform him that henceforth the great Zuni pueblo would be closed to all non-Zuni visitors.

When Buck Burshears heard of this he reacted with speed and tact. Would the Zuni chiefs honor the Koshare troop by appointing two representatives to attend a performance of the sacred dances, to see for themselves that no mock was being made of the gods? And to show that the white chief spoke with no forked tongue, he sent two round-trip railroad tickets to La Junta.

Last week they came--Oscar Sheka, Keeper of the Sacred Masks, and Leo Quetawke, Head Councilman in charge of Law and Order. They were dressed in windbreakers and dark trousers and their seamed, impassive faces were shaded by the black ten-gallon hats that the Indians of the southwest love to wear. At the railroad station they met another Zuni and brought him along. He was Enos Coonsis, a 19-year-old soldier in the field artillery at nearby Camp Carson. Like most .Zunis, Enos had gone to church while he was at school, but like most Zunis he had little understanding of Christianity. The gods that Artilleryman Enos worships are the Katchinas, the masked dancers whose sacred dual identity was revealed to him some six years ago at the dread Whipping Ceremony at which Zuni boys become men.

Something Alive. In the kiva of the Koshare troop, a capacity crowd of 400 watched while the dances began with the ceremonial lighting of a fire. Soon the Mudheads bounded in. The Mudheads are idiot children born of a god's incestuous union with his sister; their sack-like masks with doughnut-shaped eyes and mouth are hideous and their movements are wild and grotesque. The touch of a Mudhead can drive a good man sex-mad, say the Zunis, and they shrink before their threatening leaps and insane gyrations. Later in the evening the Shalakos had their turn.

The Shalakos are beautiful. They are birds, about ten feet high, with turquoise heads crested with eagle feathers and mounted with feather-tipped buffalo horns. Their bulging ball-eyes roll majestically and their wooden beaks clack-clack as they glide and stomp through their dance of blessing, with a tinkling of bells worn at the knees of the dancers.

Through the hour-and-a-half performance, the Zuni emissaries did not miss a sound or a gesture. When it was over they sat down to powwow with Buck Burshears and the Koshare leaders. "This is too real, too true," they said. "What you do is not imitation. These are living gods, and we must take the Shalakos and the Mudheads to the home of the Masked Gods where they belong."

For two days and two nights the talks went on, and at last the scouts understood. Explained Head Koshare Ronnie Lorenzo: "Always before we have taken something from the past to preserve for posterity. Now we have taken something alive. We must give it back."

At week's end, seven Koshares departed for the Zuni pueblo to return the Zuni gods and to receive a welcome such as no white men have received before into the religious inner circle of the Zuni tribes. The Zunis have promised them several new chants and dances to replace the Mudheads and the Shalakos, which they will never dance again. Said Buck Burshears last week: "The whole thing has turned out wonderfully well!"

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