Author: Paul Henley

Precise duration unknown, but probably very short.

Source: Brief passages of this footage are shown in Coming to Light, a PBS television documentary about Curtis’s work directed by Anne Makepeace and released in 2001.

This film can be viewed, albeit under an incorrect title, on YouTube here. The section about Curtis’s filming of the Yei Bichei ceremony is between 14:38 and 17:06 mins., and again between 18:02 and 18:46 mins..

Background: The Navajo Yei Bichei ceremony takes place on the ninth and culminating night of a ritual process, often referred to as the Nightway or Night Chant, aimed at healing a number of major illnesses or conditions, including blindness, deafness and paralysis.

In Navajo, the name of the ceremony literally means ‘Holy People Grandfather’, a reference to the fact that Talking God, referred to as bichei, ‘grandfather’ is thought to preside over the yei, ‘holy people’, embodied on this night by masked impersonators.

But there are many aspects to the Nightway other than masked dancing: it also involves the making of sand paintings and the manufacture of dolls, medicine bundles and other items, over a prolonged period.

Curtis liked to boast that he managed to film the Yei Bichei ceremony in 1904 after representatives of the Smithsonian had tried for decades and failed, and had even come to believe that it was impossible.

But what Curtis filmed was only a very slight simulacrum of what the ceremony both was and continues to be in reality. In fact, his film showed no more than a very brief re-enactment, performed during the day so that it could be filmed, with a reduced number of masked dancers.

The ceremony was also not genuine in the sense that there was no patient being cured. Rather it was performed entirely at Curtis’s request in exchange for payment in the form of silver dollars and rolls of cloth. He does not appear to have filmed any other of the elaborate ritual processes associated with the Nightway ceremonies. 

As this footage is most commonly shown, the dancers are dancing anti-clockwise, contrary to the normally clockwise motion, with their rattles in their left hand, rather than in their right as is customary. Some commentators have detected in these inversions a passive resistance on the part of the performers to Curtis’s attempt to film them.

However, given that such an elaborate subterfuge would have implied the expenditure of a great deal of time and effort for what was, in effect, only a brief and fake performance, it seems more likely that the inversions are merely an effect of the negative having been printed the wrong way round, something that did occasionally happen in early ethnographic filmmaking.

Texts: Gidley 1982: 72; Lyon 1988:266; Overstreet 1992.

 

Not viewed. Duration and technical specifications unknown.

Source: American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)?

Background: In July and August 1914, the AMNH curator, Pliny Goddard, accompanied by artist and cameraman Howard McCormick, visited the Apache reservation in Arizona, equipped with a 35mm Ensign moving image camera.  Only limited information is readily available on the material that they shot. It is not even clear if the footage still exists.

Although accompanied by McCormick who had successfully filmed the Hopi Snake Dance at Supawlavi at Goddard’s request in 1912, Goddard appears to have done at least some of the filming himself. From his correspondence with colleagues at the AMNH, it is clear that his skills as a cinematographer were limited. 

It appears that he primarily focused on making films about “native industries”, i.e. technical processes, and food preparation. Topics mentioned include a single woman weaving a basket and a group of women chucking and grinding corn, as in the image above, shot in San Carlos.

Although Goddard would also have liked to film ceremonies, such as the initiation of an adolescent girl, which he attended in August 1914, he seems to have been unable to do so, though it is not clear whether this was due to technical limitations or refusal on the part of his hosts.

Text: Griffiths 2002: 294-297.

29 mins., b&w, 35mm stock. Silent, English intertitles. 

Production: This film was shot in 1923 around the same time and by the same film-makers as a series of films on Zuni life produced by the Museum of the American Indian (MAI).

However, it is reported to have been made at the request of the curator of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), Clark Wissler (1870-1947) and may not therefore have formed part of the MAI series. It seems likely though that it would  have been released in the same year as the series, i.e. 1924.

Source: Some evidence for its independence from the broader series of Zuni films is that whereas the latter is held by the National Museum of the American Indian, the successor institution to the MAI, the original copy of Shalako Ceremonial is held by the AMNH. Its catalogue number in the AMNH Film Collection is 273, but due to its cultural sensitivity, viewing is restricted.

Background:  Like the other Zuni films, this film was made as part of the MAI’s Hawikku project, directed by the ethnologist Frederick W. Hodge (1864-1956). This ran from 1917 to 1923, and although primarily archeological, also involved ethnographic research and in the last year, ethnographic film-making. 

As director of the Hawikku project, Hodge is often considered to be the director of the films associated with it. He is not mentioned in the film credits of Shalako Ceremonial and it is not clear whether he was present during the making of this particular film. But he was instrumental in gaining permission for the making of the film while the intertitles certainly appear to have been written by an ethnologist. 

Although Hodge may have been the director, the cameraman and principal practical film-maker was Owen Cattell (1897-1940). Although they do not receive credits, Cattell was assisted by Donald A. Cadzow (1894-1960), an MAI archeologist, and Lorenzo Chávez, a Zuni.

Permission to make the films had been negotiated by Hodge with Lotario Luna, the governor of the Zuni pueblo, and also a leading priest, Komosana. This included permission to film religious ceremonies, which among the Zuni generally involve a great deal of dance.

Hodge believed that a film record of the ceremonies would prove their genuinely religious nature. As such, they could serve to undermine a federal government proposal to ban Native people’s dances since religious freedom was and is guaranteed by the US Constitution.

The shálako ceremony constitutes the climax of the complex Zuni annual ritual cycle. It takes place shortly before the winter solstice and involves the arrival of six large masked figures, the shálako, who are considered to be embodiments of kokko, ancestral beings (see image at the head of this entry).

The shálako are received by two other groups of masked figures, the sayatasha, the so-called ‘council of deities’, and the grotesquely costumed koyemshi, clownish trickster figures who orchestrate the ceremony. Although the shálako leave the village after one night, the ceremony continues for another four nights, culminating in the ritual welcoming of ten young girls, the Corn Maidens, into the village plaza.

The filming of the more general MAI series, which primarily concerned traditional crafts, does not seem to have caused any tensions within the Zuni community. But the filming of the shálako ceremony, the most sacred of all Zuni religious ceremonies, was a different matter.

In view of the sensitivity, it was agreed that Cattell should shoot from a considerable distance. Even so, some Zuni were incensed by his filming of the ceremony, particularly of those parts that should normally be witnessed only by initiated men. 

The filming also got caught in the midst of a deep-seated division within the Zuni pueblo between Protestants and Catholics. The governor who had given permission was a Protestant, as was  Lorenzo Chávez, Cattell’s assistant.

One version of the dispute is that the Catholics argued to Robert Bauman, the local representative of the federal Indian Bureau that in giving permission to film ceremonies, the governor had not consulted with the community, thereby violating its trust in him and requiring his removal from office.

Another version, not necessarily incompatible with the first, is that the governor had not shared out the $300 that Hodge had paid in order to be allowed to film the ceremony.

Stories of Cattell’s camera being smashed and of him and Hodge being peremptorily expelled from the pueblo are probably exaggerated. But they were certainly not allowed to film the final day of the ceremony. And since then, no film-making of any kind has been allowed of Zuni ceremonies. 

Content: The film follows the development of the ceremony chronologically in a series of sequences interspersed with explanatory intertitles.

The first 12 minutes of the film – that is, approaching half of its total duration – cover a phase of the ceremony in which only initiated men may participate. Those who will wear the masks are shown praying and making offerings to the katsina spirits whom they will personify.

Then, after a four-minute sequence showing the building of the houses in which the katsina will dwell during the ceremony, the sayatasha masked figures are shown crossing the river that lies outside the village.

At this point, a man comes and stands in front of the lens. Contemporary accounts suggest that he was only one of several people who attempted to prevent the making of the film.

However, the filming continues, showing the sayatasha dancing in front of one the houses built for the spirits. They are observed by women and children, and seemingly by some non-Natives. The women bless the dancers by sprinkling them with cornmeal.

Later that afternoon, 19 minutes into the film, the giant shálako masks appear in the distance, outside the pueblo. They are filmed from very far away, but even so, as an inter title explains, one of the six masks refused to appear  because it “objected to being photographed”.

After “a night spent in ceremony”, the shálako are shown, in a highly dramatic sequence, running at high speed back and forth in swirling snow in front of the houses built for the spirts.

The sayatasha dance before the shálako, who then leave. Now it is the turn of the koyemshi, the “delight-makers”, to dance in front of the spirit houses. 

Throughout these sequences, the camera has kept its distance. But all to no avail. As announced in an intertitle, permission to film the final phase of the ceremony, in which the Corn Maidens arrive in the village plaza, was withdrawn.

The last shot of the film is rather forlorn: it is taken from far outside the village. On top of the houses one can see the backs of spectators looking down, presumably watching the Corn Maidens making their entrance. 

Remaking: In 2012, a group of Zuni religious leaders and some of the staff of the AAMHC were shown the film during a collection review at the AMNH. They were particularly concerned about the initial lengthy sequence that shows a scene that only initiated Zuni men should see. They also identified errors in the intertitles and in the sequencing of events. 

More generally, they felt that the film should never have been made. But recognising that as it is now in the public domain, its circulation is impossible to restrict absolutely, they decided instead to collaborate with the AMNH to produce a new version, entitled The Shalako Film Remade. 

In this remaking, the sequences that should not be viewed by the uninitiated were omitted and new intertitles and a voice-over in Zuni were added to correct what they considered to be the misrepresentations of the original.

But the more fundamental aim of this remaking was to regain control over the representation of Zuni culture. Further details available here.

Texts: Anon 1924, Pandey 1972: 331-332, Tedlock 1983, Lyon 1988: 246, 264-265, Wenger 2009, Anderson and Montenegro 2017.

16:58 mins.

Source: American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), film collection, no. 192

Background: This is a compilation film shot in two, possibly three, different Hopi villages.   The digital copy available through the link above is only a remnant since the original film suffered from nitrate damage.

Possibly for this reason, the film itself carries no opening titles and it is only from the AMNH catalogue that one learns that it was made by the AMNH curator Pliny Goddard and Howard McCormick (1875-1943), an artist and accomplished cameraman, who had previously been commissioned by Goddard to shoot Snake Dance footage in the Hopi village of Supawlavi in 1912. McCormick had also accompanied Goddard on a filming expedition to the Apache region in 1914.

This film is based on footage shot during an expedition to the Hopi region undertaken by Goddard in 1925.  The generally high quality of the material suggests that he might have been accompanied by McCormick or another professional cameraman since by his own admission, his own cinematographic skills were limited. 

Content: The first sequence, which runs for seven minutes, shows a man carding, spinning and weaving a woollen sash on a loom. There is no indication of the location, nor of the date, but one presumes that it was shot during the 1925 expedition.  

It is very well shot, involving several different camera positions and a sophisticated editorial ‘grammar’ featuring matched continuity cuts.  The sequence ends with a wide shot showing the man walking out of frame. It seems very unlikely that Goddard could have shot this.

The second sequence begins abruptly with preparations for the Snake Dance ceremony, then held biennially in most Hopi villages in order to convince the spirits controlling the elements to release the rains.

This starts with an intertitle suggesting that having seen one footrace, one is about to see another, longer footrace that takes place early on the ninth and culminating day of the ritual process leading up to the Snake Dance ceremony. However, neither footrace is shown, suggesting that this part of the film was lost to nitrate damage. 

Instead, one sees three young men in a village plaza, walking around a kiva, an underground chamber normally reserved to initiated male members of a particular ‘society’, i.e. religious confraternity. Judging by the classic ethnographic accounts of the Snake Dance ceremony, these men are probably the winners of the ninth-day footrace while the designs on their kilts suggest that they are members of the Snake Society. 

This sequence is competently shot but from a single static position, seemingly from the roof of a house overlooking the plaza. The location is not indicated but it seems to be the Second Mesa village of Musangnuvi.

The men are vigorously whirling bull-roarers and shooting out telescoping wooden representations of lightning to evoke the impending rain (see the image above). They circumambulate one kiva before moving on to another kiva nearby and doing the same. 

They then descend into the second kiva, suggesting that this is their own Snake kiva, whereas the first kiva was that of the Antelope Society, with whom they will dance in counterpoint during the main ceremony later in the day. 

The third sequence, beginning around 9:00, shows the ‘dancing plaza’, also shot  from a distant roof. It shows the kisi, the cottonwood bower where snakes captured in the surrounding desert on the previous days will be stored.

The Antelope chief prepares a pit in front of the kisi in which prayer sticks directed to the spirits controlling the rain will probably be placed. He covers the pit with a plank that will serve as a foot drum during the dancing.

Two young men bring the snakes in bags and place them in the kisi. The spectators, including many outsiders, begin to gather around the perimeter.

But then at 10:48, an intertitle announces that “due to the meddling of a Hopi from another village”, the Snake chief withdrew his permission to film, so instead, McCormick’s footage shot in Supawlavi in 1912 will be substituted.

 

This continues to the end of the film with no final titles.

Texts: Voth 1903, Griffiths 2002: 294-299, 407.

 5:40 mins.

Source:  American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) film collection, where this footage is incorporated into a later compilation film, Hopi Indians of the Southwest, catalogue no. 192.

Background: Howard McCormick (1875-1943) was an artist based in New York who was engaged by the AMNH to work on dioramas of Native American life.

In June 1912, he was commissioned by the AMNH curator, Pliny Goddard, to go to the American Southwest for three months to gather data for the making of a diorama on Pueblo life. In addition to the making of sketches and even casts of Pueblo people, this involved the taking of photographs and the shooting of around 30 minutes of film.

McCormick was asked to film not just ceremonies, but also “industrial processes” such as the making of baskets, pots and blankets.

At the end of the expedition, McCormick reported that he had filmed Hopi Snake Dance ceremonies at Hotvela (roughly 10 mins.) and Supawlavi (8 mins.), basket-weaving at Orayvi and at Musagnuvi (2 mins. each), a Flute ceremony (6½ mins.) and a Navajo rug maker (2 mins.). 

But the only material that seems to have survived is this Snake Dance footage from Supawlavi, possibly because it was later incorporated into the compilation film, Hopi Indians of the Southwest.

In 1913, McCormick published a number of photographs of a Snake Dance (though not the one that he filmed in Supawlavi), as well as of various katsina performances. 

Content: Hopi Snake Dances represent the culmination of a nine-day ritual process aimed at encouraging the underground spirits that control the elements to release the rains that are so badly need by the Hopi’s maize crops by late August.

For this film, the camera is positioned only two or three metres from the action, behind and to the left of the kisi, the cottonwood bower where some fifty snakes, gathered in the surrounding desert plains over previous days, have been placed.

The film stock is somewhat washed out, but generally the quality of shooting is good. But there is an element of apparent contrivance and hesitation about the performance of the dance, making one wonder whether it has not been staged for the camera to some degree.

The film begins with the Antelope Society passing through shot, sprinkling cornmeal on the ground in front of the kisi, and then circling around in front of it, shaking their rattles. As they do so, they stamp on the foot drum placed in front of the kisi and beneath which, the day before, an offering would have been made to the spirits.  

Eventually, they form a line in front of the kisi and the Snake Society arrives to line up in front of them.  The Snakes hold feather “whips” in their hands. The Antelope chief sprinkles out two lines of cornmeal so as to a define a corridor of about a  metre between the two societies. (See the frame-grab at the head of this entry). The Snakes bend forward and begin to chant, swaying and waving their whips, while the Antelopes shake their rattles. 

Then, about 2 minutes into the film, the snake dancing begins. Having been passed the snakes hidden in the kisi, Snake Society members dance in pairs in a circle in front of the Antelopes, one holding a snake in his mouth, the other with a hand on his partner’s shoulder, ready to soothe the snake with his feather whip. Meanwhile, the Antelopes sway and chant, and continue to shake their rattles.

Other dancers gather up snakes as they are dropped until eventually, after a further 2 minutes, the Snake chief defines a circle on the ground in cornmeal at some distance from the kisi. 

The camera is further away from the action at this point. On the houses beyond, an audience, largely of children, looks on. Compared to other Hopi villages at this time, there is very little evidence of outside spectators. 

The gathered snakes are thrown into the circle and scattered with more cornmeal. As an intertitle explains, the snakes will now be released back into the ‘plains’ so that they can tell ‘the Gods’ that they have been kindly treated.

There is then a fade to black as the dancers disperse.

Texts: Voth 1903, McCormick 1913, Griffiths 2002: 287-294, 405.