Kiowa Powwows: Continuity in Ritual Practice

BY BENJAMIN R. KRACHT

In the following passage, Pulitzer Prize-winning Kiowa author and poet, N. Scott Momaday, describes the Kiowa Gourd Dance, and how it feels to dance with his fellow Kiowas in the sacred circle of the dance arena:

The sun descends upon the trees. The heat is hypnotic. . . . It is as if I am asleep. Then the drums break, the voices of the singers gather to the beat, the rattles shake all around--mine among them. I stand and move again, slowly, toward the center of the universe in time, in time, more and more closely in time.

There have been times when I have wondered what the dance is and what it means--and what I am inside of it. And there have been times when I have known. Always, there comes a moment when the dance takes hold of me, becomes itself the most meaningful and appropriate expression of my being. And always, afterward, there is rejoicing among us. We have made our prayer, and we have made good our humanity in the process.

[ Momaday 1975 :44, italics his]

A member of the Kiowa Gourd Clan, Momaday perceives the dance as "a religious experience by and large natural and appropriate. It is an expression of the spirit" ( Momaday 1975 :39). A Kiowa elder, Clifton Tongkeamah, commented to me that the Gourd Dance is sacred, and that participating in it is an expression of "Kiowaness," because the "Kiowa are born to dance."

Since the post World War II era, ethnologists have described Plains powwows ² as secular, or social events consisting of dances that lost their religious symbolism. Reporting on powwows in the early 1950s, John Gamble ( 1952 :94-95) described what are now called "benefit" dances, powwows held for the purpose of "materially benefiting the promoters," and characterized by dances that had "drift[ed] from religious to secular." His contemporary, James Howard ( 1965 :107-108, 1983 :73), suggested that powwows emerged from the War Dance complex of the Southern Ponca Hethushka Society, noting that after most of its religious symbolism had vanished, the Hethushka Dance became more secularized. Nancy Lurie ( 1971 :449-450) perceived powwows as secular dances--"based on ceremonial patterns of the Plains"--that emerged toward the end of the nineteenth century. More recently, William Powers ( 1990 :57-58, 64, 69, 1980 :223)

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described powwows as "mainly secular in context"; Oklahoma powwows in particular are "secular event[s]."

A trend in the powwow literature has been the emphasis on "panIndianism," or the development of a "nontribal [intertribal] 'Indian' culture" ( Howard 1955 :215; see Ashworth 1986 :6-11). Some authors even have suggested that powwows represent the "secular sphere," and peyotism the "religious sphere" of the so-called pan-Indian movement ( Howard 1983 :71; see Howard 1955 :218; Hirabayashi et al. 1972 :83; Thomas 1965 :78; Brant 1950 :222; Hertzberg 1971 :113-114, 239-284, 295, 308, 311; Young 1981 :5881). Howard ( 1965 :216) identified the War Dance as the "prime secular focus of pan-Indianism," and Reginald and Gladys Laubin ( 1979 :83-83) contended that war dancing is a secular dance on which the powwow is based. Since World War II, powwows have become an integral part of intertribal social life in the southern Plains (Oklahoma and Texas). Native Americans attend these events with pride and enthusiasm. An American Indian living in Dallas, Texas, recently commented on the "reawakening" of this dancing heritage among Indian peoples: "All of a sudden people said, 'Wait a minute. It feels good to be an Indian'" ( Hamilton and Weiss 1989). The common celebration of Native American traditions in today's powwows has bridged history with future survival, and the "spirit" of the dancing tradition is sacred to many, as expressed by Linda Yardley of Taos Pueblo:

The spirit of the powwow is a continuum in Indian life. . . . We live this spirit on a daily basis. It is why we have survived for so long. At one time we were a forgotten people, but I think we are getting stronger. From the powwow we gain strength as Indian people, individually and collectively, to go on into the 21st century. ( Mason 1990)

Based on these statements, I propose that powwows are sacred to Native American peoples of the southern Plains because they are replete with set patterns of ...