DANCING TO A DIFFERENT TUNE

In May 1921, the Yavapai County attorney placed a newspaper ad offering 50 cents apiece for live bullsnakes. The question on most people's minds was: Why? And the Prescott newspaper promised to get to the bottom of it.

A trail of clues dribbled out with the regularity of a drumbeat. The Owl Drug and Candy Store displayed the snakes in its window. Curious customers learned the snakes had something to do with Way Out West, a playful revue planned to benefit Prescott's rodeo.

Subsequent articles said the show would feature “a peaceful Indian tribe” invited to perform its famous Bullsnake Dance. Organizers promised to halt the “death-defying” spectacle if more than 13 people fainted.

The publicity ploy worked. Spectators packed the stands at the rodeo grounds, and the show's finale, the Smoki Bullsnake Dance, was a hit. In keeping with the comedic nature of the show, the dancers had burlesqued a Hopi dance, although many believed it was authentic. The newspaper assured its readers that none of the participants “was other than a perfectly well-known and respected citizen of Prescott or its environs.” Audiences clamored for more. And for almost 70 years, Prescott's Smoki People obliged.

Identified by tattooed dots on their left hands, the selectively anonymous members included some of Prescott's leading citizens: state senators, legislators, county and city officials, and, most famously, U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater. Smoki became such an institution that members said that to be Prescott was to be Smoki and to be Smoki was to be Prescott.

Yet despite the group's stated objective of preserving Native culture, the popular dances proved increasingly controversial, and many in Native communities — particularly the Hopi Tribe — found them offensive. Now, 30 years after the last Smoki performance, Prescott's Smoki Museum, which celebrates American Indian art and culture, is distancing itself from its origins with a name change to accompany a planned expansion.

The name “Smoki”

It is a play on Moqui, a term the Spanish used to describe the Hopi people. As its emblem, the group chose a variation on the Hopi Sun Shield, and poet Sharlot Hall wrote a Smoki origin myth based on that of the Northern Arizona tribe. The name was originally pronounced “smoky,” but in 1922, Prescott's newspaper explained that “Smoki” should be pronounced “smoke-eye,” emphasizing for the first time the group's unique identity. The same year, encouraged by the success of their Way Out West performance, Smoki members repeated their dance.

Smoki's 26 charter members incorporated in 1923. That was when they “got serious,” as one member put it. With the support of University of Arizona archaeologist Byron Cummings, Smoki's mission shifted from supporting the rodeo to preserving Native American customs, artifacts and lore.

“Shuck the clothes off a white man, paint his body brown, give him a live snake in one hand [and] a rattle in the other ... and he reverts to the primitive,” charter member Gail Gardner, a noted cowboy poet, famously said. “He realizes that many Indian ceremonies are strangely moving and beautiful, and that the encroachment of our so-called white civilization may mark the end of them.” It wasn't a stretch for Smoki members to believe they were preserving a vanishing culture. Beginning in the late 19th cen-tury, the federal government's Indian policy was assimilation. Native children were sent to boarding schools and discouraged from practicing their language and customs.

In 1882, the government declared the Plains Indians' Scalp Dance, War Dance and Sun Dance “Indian offences.” And by 1915, Hopi dances had come under fire.

Beginning the year of the first Smoki dance, Bureau of Indian Affairs Commissioner Charles H. Burke published rules that placed restrictions on dances, particularly those that failed to meet Anglo codes of morality or caused participants to neglect their crops, livestock or homes. Some Hopi dances were accused of all of these.

In its heyday,

Smoki membership was highly prized and granted by invitation only. Full membership took years and required a secret, elaborate and difficult initiation. With the exception of President Calvin Coolidge, an honorary member, admission was initially restricted to white men who lived in Prescott and had significant business interests there.

Amid great controversy, Smoki allowed “squaws” to form an auxiliary in the 1930s, with membership subject to the approval of the Smoki tribal council. But, unofficially, women played key roles early on. Marie Tumber came up with the idea for the first Smoki Snake Dance, presenting it to a fraternal organization called the Yavapai Club. Having lived on Hopi land, Tumber choreographed the dance and taught it to the men.

Yavapai Chamber of Commerce Secretary Grace Sparkes threw her marketing genius behind promoting the dances. And in 1935, she helped secure Depression-era public works funding to construct the Smoki Museum to house the group's artifacts and research library, as well as relics from archaeological digs underway around the county.

Over the years, Smoki's stagecraft grew increasingly sophisticated, with members spending most of the year preparing for the annual ceremonials. After each performance, a newly elected chief appointed a ceremonial director to plan the next year's program.

Members pored over federal Bureau of American Ethnology texts to research dances and costumes. Max Factor, the Hollywood cosmetics line, created and tested their body paint. Set designers experimented with special effects: a tree felled by “lightning” with the help of a battery and primer cord, a rain-bow created with a pair of fire hoses and a projector, a “maiden” who disappeared into a pond as though she had drowned.

Not everything went smoothly, and most of those incidents made for entertaining stories. There was the “Fire God,” which unintentionally caught fire, and the maiden who emerged from