Cowboy Capital of World Preparing for Thrilling Frontier Days

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS Cowboy Capital of World Prepairing for Thrilling Frontier Days

PRESCOTT, the Jewel of Arizona's mountains, during July 4, 5, 6 and 7, easily conceded to be the Cowboy Capital of the world, is again getting ready for its thrilling Frontier Days Contests, which have become famous throughout the United States.

Hundreds of cowboys in their attractive western attire, gather annually in the Prescott arena from the far reaches of Canada, Old Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona to pit their strength of brain and brawn for supremacy in the sports which are a daily occurence in their work upon the ranges. Ten thousand dollars in cash is offered for the World's Championship Broncho Riding contest, bull dogging, cowboy races, cowboy rangeland relay races, and bull riding.

Marvelous parade prizes totaling hundreds of dollars, are awarded at the close of the four days parades, which forms one of the many interesting features of the Frontier Days.

The Northern Arizona State Fair with a magnificent exposition of the products of Apache, Coconino, Mohave, Navajo and Yavapai counties is held at the same time. Prescott is the mecca for hundreds of tourists from every section of the country, who come to view these contests. Yearly, Arizonans meet on a common hallowed ground at Prescott.

COLORFUL PAGEANTRY, INTERPRETING SACRED RITES OF VANISHING PEOPLE PORTRAYED IN SMOKI DANCES.

As a greeting to the thousands of summer visitors who throng to Prescott, the Jewel of the Mountains, the great Smoki People annually stage in the city among the pines, their weird, fascinating and spectacular dances of the Indians of the Southwest, conceded to be America's Premier Indian Pageant.

Plans this year have been perfected for the greatest Way out West Day in the history of the Smoki People, this being the ninth year that they have presented the Dance of the Snake.

Tourists from all sections of the United States gather in the Mile High City on June 8, to greet these Smoki People, whose origin is in the realms of mystery. Three thrilling dances in

By GRACE M. SPARKES

addition to that of the Snake will be given this year. It has been said by the best of Indian critics that nothing on earth approaches this Indian pageant in its marvelous settings. Once seen the dances are never forgotten and the finest test of their genuine superiority is the number of times the same individual returns to see the Snake Dance.

Since 1921 the Smoki People of Prescott, Arizona, have been bringing from the dim realms of the past and from inaccessible fastnesses of mountain and desert, a lore that expresses the Great Southwest because it IS the Southwest, done in form and color and in the weird symphonies of primitive people. In nine years aside from the Ceremonial Snake Dance, these people have represented over a score of the dramatic and often obscure interpretive rites of the Lower Colorado River Basin.

A lesson in humility is contained in the Smoki Hunting Dance. Whereas their major dances involving appeals for good fortune in war and the chase of the deer and the bear, the lion and the antelope begin with the solemn invocation of the friendship of the gods of the chase the hunting dance to be given this year is a demonstration of man's proneness to err and of his capacity to repent and mend his ways.

The occasion in this instance is a desire to find rabbits and turkeys for the family cooking pots. The dance is really a little play in pantomime, showing how careless ones can forget and can be reproved by their deities. Needless to say there is a moral taught, as in many other Smoki pageants, and like the novel and the story popular with the white people, there is a happy ending.

Among some of the eastern and plains tribes, the need of rain as a life-giving factor is absent,and they have among their ceremonies one of defiance to the storm gods. They exercise and strengthen their boldness by these temerarious dances.

But with the Smoki People a very different basic appeal comes through their utter dependence upon the fortunes of rain. With bounteous rainfall they prosper; without it they die. Their good and ill are inextricably bound up in the munificence of the clouds that seasonably hover above their arid little fields of corn, melons, squashes and beans. Then, too, their springs of drinking water flow or disappear in ratio to the favor of the gods.

The Rain Dance is the direct appeal of the Smoki People to the storm gods. In it will be seen the ceremonial beseeching of the clouds not to pass away without having deluged the fields. Although there is an apparent attack upon the clouds, this is not the case; the priests, especially the chief priest in this dance, is inviting, not endeavoring to compel the clouds to bestow their watery blessing.

The savagery with which the Smoki Priests are associated because their Snake Dance is the ne plus ultra of primitive splendor, is not the sole characteristic of these people. On the contrary, there are many evidences of gentility, of smooth, polished culture and of devotion to that beautiful art the production of happy song.

The Butterfly Dance is one of the great proofs of the innate love of beauty and rhythm of the Smoki People. It is a happiness dance, and while it has two principal phases, neither is like the other. One form of this dance engages all who care to participate and looks to the outsider not unlike a wonderful barbaric this year the Smoki expect to put on the Butterfly Dance which brings out to the fullest extent the capacity of their best performers for solo work. The Butterfly Dance will be found to be one of interesting costuming and unexpected skill.

Associating the ground-dwelling snake' with the sources of the water of springs the Smoki believe that by dancing with the snakes and then sending their "little brothers" underground to report the duty done the gods there will be bountiful water. It must be remembered that the Smoki live in an unirrigated and almost rainless land beat upon by an ardent sun and that their good and ill fortunes are inextricably linked with seasonal desert showers and the great river flowing a mile below the level of the plateau-the Rim. The Snake Dance then is a bid for water a placating of earth-gods. In it join the priests of the Snake and Antelope clans and the "little brothers" living snakes caught on the desert and bring in each year for the proud duty.

VACATION LAND, 1929 Page Forty-three