... It was 4
August 1968, and it was the feast
day of Saint Dominic, patron of
Santo Domingo Pueblo, southwest of
Santa Fe. At one end of the hot,
dusty plaza, a Dominican priest
watched nervously as several hundred
dancers arranged in two long rows
pounded the earth with their
moccasined feet as a mighty,
collective prayer for rain,
accompanied by the powerful baritone
singing of a chorus and the beat of
drums. As my family and I viewed
this, the largest and in some ways
the most impressive Native American
public ceremony, a tiny cloud over
the Jémez Mountains to the northwest
got larger and larger, eventually
filling up the sky; at last the
storm broke, and the sky was
crisscrossed by lightning and the
pueblo resounded with peals of
rolling thunder ... |