The Yurok Jump Dance: Song of the Celestial Earth

By Royal E. Alsup, Ph.D.

The People are gathering again for the Jump Dance -- one of their most sacred world renewal ceremonies. It is an important intertribal spiritual dance held in the fall at Pecwan, by the local native People. Yurok, Kuruk, and Hupa People participate in a mystical community ritual that interpenetrates and restructures Reality, through prayer, dance, and song, to balance the world. The Dance is to heal the sickness, pestilence, famine, and desecration of the earth.

This article contains my impressions, perceptions, feelings, thoughts, and intuitions that I have gathered over several years of involvement with Yurok People, and with their beautiful world renewal ceremony, as a participant observer.

Speaking with Native American friends about the upcoming Jump Dance, I see smiles and hear excitement in their voices as they anticipate the 10 days of the ceremony. A woman who is known for her wonderful pies tells me to be sure to come. Another person reminds me not to miss this chance to taste the traditional acorn soup that is always offered in the camps, along with traditionally cooked salmon. All the food is prepared with loving kindness as an essential and sacred element in the community, sharing with everyone who comes to the Dance.

At the site, before the Dance begins, the People mill around and speculate about who will be the singers and who will be the center man for each round of the dancing. The children diligently assist the elders before and during the dance, helping them walk to the dance house and making sure that they have chairs on which to sit. It is wonderful to see the depth of the youngsters' respect and concern for the aged ones. It is obvious that the children feel honored to help make sure that the grandparents are able to participate for the entire 10 days. Children are at the beginning of life, so they are closer to the Holy People, the Spirituals. The elders are preparing to leave this world, so they also are close to the Immortals. The caring communion of the Holy People -- the elders who pass along the traditions, and the children who represent the ones coming after -- is a continual link and is the cycle of life that guarantees that tribal members and the Immortals are in constant conversation.

The Dance at Pecwan

The Jump Dance takes place in a pit house with the roof removed, leaving the floor of the house open to the sky above. The dancers stand abreast, down in the house, facing the audience above. The men wear beautiful, sacred regalia that includes necklaces of dentalium shells and impressive head pieces decorated with red woodpecker scalps and white plumes. Each man holds a beautifully woven cylindrical basket in his right hand. The sacred fire is located in front of the dancers, with the formulist and an assistant facing the dancers. The formulist puts sacred herbs into the fire and recites the formulas or prayers that are needed to remove the desecration of the earth and to rebalance the world.

There are usually from seven to nine dancers standing in the line, always an odd number that leaves the center balanced. Even numbers of dancers stand on either side of the two singers and the center man, who leads the rhythm of the dance. The singers, taking their lead from the center man, sing three songs apiece, rotating singers until the songs are completed. While the songs are being sung, the men raise and lower the baskets to the rhythm, blessing the audience and cleansing the earth. As the basket descends, they stomp one foot forcefully. The dancers are spiritual warriors against evil. My impression is that the foot is stomped to keep evil out of the world and to stomp the tilted earth back into balance.

Then all the dancers, the singers, and the center man remove the deerskins that they have been holding around their waists. The deerskins are folded and laid on the ground, with purses placed on top. Now they hold hands and stoop low until their fingers almost touch the ground. Then they jump up about a half a foot off the ground. The singers follow with three more rotating songs.

At certain points, young, virginal girls are part of the Jump Dance. A young girl was happy and thrilled because her mother and grandmother had made her a dress to wear at an upcoming Jump Dance. The debut of the dress, the coming out of the dress to allow it to dance, is an event of immense importance and excitement in the lives of a girl and her family. Another girl cried tears of happiness because she was able to wear her grandmother's dress, which had not been worn for many years. Now the dress was able to dance and to come alive. When she heard the ringing and singing of the dress as she was dancing, she felt the joy and happiness of her ancestors. She felt very close to her deceased grandmother because she had the honor of carrying on her grandmother's participation in the Jump Dance into the present.

The Center Man

    The People talk at great length about great center men. The center man leads the dance with prescribed movements, but he also definitely shows his own unique style. The center or middle is important in the Yurok world view. The center is the axis mundi, where the People have access to the sources of the sacred. Therefore, the center man has to be a strong leader; and all the dancers follow a chorus of actions that are circumscribed, but each dancer expresses his own personality through the traditionally defined movements.

Interest and joy were intense at one Jump Dance because a young man had been selected, for his first time, to perform the lead position as center man. His grandfather, who was known in the tribe to be a great center man, had trained him for several years. His mother was proud, but she was worried because this was a milestone in her son's development, a moment of honor because he was being accepted by the traditional dancers as a future center man for the Jump Dance tradition. The father could see that the young man was worried and had butterflies in his stomach about being a center man, with so much responsibility. He reassured his son that he had been trained well by his grandfather. The dance maker reminded the young man that he had been doing this world renewal ceremony with his grandfather for several years, and he assured him that he thought he would do a good job for his People. The young man's performance was excellent, and he felt good that he could stand beside his grandfather in the tradition of fixing the world. The People will always remember his first performance, and he will become part of the oral tradition that continues the stories and legends about the center man.

The Singers

Composing new songs makes the Jump Dance exciting. Local Native Americans participate in a living tradition, a mysticism of songs. Jump Dance singers may fast and go on a quest to the high country to get a special song from the Holy People, but it can also come from an elder or through a dream. Sometimes the songs come in a waking moment when a deep inner voice gives the gift of a song. This is an intuitive, mystical process. To receive a song in these ways feels like being given an unexplainable gift that is coming from a Sacred Reality. This is a living tradition that emerged from the Holy People, and was taught by the ancestors to their family members, in the face-to-face transmission of a spiritual tradition. The singers know that their composition of new songs maintains the earth and allows them to participate in a world renewal tradition.

I remember one time there was real fervor at the Jump Dance when it was rumored that a dancer had been newly selected to be a singer. People wondered how his new Jump Dance song would sound. The dancer reported that he woke up hearing the song and began to compose it, and realized it was a new Jump Dance song. Then he was really shocked and surprised when the dance maker selected him to perform his Jump Dance song in the next world renewal ceremony. A mystical experience like this can happen at any point in life, at any age.

The Dance builds in intensity as the days go on. The longest dance, when the most beautiful regalia are brought out, is the last dance on the 10th day. The wealth of this dance, as exhibited through the magnificence of the regalia, reveals the spiritual strength of the dance maker. This wealth, with the formulas and prayers, work spiritually and ceremonially to balance the ecology of the earth.

The Payment Tradition

    People at the Jump Dance practice self-awareness and generosity because they are instructed through the oral tradition to think only good thoughts and to love all creation. The way a person thinks and feels at a Jump Dance is the way he or she will think and feel until another Jump Dance happens. Therefore, the Jump Dance is not a place to harbor grudges and resentments, or to hold on to bad feelings about someone.

Payments contribute to healing individual conflicts that break Indian traditional law. They help keep everything in balance. When there is disharmony between community members, a nonviolent approach is used to settle disputes. A traditional person of wisdom listens to the hurt, pain, and resentments of both parties. In the presence of the Creator, he or she decides what amount of payment that a person is to give the other, or that they are to give to each other, to settle the dispute before the Dance begins. If either party refuses to settle, they are told not to attend the Dance. This is because the Dance is a sacred time, in a sacred place, to practice loving kindness and compassion toward all. If there has been a recent death in a family in the community, the dance maker must make payment to the family that is in mourning. This is done to honor the family and the life of the person who passed on to the sky world.

Healing the ecological crisis of our time through the particularity of the Yurok Jump Dance deals with the subtle energies and unseen forces that are talked about in the new physics. The Jump Dance is a demonstration, in ceremony, of the quantum energy that is so prevalent in the animate and inanimate world. The Yuroks, and the physicists, confirm this inter-relatedness of all reality. The mutual attraction and interdependence of the unseen structure of our physical world is the Love-force or the Soul-force that is addressed through song and dance, balancing our celestial earth. The Jump Dance ceremony creates a state of true Being, when real prayer and deep ecology form a unity of Reality.