Native American ritual songs
The Yaqui deer dancer is called the saila maso, “little brother deer.” The deer songs, called maso bwikam, are traditional songs, usually performed by three men, that accompany the dance of the saila maso. To the Yaquis, the deer song is the oldest and most respected of their verbal arts. Authors Larry Evers and Felipe Molina describe them this way: “Highly conventionalized in their structure, their diction, their themes, and their mode of performance, deer songs describe a double world, both ‘here’ and ‘over there,’ a world in which all the actions of the deer dancer have a parallel in that mythic, primeval place called by Yaquis sea ania, flower world.” The Yaqui deer songs reflect aspects of life practiced for centuries in the Sonoran desert, long before the appearance of Europeans.
Yaqui tribes occupied present-day Arizona and Sonora, northern Mexico. Their first European contact was the Spaniard Diego de Guzman in 1533 and later the Jesuit missionaries, who arrived in 1617 and brought profound changes in community organization and belief systems. Yaqui folk literature contains mythical histories of the region prior to Spanish influence, describing the spirits thought to inhabit the land and the magic powers sometimes possessed by animals. These myths were part of the cycle of religious ritual and belief practiced by the Yaqui prior to the Jesuit missionaries, which the deer songs record and celebrate.
Aside from their agriculture, the Yaqui depended on deer as a food source. Dancing and songs were performed prior to the hunt to ensure success. The Yaqui deer songs reflect a worldview where all parts of the huya ania, the “wilderness world,” live in an integrated community. Birds and insects, plants and animals, even the rocks and springs of the desert are intimately connected. The language of the deer songs, called bwika noki, or “song talk,” is the language of this carefully interconnected, beautifully balanced community.
While the deer singers may know as many as 300 songs, at any given performance they will perform only a fraction of these. The first songs set the stage or purify the space in which the dance will be performed. A formal speech and often a procession follow, and then the musicians perform a sequence of songs. Usually the instruments include a violin, a harp, a flute, and drums, and songs may be repeated several times. The sequences are designed to symbolize the elapse of night and the coming of morning, which parallel the symbolic preparation, hunting, and killing of the deer. These lines from “The Fawn Will Not Make Flowers,” translated by Evers and Molina in Yaqui Deer Songs, are part of an alva bwikam, a morning service song:
This flower-covered dawn world rises up brightly, here where they divide the enchanted earth with light.
The last songs of the cycle typically celebrate the roasting and eating of the deer, whose body is symbolized again with the imagery of flowers, as in these lines:
My enchanted flower body, fire, above the fire, side by side is hung.
The rhythmic repetition of sounds, lines, and songs, and the images of death paired with the images of dawn and rebirth, give to the performance a mythic quality that parallels the natural cycle in which the Yaqui people lived their lives for centuries.
The Yaqui deer song is a living tradition that continues to this day. While performances of the deer songs are no longer connected to the hunt, they serve as more than a means of entertainment. The context in which the deer song is performed is vital to its enjoyment; the smoke from the fires, the chatter of the audience, the antics of the masked clown, and the noise of the dancers all complement the poetry of the songs. Moreover, the performances offer a way to celebrate, forge community bonds, and preserve an ancient cultural heritage.
English Versions of Yaqui Deer Songs
Endrezze, Anita. Throwing Fire at the Sun, Water at the Moon. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.
Evers, Larry and Felipe S. Molina. Yaqui Deer Songs, Maso Bwikam: A Native American Poetry Sun Tracks. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1987.
Padilla, Stan. Deer Dance: Yaqui Legends of Life. Lincoln, Neb.: Book Publishing Company, 1998.
Works about Yaqui Deer Songs
Painter, Muriel Thayer. With Good Heart: Yaqui Beliefs and Ceremonies in Pascua Village. Edited by Edward Spicer and Wilma Kaemlein. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1986.
Savala, Refugio. The Autobiography of a Yaqui Poet. Edited by Kathleen M. Sands. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980.
Spicer, Edward H. The Yaquis: A Cultural History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1980.
