The drums have been beating hypnotically for hours – about as long as the 110˚ sun has been beating down on dancer and observer alike in the pueblo plaza. Filaments of dancing Pueblo Indian men, women, and children thread slowly up and down the plaza in the ritual patterns of the Corn Dance in this centuries-old tradition.

Now the koshari – the sacred “clown” men who deliver serious messages to their people, their gargantuan bodies painted in black and white stripes and arrayed with straw and bells – emerge from the kiva holding the requisite chunks of watermelon.  

A few tourists point at the bulging painted bellies above the loincloth and to the koshari faces scarfing up the watermelon and spitting seeds in trickster mode, while other tourists begin to clap or to laugh loudly. “Hey, Joe, get that with the camera!” shouts one, as several others raucously clamber up the ladder of a private home to get a better view for themselves.

What’s wrong with this picture of a Pueblo Feast Day, open to the public? Sadly, too much. Although the idea of entertainment is ingrained in the American psyche, it is important not to mix up a Native American feast day, or even the pueblo itself on an ordinary day, with Disneyworld.

Says Calvin Tafoya, former director of the New Mexico Indian Tourism Program, “Tourism can have dramatic effects on a culture, and it is easy to cross the exploitation line.”

With the popularity of travel to New Mexico and the Southwest, many visitors are arriving at Indian pueblos without an understanding of appropriate etiquette. The people of the pueblos invite visitors onto their sacred land and ask simple respect for the ancient ways. Each pueblo has its own regulations, each posts signs stating them, and each maintains a pueblo office where, except at ceremonial days, guests should register before walking around the homes, church, or kiva. All too often, this is ignored by the deliberate and the accidental tourist.

While everyday life at the pueblo can be quiet to the point of a hush, celebration days draw large crowds. Yet a Feast Day has entirely different rules than the much noisier Pow Wow like the one in Gallup, NM. Yes, I met the tribal people in Gallup, but I met them differently. The Pow Wow is a social gathering, intent on enjoyment. But the Buffalo Dance at San Ildefonso, or the Elk Dance at Nambe, or the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo or Santa Clara? These are days of pure spiritual resonance.

To the uninformed, there may seem to be only sound and random movement, when actually there is the concentrated peace of the tribe members’ prayerful dance steps, their hearts and minds at one with Mother Earth, Father Sky, the drumbeat, and their ancestors.

I have attended the Corn Dance at Santo Domingo for fourteen of the past seventeen years, so I have observed the 4-year-olds -- in deep concentration as they moved their little feet in attentive alignment with the drums, the chanting, and the steps of those in front of them -- turn into young adults. And each year there are new 4-year-olds growing into the ancient ways.

I was lucky to have had a Pueblo Indian tell me, on the day before my first Feast Day, that I should bring lots of water, a hat and an umbrella to provide shade, maybe a folding chair to sit on, money to buy watermelon juice and Indian foods, and that I should stay the entire time. Most tourists take a look at the dancers and the drummers, catch a bit of the ritual, walk to the area with crafts and food, get too hot, and leave. Staying all day and remaining quiet and observant allows me to experience the sanctity, the suspension of time, and the hypnotic repetitions that bind the community in their hopes for a good harvest.  

Feast Day visitors often ask, “When does it start?” or “When does it end?” As my brother used to say, irreverently, when it was his turn to do the dishes, “I’ll do them when the spirit moves me.”  There are approximate starting and ending times, but again, visitors should not think of this day as “performance.”

Because the day is more akin to a church service than a spectator event, even talking is inappropriate. Laughing, pointing, clapping, taping, asking questions, sketching, and photographing (except in rare instances) are also inappropriate. Only when the concentration of participants and spectators is unbroken can the ceremony be experienced fully – and not as trophy cocktail party talk.

For the Native American family, preparations for a Feast Day are extensive and expensive; for a poor family, the cost is considerable. Mounds of chile stews, hot pou (oven bread), fry bread, posole, and tamales are part of the orderly chaos as family members and friends crowd the plaza and the adobe dwellings.

Unless invited, and preferably in advance, tourists should not invade a family space, particularly since there are booths with plenty of foods and native crafts outside the ceremony and dwelling area. Unfortunately, tourists do not always make the necessary distinctions. Some of the houses on the plaza were once ceremonial buildings and are considered to be spiritual pathways for Indian beliefs. Too often, visitors can be seen climbing the ladders to the flat adobe roofs to get a better view or walking into the homes of those families who live on the plaza where the dancing occurs. Here, they have been known to smoke cigarettes, eat the food on the tables, and walk out. Because the Indians are taught to be hospitable, polite, and generous, and because the communal spirit is at the center of the celebration, the Indian families say nothing. But responsibility falls on the guest who should observe the rules for privacy that he would insist upon in his own house.

Remember, too, that if the adobe houses on the plaza have sitting ledges, during a ceremony they are for the elderly and not the tourists. At one reservation, cushions had been set out on all the ledges, and while most of the visitors politely refrained from using them, some scooted over to the cushions, shouting, “Hey! Come over here! I’ve got seats!” That left the grandmothers and the grandfathers (among the Pueblos, the elderly are addressed as “Grandmother” and “Grandfather” and accorded the full respect of longevity and acquired wisdom) standing up.

If you visit on an ordinary day at one of New Mexico’s nineteen pueblos, be aware that each tribe is trying to strike a balance as it brings tourists to its doorsteps. Visitors often misinterpret what they see before them, thinking, for example, that an unpaved road means squalor. To the Indian, nature is the great teacher, and he needs to touch the earth, literally. So the road is not paved, and the Indian may go barefoot or wear moccasins or sneakers.

Also, to the untutored, an adobe house may not look like McMansion, but it has worked for centuries, long before America as we know it was even a glimmer. On a visit to Cochiti, I got out of my air-conditioned car to walk to a friend’s adobe house and nearly melted before I reached the door. Yet upon entering the house, I was as cool as I’d been in my rental car with the AC on high. Adobe is not poor; it’s high-tech! 

There has always been much to learn from America’s Indian tribes, who, from the beginning, shared everything with the newcomers to their lands -- though not always with good results since Western European notions of property and ownership conflicted with the Indians who gave the settlers such words as “consensus.” In an interview with Lakota Chief Oren Lyons, Bill Moyers commented regretfully that Western man took the land and the corn and gave the Indian “firewater” and disease and confinement on reservations in return. Lyons answered slowly and thoughtfully. “Yes,” he said. “But we’re still here. And I’m still a chief.”

If you will be visiting the Southwest, clip and save these etiquette guidelines drawn from the Eight Northern Indian Pueblos Council of New Mexico: