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Pueblo Indian Watercolors:
Vigil's Dance Watercolors

Thomas Vigil, Buffalo Dance

This painting represents a religious ceremony. Many Pueblo religious ceremonies are called dances because rhythmic movement and singing to music constitute a large part of the public segment of the ceremony.

Because the buffalo is associated with hunting and snow, the buffalo dance at many pueblos is held in winter. Dancers sometimes scatter white down feathers throughout the dark hair of the buffalo headdress to symbolize fluffy snowflakes. The buffalo dancers are accompanied by a Buffalo Mother. The men dancing as buffalo and the woman dancing as the game mother imitate the movement of buffalo. The dancers are accompanied by men drumming and singing. In this painting, the women hold feathers in their hands and the men hold an antelope antler and a rattle. The men wear kilts painted with the symbol of the horned serpent, Avanyu.

Thomas Vigil, Harvest Dance

The large harvest dance is performed annually in many pueblos, usually in summer or early fall, to give thanks for the upcoming or recently completed harvest. Both men and women dance in equal numbers with a drummer and chorus of male singers.

A man carrying a feather-topped woven banner on a tall pole leads the dancers into the plaza. The male dancers wear white kilts, sashes around their waists, and tie tufts of parrot or macaw feathers in their hair. They hold evergreen branches in one hand and gourd rattles in the other. In some pueblos the men also paint their torsos and legs black, and their waists and hands white. The women wear woven dresses, or mantas, red sashes, and blue tablitas, or headdresses, made of thin wood boards. This dance is also called the "Corn Dance" or the "Tablita Dance" in some pueblos.

Questions for Students

What religious or traditional ceremonies do you take part in? What do ceremonies such as attending a Passover Seder, participating in an Easter egg hunt, hanging Christmas lights, watching fireworks on the Fourth of July, or trick-or-treating on Halloween mean? How would you explain these ceremonies to someone who has never heard of them? If you drew them, what details would you want to include?

Pueblo dances have been the subject of other Pueblo artists.

Pictured above:

Top: Thomas Vigil, Buffalo Dance, Six Dancers, Two Drummers, about 1920–50, gouache and pencil on paper, 35.7 x 57.2 cm. Corbin-Henderson Collection, Gift of Alice H. Rossin

Second: Velino Shije Herrera, Story Teller,about 1925–35, gouache and pencil on paperboard, 25.6 x 38.2 cm. Corbin-Henderson Collection, Gift of Alice H. Rossin