Sacred Clowns and Fools Chapter 13 from The Sacred - Ways of Knowledge, Sources of Life By Peggy V. Beck and Anna L. Walters PAGE ONE   Here the koshare, or clowns, taunt the kachinas, or "power centers," in a Hopi ceremony. The people are positioned characteristically around the dance plaza of the pueblo. The ceremony seems to be a Corn Dance. Watercolor on paper. Courtesy Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa.   Innocent and wise; painted in their stripes, their lightning streaks, fantastic masks, or naked from head to toe; the Clowns catch our attention whenever and wherever they appear. They are called heyoka, chifone, koshare, "banana ripener," kwirana, "blue jay," and many other names. These are the characters that follow behind the neat rows of dancers, dancing out of step, singing one beat behind. These are the confusing individuals, men dressed as women; old men acting young, young acting old. They are lovers, teasing the young women, the tourist ladies taking pictures, the unmarried women or other men. So obscene are their actions at times that the crowd watching them gasps in horror; minutes later people from the crowd are giving them food—melons, squash, corn, tortillas, fried bread, and chiles. They are the brave hunters shooting the deer dancers with miniature crooked bows and sticks for arrows, or "counting coup" to a pot of boiling dog meat; they plunge their arms into the water to grab the meat without getting burnt. They are the serious Clowns of the medicine society maintaining the continuity of fertility, rain, crops, health, and the various orders of Creation. They are the guardians of the ritual, ready with their whips, their yucca plant lashes, ready to catch a child to throw him in the river. Whenever the Clowns enter the stage of drama in a ritual and wherever they are found in the oral histories, stories, or songs, the Clowns have something in common with each other. A sacred Clown from one tribe would recognize a sacred Clown from another tribe, and, without a word passing between them, they would know who the other one was; what he represented, and what he was placed on earth to do. Clowns and foolish characters are part of the oral tradition of most Native American peoples. When Clowns appear in the Creation histories they often play very important roles during the emergence of The People into this present world. We have already seen how foolish figures like Coyote created death; in other instances, these figures bring light and fire to humans, and give creatures their behavior characteristics and tools for survival. In these early histories of oral tradition we are first introduced to the concepts and the techniques of clowning. Sacred Clowns often have a special relationship to the sun—almost like sons—particularly in the Southwest of the Continent. Often there is more than one Clown society. In the Rio Grande, for instance, Pueblos divide the Clowns into Summer and Winter Clowns. Sometimes Clowns are associated with the World of Souls or the Land of the Dead and are guides to individuals whose dreams or visions take them there (as among the Chiricahua Apache), or to the souls of the dead on their way to their final resting place. The most widespread association the Clowns make is with watery places: mist, drizzle, rain, the clouds, storms, streams, water holes, damp places, thunder, and lightning.   Group of Clowns, Zuni. (Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution)   The Clowns are mediators for rain. They bring rain and thus bring fertility to crops, growth and life to The People. In San Juan Pueblo the Clowns usher in the Cloud Beings during the Cloud Dance. In the Hopi dance we will describe later, the Clowns are referred to as "The White Cloud" Clowns and at different points in the two-day dance they are mediators for rain. The "watersprinkler" (To nei nili) of the Navajo Night Chant Way has his origins in the Grey (San Francisco) mountain to the West. His other name is Grey God (Hash ch'el Bahi) and he is associated with rain, for West is the direction of storms and clouds. The "watersprinkler" appears in certain parts of the Night Chant Way, and does not appear in others. Barney Mitchell, speaking of the dramatic role of the "watersprinkler" remarked, "Having a 'watersprinkler' in the ceremony means you will have a hard winter, and therefore, one Singer from the Tsaile area does not use the'watersprinkler' in part of the Night Chant ceremony." Another Navajo sacred Clown is "mud clown" (Chaazhini); the "mud clowns" are found in the Enemy Way ceremony (Squaw Dance). The Enemy Way ceremony has a "rain ceremony" within it. The ones who help with this are the "mud clowns." Sometimes, similar to the "watersprinkler," if there has been a lot of rain, the "mud clowns" do not appear. Otherwise, they do and they help attract rain. PAGE TWO