Elaborate wooden headdresses and staffs used in a religious ceremony were returned to the White Moun-tain Apache Tribe on Tuesday after they were anonymously donated to the Navajo County Historical Soci-ety.
Historical society board member JoLynn Fox explained that an individual who recently bought property near Winslow found the items in a shed on the property and did not know what to do with them. He brought them to the historical society as a donation.
Recognizing that the items likely belong to a local tribe, board members contacted Ralph Scott to see if he could identify them. Scott believed they belonged to the White Mountain Apache Tribe and put the his-torical society in touch with tribal representatives.
On Tuesday, Tribal Council Member Cline Griggs and Cultural Resource Director Ramon Riley, who is also an official representative for the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act (NAGRA), arrived at the historic courthouse in Holbrook to view the items.
Riley explained that the headdresses and staffs were used for an Apache sunrise dance, also known as a crown dance because of the massive headdresses worn during the ceremony, and were from Cibecue. He was able to tell that they had been used in a ceremony because of the remaining spots of white ochre on the main headdress.
According to Riley, the items should have been properly put away into the earth following the ceremony, never to be used again. He explained that new headdresses and other items are made for each ceremony.
By Riley’s estimate, the items are about five or six years old. He noted that it is possible someone stole them from their resting place.
“They were part of a ceremony and they should have been put away,” he said. “We have had some youth stealing some.”
He noted that drugs and alcohol have caused even some tribal members to treat religious items with dis-respect by stealing and selling them.
Riley and Griggs told the historical society board members that they believe they know who made the items, and they intend to contact him and find out whether the items were properly put away following the ceremony, and whether they may have been stolen. Riley pointed out that although the fabric masks had been removed from the headdresses as they should have been, mirrored squares remained.
“They usually take these mirrors off,” he remarked.
Mirrors are a recent addition to the headdresses, and Griggs explained that small pieces of metal were used prior to mirrors. According to Griggs, the mirrors and the metal are believed to capture evil and reflect or radiate goodness.
Griggs went on to explain that the headdresses, masks and other items worn during the ceremony are representative of the spirits or powerful beings that came from the earth to teach the Apache people how to live. He noted that they are similar to kachinas.
“You might call them angels,” he commented.
The crown dance uses five massive wooden headdresses, each representing a different spirit, including the well-known clown who carries a bullwhip-style noisemaker. The noisemaker appeared to be the only item missing from the collection.
Each item was handcrafted, with the headband of each headdress made of a thick piece of oak that had been heated and bent. The headdresses were made of picket-shaped pieces of wood, radiating straight out from the headband and painted in bright colors, mainly yellow and blue, and decorated with symbols and small mirrored squares. The largest headdress in the collection was at least four feet tall, and the others slightly smaller.
Since Riley and Griggs recognized the items as part of religious ceremony and not appropriate for dis-play, the historical society turned them over to the tribal representatives. Before accepting them, Riley spoke an Apache prayer over the items. He explained that after leaving Holbrook he would be visiting a state mu-seum to receive some human remains that belong to the tribe, and he intends to bury the ceremonial items next to those remains.
“They will all return to the earth,” he said.
