YEIBICHAI WEAVINGS: FEATURING WOMEN DANCERS

A look at the origins and early historical development of these secular Navajo weavings and their ceremonial themes.

- Rebecca Valette

Yeibichai weavings constitute a small but highly collectible category of Navajo textiles. These weavings evoke scenes from the ninth and final night of the Nightway healing ceremony during which a succession of teams of masked dancers appear, impersonating male and female Yeis. In executing the carefully prescribed ritual dance movements, they call upon the Holy People to bestow good health on the patient and, by extension, on all those hundreds in attendance.

The Yeibichai dance is performed in front of a ceremonial hogan that has been built in a remote location near the patient’s home. At some distance away is a brush enclosure where the dancers don the sacred masks which have been ritually prepared by the medicine man. The ceremonially attired dance teams enter the firelit area in front of the hogan led by Talking God or Yeibichai, the grandfather of the Yeis, who carries his sacred Abert squirrel bag. He is followed by six male and six female Yeis. The last participant is Water Sprinkler, who provides an element of comic relief by shaking a tattered fox pelt at the spectators.

In the 19th century, a Yeibichai dance team would consist entirely of men. The role of the female Yeis was assigned to teenage boys or young men of smaller stature who would let their down their hair and wear the appropriate rectangular female Yei masks, all the while dancing in their traditional male kilts. However, if there were not enough qualified younger men, one or more mature women might be invited to perform the female Yei roles. Today Yeibichai dance teams generally are made up of six men and six women.