JUMPING THROUGH HOOPS
EARLY HISTORY OF THE POPULAR DANCE The claim by the American artist Eric Sloane that he was the inventor of the Hoop Dance brings to mind a couple of popular quotations—particularly the one about history being written by the one who controls the media. The Hoop Dance was presented to a national public in 1926, the fifth year of the Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial, as performed by members of the Taos Pueblo. While something like the hoop dance might By Ernie Bulow date much much earlier, it was not presented for Author photo by Erin Bulow public entertainment, which was the hoop dances’ only purpose. During those early years photographs show dancers with three or four hoops. Today there are a few performers that are said to control as many as thirty at one time, and some put the number even higher than that. I found a very puzzling photo among the images from photographer
“For years the Hoop Dance was the property of Taos Pueblo and
Alonzo Compton who documented New Mexico in the early years of the last century. He took a lot of pictures of Native Americans, but his prints and negatives have no captions. This photo seems to show two very early Hoop Dancers. But they are both grinning, and one of them is pretty chunky. The hoops they hold are rather crude and they each only have one. Is this a prank or an early version of the dance? Wherever the original idea came from, its performance came of age during the early years of Ceremonial. The Hoop Dance was the property of Taos Pueblo NAVAJO HOOP DANCER JOE PRICE and in particular Adam Trujillo. Though he never got singled out in the press, he became an icon of Indian Dancing. Judging from newspaper coverage, it was the custom at the time that individual performers were not given billing, except for a few solo vocalists who already had a national reputation. Members of groups were never named, probably to keep everyone happy.
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ADAM TRUJILLO AND BEN MARCUS According to Jerry Archuleta, my Taos uncle, there was a group of men besides Adam who are remembered as the first hoop dancers and they performed publicly far and wide once the dance caught on. Some are mentioned in Sloane’s article for New Mexico Magazine (August 1962). He claims he made the first hoop for a three-year-old Bobby Lujan and taught him the dance in 1925, Ceremonial’s fifth season. It debuted in Gallup the following year, which was awfully fast action for Sloane’s claim. That early Taos group included Bobby’s uncle, Juanito Luhan, Anesemo and Trinidad Archuleta, my friend’s uncles, Augustine Mirabal, and one often left off the list, Ben Marcus, though Ben was a popular performer around the country and into Canada. The Taos group were unchallenged until 1931 when a Navajo group presented what the program called “The Beautiful Chant.” This was probably taken from the Beauty Way ceremony. It was not the Hoop Dance as we know it. In an August 30th, 1929, newspaper article there is brief mention of November 2015