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Ceremonies and Dances

The two primary social activities that a Miwok village would enjoin together to hold were dances and ceremonies. The dances were important social gatherings that brought the people into a single mind and drum-beat and solidified their relations to one another. They were not a scared telling or enactment in a ritual manner. The ceremonies on the other hand were the sacred communication between selected leaders - or people chosen to impersonate deities - and the entire village. These received the utmost respect from the people and were only held on certain prescribed occasions. In the ceremonies, the beliefs of the people- their understand of the world, of the deities that they revered, and at times of even their enemies, could be brought before the people to teach them how to understand and come to terms with broader social and religious ideas. These teachings were presented in the form of villagers dressed as specific personages, and a story would unfold through dance, music and story telling. This was they sacred play/storytelling in the tradition of the great Greek plays, the ancient Illusyian drama, or the more insightful Shakespearean plays understood by Europeans as the transmittal of cultural knowledge.

One of the interesting things about the Miwok from our perspective today is that women and men both observed these ceremonial - educational - events. In many other tribes, these elaborate sacred rites were kept among only the men, while women developed their own ceremonial practices. For the Miwok, the people gathered together in a semi-subterranean - below the ground - structure that was the largest in the village. In this earth-enclosed space, topped by branches and bark, the ceremonies unfolded. As an educational event, the ceremonies taught the people a shared world view, helped them understand their life experience, and helped them overcome their grief and fears. This was the structure of their religious experience, and it nurtured a peaceful society for thousands of years.

Another special structure of the Miwok was the sweat house. This enclosure was a smaller version of the large ceremonial house, sunk into the earth, covered with branches and bark, and possibly also covered with dirt to trap the steam. In a sweathouse, a fire is lit and as it gets to its hottest point, water is poured over the stones in the fire and a thick, hot steam arises and fills the room. This steam is used by people all over the world to cleanse and purify the body, so it has specific medicinal uses. The steam of the sweat bath was also used to purify and prepare a deer hunter before setting out in the woods to find and capture one of their primary food and material sources.