Ceremony: Section 4 Summary & Analysis

Returning to Tayo’s present, Tayo leaves Harley with yet another beer and walks out of the bar. Tayo looks toward the sacred mountain Tse-pi’na, and walks west until he reaches a small café. The Mexican man who owns the café brings Tayo a bowl of menudo (a Mexican stew) then goes back to swatting flies as the bugs buzz around the window. Tayo then walks back to Harley’s bar, thinking about the time Uncle Josiah had caught him killing flies in the house. Josiah reminded Tayo that the green bottle fly helped the people earn the rain back from the Corn Mother. Tayo is humiliated by his actions, but Josiah tells him that the flies will forgive his mistakes.

When Tayo gets back to the bar, Harley is gone. Tayo walks to Cubero and sits on Night Swan’s stoop. Tayo remembers sitting here with Rocky when Lalo’s bar was still profitable. Tayo is happy sitting under the cottonwood trees that have been there since his childhood. Tayo picks up a piece of old plaster and marks his hands the way ceremonial dancers paint their bodies with white clay. Tayo then goes up into Night Swan’s apartment, even though Night Swan moved away after Josiah’s funeral. Tayo can see no trace that Night Swan was ever there. He leaves and sleeps in an old barn that night.

The novel returns to the poem of Corn Woman’s story. Fly wants to eat everything but Hummingbird makes sure they get to Corn Mother. Corn Mother accepts their offerings then tells them that she will return the rain clouds if the people get Old Buzzard to purify their town. The novel returns to Tayo in the present. He tells Robert that he is feeling better and can help Robert with the ranch work. Robert tells Tayo that Ku’oosh thinks he still needs more healing.

Robert and Tayo take a trip to the city of Gallup and Tayo is reminded of the poverty and hopelessness of the city, especially for Native peoples. Many people of color live under the bridge in Gallup, waiting for the white welfare officials to chase them out each year before the tourists come for Gallup Ceremonial time. The children born under the bridge have mixed blood and learn to survive on the fringes of society.

Tayo remembers when he was a little boy and lived under that same bridge with his mother. Tayo finds his own food and even sleeps on his own when his mother is busy with the men she meets at bars. Tayo observes the other people who live in the same miserable conditions, and is especially traumatized by a woman who miscarries a baby and then buries it in yellow sand. The white people of Gallup never notice the children who live under the bridge, only seeing the women who line up to offer their services for money or booze.

One day, police come to clear out the settlements under the bridge while Tayo’s mother is out with a man. Tayo hides in a tamaric and willow grove and watches the police spray the area and burn the shelters people have built. Tayo prays for his mother to come back. Moving back to the Corn Woman story, Hummingbird and Fly find old Buzzard, but old Buzzard tells them to come back with an offering of tobacco.

In Tayo’s present, Robert and Tayo stop on the bridge in Gallup, avoiding the women who ask them for money. Tayo thinks back to the day he came here with Rocky, throwing coins to the Navajo, Zuni, Laguna, and Hopi people who left their reservations for better lives only to find little opportunity to work in Gallup. Rocky wishes on his coin for a safe return from the army, but Tayo is unable to make a wish. Now on the bridge with Robert, Tayo finally wishes for a safe return.

Ku’oosh has sent Tayo to Gallup to see a medicine man named Betonie. Gallup is known for the Gallup Ceremonial, an annual event organized by white men “celebrating” the Indian cultures of the Southwest, but the event actually panders to the tourists looking for Indian souvenirs. Robert and Tayo arrive at Old Betonie’s house, which looks down on the Ceremonial grounds. Before they can speak, Betonie explains that he keeps his hogan (the traditional dwelling of the Navajo people) off in the hills because he is comfortable living on the land. Tayo wonders how Betonie can live so close to the poverty of Gallup, but Betonie reminds Tayo that his family built this hogan here before the city was ever constructed.

Betonie can see that Tayo is unsure of his eccentric ways, and tells Tayo he can leave at any time. Tayo notices that Betonie has hazel eyes, like Tayo’s own, and decides he can trust Betonie. Tayo follows Betonie into his hogan, which is built partly into the hillside in the old way. The small house is filled with boxes full of old things and bundles of newspapers from all over the country. Tayo struggles to take it all in, and Betonie comments that “we’ve” been gathering things for hundreds of years.

In the hogan, Tayo sees traditional medicine man paraphernalia as well as ceremonial objects and layers of old calendars. Betonie explains that he needs all of these things to continue doing the old ceremonies nowadays. Tayo sees some Santa Fe railroad calendars from 1939 and 1940 that he recognizes because Uncle Josiah used to bring calendars back from the Santa Fe depot. Betonie tells stories about traveling on the Santa Fe rail line, after he was sent to school at the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California. There at the institute, Betonie learned English because his mother told him that “it” is carried in all the languages now.

Betonie notices that a hair has come loose from his mustache and he carefully locks the hair in a footlocker. Tayo pretends he doesn’t know why Betonie would do that, but he remembers the old stories about medicine men who could wreak horrible damage on people with a single nail cutting or hair for magic power. Tayo worries aloud that the tribe has sent him to Betonie to get rid of him, not cure him. Betonie laughs, and tells Tayo he is free to leave if he wishes, as Betonie can’t help anyone who is afraid of him. Tayo stays.

Tayo tells Betonie about feeling like invisible white smoke when he was in the Veteran’s Hospital. Betonie says that Tayo could choose to return to the white smoke, but that living in the hospital is worse than dying. Betonie knows that the Navajo tell stories about him, and that the stories scare people away from Betonie’s hogan even when Betonie is not there.

Tayo tells Betonie about seeing Uncle Josiah die in the Philippines, wearing a Japanese uniform. Tayo admits that Uncle Josiah died because he had no one to help him care for his cattle with Rocky and Tayo gone at war. Betonie asks about Rocky but Tayo can only cry. Betonie tells Tayo that seeing Josiah in the jungle was an important part of the story, reminding Tayo that the whole world suffers from the same “witchery.”

Tayo tells Betonie about Night Swan’s hazel eyes and Auntie’s suspicions that Night Swan was evil all along. Betonie does not respond to Tayo’s questions about Night Swan, instead telling Tayo that Tayo must complete a mysterious ceremony for the sake of the world. Tayo, frustrated at Betonie’s cryptic references to “the ceremony,” wants to yell at Betonie all the things the white doctors told him about Indian medicine, but in his heart Tayo knows that the only way to heal himself is to help heal the world.

Betonie describes the changes that he has had to make to the traditional ceremonies in order to adapt them to the current generation. Though it is important to respect the rituals and avoid tampering with them needlessly, he says that the rituals have to able to change or they will die and all mankind will die with them. Tayo wants to believe Betonie, but has trouble seeing the healing power in the junk cluttered around Betonie’s rooms.

Betonie and Tayo walk outside, and Tayo comments on all the land in Gallup that was stolen by white men. Betonie reminds Tayo that Indians need this constant reminder of everything they have lost in order to continue fighting to make things right once more. Furthermore, all the deeds and titles in the world do not truly mean that white men own this land. Betonie cautions Tayo to look for both good and bad within white people, the same as he would do for a fellow Indian.

Betonie introduces Tayo to his helper, Shush, whose name means “bear.” Betonie begins to tell a story, and the novel switches to a poem. The story tells of a young boy who wandered away from his family and went to live with bears. The medicine man knows that he has to call the child back quickly and rushes to the bears’ cave. The medicine man makes bear noises outside the cave until the young boy comes out, yet the young boy is already crawling like a bear. The medicine man knows they have to call him back carefully to avoid leaving the boy stranded between men and bears.

Betonie stops the story to remind Tayo that witchery is only responsible for a small portion of life. Good or bad are less important than finding balance in the transitions of life. The novel includes a note on bear people and witches, explaining the difference between someone who goes to live with the bears, and a person who uses a bear’s skin for evil purposes.

Tayo starts to tell Betonie about Emo and Rocky, because he is reminded of them by the neon lights of Gallup spread out in the valley. Rocky was supposed to be the success story of the reservation, a man who made it out and survived in the white man’s world. Tayo cannot forgive himself for letting Rocky die. Tayo then tells Betonie about Emo’s bag of teeth and his vendetta against white men, then asks Betonie what ceremonies can be used against the white sickness of wars, bombs, and lies.

Betonie reminds Tayo that white people are not purely evil, they are simply one tool that the larger witchery of the world manipulates. Indeed, Indian witchery created white people. Betonie starts a poem-story about a time before white people. All the Indian witches of every tribe have gathered together to out-do one another with their dark spells. The witches do all kinds of magic, using disgusting charms made from the skin and body parts of the dead.

At the end of the contest, the last Indian witch, from an unknown tribe, does dark magic by telling a story. The other witches laugh, but the witch silences them by telling of a world completely destroyed by white skin people who have no respect for life or the earth. The fear inside these white skin people will make them do horrible things, killing anyone in their path and unleashing all sorts of diseases. In a final pattern, the white skin people will use rocks with veins of green, yellow, and black (that is, the uranium in an atomic bomb) to explode the entire world. The other witches ask the witch to take the story back, but the witch says this cannot be undone.

Betonie, Shush, and Tayo ride on horseback into the foothills of the Chuska mountains outside Gallup. They set up camp at a small stone hogan and Tayo feels almost as peaceful as he did before the war. Betonie goes back to the story-poem about bearskins, this time describing how a woman found out her son-in-law had been transformed into a coyote and performed a pollen ritual to call the man out of the coyote skin. Betonie performs the same pollen ritual for Tayo.

Tayo falls asleep and dreams about speckled cattle that constantly outrun him, heading south. When he wakes up, Betonie and Shush are nowhere to be found. Tayo surveys the unbroken mesa of black sand. Betonie walks back up the western ridge, then sits down next to Tayo and rolls a cigarette.

Betonie starts to tell a story about his grandfather, Descheeny. Descheeny was with a Navajo hunting party returning from an escapade down into Mexico. They stop for the night when they realized that a girl is stuck in a nearby tree. The men are inexplicably scared of the girl, but get her down out of the tree so that they can sell her to another tribe. Only Descheeny is not afraid of the girl – who is Mexican – and decides to take her as his wife.

Descheeny speaks a little Spanish and promises to return the girl to her family in Mexico, but the girl refuses, saying that the people back in Mexico will harm her. Descheeny’s other wives dislike the Mexican girl, but Descheeny knows that the girl is necessary for the ceremony that will save the world. The girl is willing to use any power she can, even power from white people, in order to set in motion rituals that future generations will have to complete. The other Navajo people become even more afraid of Descheeny.

Betonie describes the day he was born and the other people tried to kill him for his hazel eyes. The Mexican woman saved Betonie and took him north to El Paso to raise him. The novel moves into the Corn Woman poem-story where Fly and Hummingbird visit Corn Mother to ask where to get tobacco. Corn Woman sends them to caterpillar.

Betonie tells Tayo that the ceremony is not yet finished. Betonie draws a constellation in the dust, then tells Tayo to remember this certain formation of stars, a woman, a mountain, and the spotted cattle. A poem-story describes how the witchery and its effect gradually leaves the coyote-man’s body and lets him return to live with people.