Night Parade dazzles downtown
Annual even draws spectators from all over
Azteca dancers from Vera Cruz Mexico perform Thursday night in the 87th Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial night parade. [photo by Cable Hoover / Independent]

By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — There’s something magical about holding a parade at night.

Which may be why thousands of area residents turned out Thursday for the first of two parades put on by the Inter-tribal Indian Ceremonial.

With the threat of rain and lightning in the distance, people from as far away as Shiprock and Crownpoint began setting up their chairs along the parade route as early as 7 p.m. so they could get the choicest spots.

That’s what Gloria Begaye and her family from Thoreau and Gallup did. The elders got the chairs and the children were allowed to wander around.

“They wouldn’t sit in chairs even if we had some for them,” she said.

They sat up on Historic Route 66 about two blocks west of the Gallup Chamber of Commerce as they have done, off and on, for decades waiting for the parade to past them by. That wouldn’t happen until nearly 9:30 p.m. but no one seemed to mind because one of the things to be enjoyed was the anticipation of seeing groups that have appeared time and time again.

No one in the Begaye family probably would recognize the name Mauchahty-Ware, but that Oklahoma family has been coming to Gallup for more than three decades now to perform in the Ceremonial.

In fact, the patriarch of the family, Tim Mauchahty-Ware II, is part of Ceremonial history.

“Back in 1976, I was the first dancer to perform at Red Rock Park when it first opened,” he said.

Now he brings three generations of his family to the Ceremonial, some as young as 2 years old, and all are dressed in colorful Kiowa traditional garb.

The family doesn’t come here for the money — it barely pays for the cost of traveling here — but he says he does it because “this is the best Indian show” around. He also gets an opportunity to meet old friends, many of whom have been coming to the Ceremonial for generations as well.

Now approaching 60, he spends most of his time on the road, playing the flute at Indian shows or powwows or playing in a blues band called Blues Nation.

The male members of his family live in teepees when they are here while the females stay in the living quarters provided by the Ceremonial.

And the food ... he said he remembers in the early days when he was coming here that the food provided by the Ceremonial was uneatable. After a meal, he said, you could go to the trash cans at the Ceremonial grounds and find it all there.

“Today, it’s better, good,” he said, adding that it comes from Golden Corral.

People who missed the Thursday night parade will get another chance to see it at 10 a.m. Saturday in downtown Gallup.

The events at Red Rock Park will continue throughout today with the NRCA rodeo from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., gourd dancing until 6 p.m., the Ceremonial Queen Contest from 5 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., a powwow from 7 p.m. to midnight and Indian dances until 10 p.m. The exhibit hall will close at 8 p.m. and the performances in the amphitheater will continue until 5 p.m. The youth concerts will go on from noon to 8 p.m. and the children’s village in the museum will continue to 4 p.m.