Darkness blankets a chilly fall Southern Appalachian night in Big Cove, NC. Tucked away in a quiet hollow lies a small handmade house. It was built in a single day. Not because it was shoddily thrown together or because corners were cut. But because that’s what good neighbors do for each other. They give freely. When cold is setting in and a family needs shelter, they all do their part.
Inside smoke hangs like spider webs. In the heart of the room, a fire burns low, beating back autumn frost, warming a stone hearth. Fire light illuminates the face of a tight-knit community. Most all the men, women, and children are here. They dance and socialize without restraint, awaiting the evening’s festivities. There’s a bench against one wall. Sitting on that bench, six men lead the affair. They’re known as callers. Five of them play rattles made from gourds, and the head caller beats a Cherokee water drum. It’s made of hollowed buckeye with a head of brain-tanned deer skin. The beater is carved from a good length of hickory, straight and strong as the chief himself. The drum is filled with water. It resonates soulfully like no other drum.
The callers play six songs and then, one by one, the boogers stomp into the room. There are seven, all sloppily dressed. Some wear tattered European clothes, and others have bed sheets and quilts draped over themselves. One of them carries a dead chicken on a string. All are wearing masks. Each mask is different, resembling either white men or Indians. One is a hollowed hornets’ nest. The others are made from buckeye, basswood, and gourds. Some look silly and some scary. Paint and animal fur represent eyebrows and hair. A couple of the booger masks have long thin gourd necks for noses. Possum fur has been attached to the bases of the gourds. These are meant to look like penises.
After the boogers make their entrance, they move clumsily about, lurching at the spectators, groping for the women and girls, chasing them across the room. The girls giggle at being chased. A few of the boogers fall to the floor pretending to be stricken by convulsive seizures. Some of them wear gourds between their legs, occasionally thrusting them towards the women and releasing the water held within. Soon the boogers settle down and take seats against the wall.
The host announces the arrival of the new guests and then converses quietly with the booger chief. He whispers a series of questions… “Who are you? Where are you from? Where are you going?” The host repeats the chief’s replies for everyone to hear. The boogers have come from a land far away, and they are heading southward. The foreign chief whispers in the strictest of confidence that his dead chicken is a wild turkey. The audience jeers with laughter. When asked what they want, the boogers all reply, “Girls!” Then they ask for a fight and the host responds, “We are a peaceful people and do not wish to fight you.” So the boogers ask to dance, and they are granted permission.
Each is called by name and performs his own solo dance. There are Cow’s Tail, Sooty Anus, Black Buttocks, Sweet Phallus, Penis, Rusty Anus, and Big Testicles. Most of the dances represent the boogers’ names in some way. It’s mostly just chaotic motion and groping. The clumsy display brings to mind a white man imitating an Indian dance. The dancers cough, growl, and frequently expel flatus.
The boogers finish their dances, and the host invites the booger chief to choose another dance. He indicates that he and his boogers would like the Eagle Dance. Now they take a break and run outside, probably stirring up some unseen trouble. A few minutes pass and the boogers make their re-entry. The music makers sing a song and request tobacco. A pipe is lit and passed among them. After all of the callers have partaken, the pipe is retired. The host lays a deer skin before the eagle hunter in an act of reverence. The spectators take an opportunity to honor this man by offering gifts for his skill and medicine. He has spent several days alone in the wilderness, executing the rites necessary to take this special bird. Among the gifts are tobacco, a buckskin for moccasins, an iron knife, various pins, buttons, and other personal adornments.
The ensuing dance is the pinnacle of the evening’s ceremony. The boogers take female partners, dancing side by side or face to face in sexual burlesque. They finish dancing, having completed their quest for women and vanish into the cold night to fulfill the last leg of their mission. The ceremony ends with a Friendship Dance.
There seems to be some controversy regarding the meaning of the Booger Dance. Frank Speck and Leonard Broom have given the most commonly known interpretation. Their informant, a Cherokee man named Will West Long, said the dance originated from the same source of all dances, indicating it existed in ancient times and has been passed down through generations. He said it’s only used for fun now, but it was once a formal ceremony. It supposedly was given to the Cherokee people as tool to help them cope with the stresses of adversity. According to the Speck and Broom theory, the ceremony reduces the Cherokee enemy to something psychologically manageable. The offending boogers represented real threats to the Cherokee. Speck and Broom concluded that the masks symbolized Europeans and the diseases they brought. The white man happened to be the most imminent threat of that era, but in earlier times it may have been dangerous animals or enemy tribes. The dance eased threat through the use of humor and mockery. They also used it as a ceremony to eradicate foreign diseases.
Anthropologists Raymond D. Fogelson and Amelia B. Walker feel like Speck and Broom have oversimplified the meaning of the Booger Dance. They claim the masks are symbolic of tensions, emotions, or character traits. Many of the booger masks, they say, are painted and carved with wrinkles, and topped with gray hair. They are meant to resemble the wisdom of elderly Indians, while others represent the young man and his preoccupation with sex. The mask allows the dancer to experience a particular trait or quality. Some boogers portray the clumsy overindulgence of youth. Others might imitate the arduous gait of an old man. Through the Booger Dance, the young man is wise and mature. The old man reclaims his youthful vitality. They both get a chance to explore the tension that exists between them. Each fears and envies the other’s powers.
Still, some masks clearly resemble whites, blacks, Asians, and others. Fogelson and Walker assert that the Cherokee audience gets a glimpse of another culture through the dance. The culture they see is one they don’t understand; a culture built on ethics and morals completely foreign to the Cherokee. A group of strangers barges into a home demanding women and war. They are disrespectful and offensive, and they leave only after making fools of themselves.
All we can do is speculate on the origin and meaning of the Booger Dance. The Cherokee are a people of mystery. Most of their history has been recorded only in their minds, passed down verbally from father to son, mother to daughter.
But I’m holding fast to the Speck and Broom theory. I have absolutely no legitimate evidence other than what they’ve published. I just like that story. It makes perfect sense to me. It demonstrates the strength of a small community. What better way to dispel a demon than to laugh in its face? It may do no other good than to offer comic relief. Our political demons certainly can’t be slain by mockery, any more than the white man could be driven off by the Booger Dance, but it sure sounds like fun. And I can’t help but dream about a modern Booger Dance…
Boogers crash the party. The masks are mostly the same. Except one. It’s not unlike a monkey’s face. Instead of a dead chicken, this booger carries a dated assault rifle, capable of offing a man a couple hundred yards away. In the strictest of confidence he quietly confides, “This is a nuclear warhead, capable of leveling an entire nation.” The audience jeers with laughter. When asked what the boogers want, they all cry, “Oil!” Folks, can we be just a little more discreet when we pick our boogers.
