Traditionally, for the Cherokee, the tobacco smoked for ritual purposes was not Nicotiana tabacum L., the tobacco found in cigars and cigarettes, but rather Nicotiana rustica L., or "ancient [page 77] tobacco".(32) The Iroquois call this tobacco, "real tobacco".(33) The Cherokee smoked this tobacco not only before rituals and ceremonies, but also to suppress hunger, as medicine, and as a "kind of spiritual facilitator" before councils of war and peace.(34) There seems to be a very important reason for the use of this type of tobacco rather than the more accessible Nicotiana tabacum L.: Nicotiana rustica L. allowed for mind-altering effects, far more than experienced by smoking the commercial Nicotiana tabacum L.(35) The "ancient tobacco" may contain more nicotine, the Indians may have held the smoke longer in the lungs (therefore absorbing more nicotine), or they may have cut "ancient tobacco" with a hallucinogenic such as the bright red leaves of dried sumac (Rhus glabra L.).(36)

"Ancient tobacco" was fit for ceremonial purposes when it was "remade" into a sacred symbol (in Eliadean terms, into a hierophany) through a ritualization process that began at its planting. The seeds of Nicotiana rustica L. were planted on ground first made sacred by the burning of wood that had been struck by lightning. In the fall, the Cherokee harvested the tobacco, which was then taken to running water. Prayers and formulae were said over the tobacco leaves, and they were infused with sunlight, human breath and saliva for extra power.(37)

It is not the tobacco leaf, however, that is most powerful, but the smoke that issues from it when burned. Smoke is considered by the Cherokee to be closely associated with the sun, fire's progenitor,(38) and therefore has the sun's life-giving properties. In Cherokee tradition, smoke was often blown into the nostrils of the ill to infuse them with life.(39) In Eliadean designations, smoke then is a bridge from the smoker to the sun, a universal symbol or [page 78] archetype for the Supreme Being, the ultimate Sky God. As the smoke facilitates a connection between the Middle and Upper Worlds, so too does smoking the mind-altering Nicotiana rustica L., the vehicle that allows the smoker's spirit to soar to the Upper World and "ascend to Heaven." Such spans, including the preeminent vehicle of ascension in the Booger Dance, the sacrificed eagle, whose plumage is utilized in the next "act," are conduits traversed to redress the transgression committed by man in his "fall," when ties between the Upper and Middle Worlds were severed.

Ascension rites, according to Eliade, are consecrating and determining activities that sublimate a profane space into a sacred one;(40) smoking tobacco and dancing the Eagle Dance in the Booger Dance seems to serve these same purposes, thus I will refer to them as ascension rites.

Moreover, Speck does not address the importance of setting. The private Cherokee home where the Booger Dance is held may be considered in Eliadean terminology to be an axis mundi, or center of the world, a common pattern in world religions. In ancient times, before the invasion of other races, the Booger Dance would have been held in the village's council house, a centrally located and raised structure with seven sides (one for each clan) that could seat many Cherokee.(41) The nearly circular structure contained benches arranged in a circular pattern, facing center, in which there was a pit for fire.(42)

Eliade deduces the symbolism of such a structure to be a metaphor for the "sacred mountain" standing at the Center of the World, where heaven and earth meet. This Center of the World, for it lies in the middle or navel of the earth, constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space, a break that serves as a passage and means of communication from one cosmic region to another. One or another of certain images, such as, for example, a mountain, tree, or pillar may represent the axis mundi.(43) Every temple (this designation certainly includes the Cherokee council house and thus, in the absence of a council house, the Cherokee home), every palace, [page 79] every sacred town and royal residence is a local symbol that corresponds to the archetypal "sacred mountain." Therefore, like the "Sacred Mountain," the temple or sacred city (for our purposes, the Cherokee home serving as the setting for Booger Dance), is a place through which the axis mundi passes and is thus a junction between the Upper, Middle and Lower Worlds.(44)

This creation of a sacred space, and acknowledgment of its location at the Center of the World, is indicative of the Cherokee belief that their land, their world, was at the midpoint of the earth. The valorization of Cherokee territory then, as not only the land of the ancestors but also as the navel of the earth, the location where Creation occurred and from whence Creation spread, gives insight to the anguish that the Cherokee must have experienced at their forced removal from this homeland in 1838-1839. Not only did the Cherokee lose claim to a physical place, the more traditional-minded Cherokee's sense of loss must have surpassed merely the loss of material property. Eliade might maintain that for the traditional Cherokee, her displacement from her inhabited world would incite in her feelings of nothingness, as she is flung into the chaos surrounding her world. This unknown space extending beyond her world, uncosmicized because unconsecrated, represents absolute nonbeing for the religious person. Eliade asserts that, "If, by some evil chance; [she] strays into it, [she] feels emptied of [her] ontic substance, as if [she] were dissolving in Chaos, and [she] finally dies".(45)

Ascension rites also create a ladder between the Middle and Upper Worlds. Eliade writes

In whatever religious context you find them, whatever sort of value is placed upon them—shamanist rite or initiation rite, mystical ecstasy or oniric [dream-like] vision, eschatological myth or heroic legend-—ascents, the climbing of mountains or stairs, flights into the air, and so on, all these things always signify a transcending of the human and a penetration into higher cosmic levels.(46)

These rites of the third "act" therefore prepare the participants for the reenactment of the cosmogony by taking them back to the true place of origins, the Upper World, readying them for the journey to the Middle World and the reestablishment of the cosmological configuration.

[page 80] The fourth and, according to Speck, most important act of the Booger Dance proper then begins. The singers chant the song of the Eagle Dance and the Boogers move onto the floor with the Cherokee men who begin to dance the peace dance. The dancers, impersonating eagles flying higher and higher to escape the hunter's arrows, circle gracefully with their arms outstretched, right hands clutching wands of seven eagle feathers, gourd rattles in the left. In ancient times, the Cherokee carried entire eagle tails, but as the birds became scarce they substituted wands of sourwood (believed to hold power against witches) holding feathers of the sacred number seven.(47) Like the Booger Dance, the Eagle Dance is also a winter dance. The eagle is the nemesis of the snake; as the snakes hibernate underground in the colder months, the Cherokee can summon the power of the eagle without fear of rousing the sleeping serpents.(48)

Cherokee women then join the Boogers in the Eagle Dance, one woman for each masked figure. As the women serenely dance, each carrying an eagle-feather wand in her left hand and nothing in the right, the Boogers advance upon them sexually. They desecrate the purity of the dance, mocking the hospitality of the Indians, and, for Speck, symbolically mime the cultural "rape" of the Cherokee. They exhibit their gourd phalluses, obscenely bumping and grinding. Unperturbed, the women continue to dance with great dignity.

At the close of the dance, the Boogers boisterously bound for the door. The Boogers make one last grab for an unwary female, but fail to drag off their struggling victim. They run into the night, leaving the spectators in side-splitting laughter. The Boogers then return, sans masks and costumes, as well-behaved Cherokee men and the social dancing and party continue.(49)

For Speck, the psycho-social function of the dance is made explicit in this fourth action: the Cherokee symbolically deal with the psychological trauma of their encounters with the oppressor by standing steadfast and morally upright in the face of their enemies. He proposes that this play-acting may therefore satisfy the need for the Cherokee to see their foes [page 81] vanquished, in a kind of "sympathetic magic" in which "like affects like".(50) In the Booger Dance, the Cherokee drive the buffoon-like, seemingly impotent invaders away; such an outcome is hoped for in a world in which the invaders are truly terrifying, thus the dance is performed as a medicinal tonic to ensure that the desired effects come to fruition.

Speck, too, intimates that the Cherokee find empowerment by impersonating those they fear. Perhaps by impersonating the forbidden outsider (undoubtedly the forbidden male outsider), the Cherokee can vicariously live out their fantasies, normally off-limits according to strictures of Cherokee social decorum, but perceived by them to be de rigeur for non-Cherokee (and the cause of all of their social ills.) In the Booger Dance, the performers and the audience can safely experience what is off-limits to them.

While these perceptions of the dance may have credence, and they are worthy of further examination, to accept them as denotative of the dance's only function (a societal or psychological one) diminishes its sacred and cosmic capacity. In Eliadean terms, the Booger Dance is not imitative: it truly reenacts the creation of the Cherokee cosmos. The fourth action is clearly the most important, as Speck says. But Speck's rationale that this act is important because the audience experiences a catharsis by watching the defeat of representations of their foes does not hold when Eliade's theory illuminates it. Rather, in this "act" the world is destroyed and created anew.

The juxtaposition of the highly sacred Eagle Dance with the comic and lecherous machinations of the Boogers is unnatural, symbolizing a Middle World enveloped by chaos, a Middle World that has lost form. The Middle World therefore must be destroyed in order to be reformed. Before the regenerative process is set into motion, and before the world is completely destroyed by the actions of the Boogers, the Eagle Dance asks the Upper World for strength and power.

The eagle, as stated above, is an emissary of the Upper World. Its plumage, which plays a central role in the performance of the Eagle Dance, serves as a mode of transcendence to a higher level of consciousness, the means by which to go "above and beyond" the human condition. The Eagle Dance was the highest dance of honor in the entire canon of Cherokee ritual dance. James Adair wrote in the eighteenth century:

[page 82] The Indians cannot shew greater honour to the greatest potentate on earth, than to … dance before him with the eagles tails.(51)

The notion of the bird as a symbol for the soul and its ecstatic flight permeates history and is universal. Eliade asserts that "flight" and all of its related symbolism signifies a break with the universe of everyday experience. Rupturing the bond between mankind and profane existence (obtained through "flight") further symbolizes transcendence as well as freedom. Eliade maintains that the desire for freedom (for reality defined by sacrality) is a universal human condition rooted in the psyche, not brought about by certain historical moments or as the result of cosmic pressures or economic insecurity. The desire for absolute freedom is an essential longing of mankind irrespective of culture or society; it is quintessential of man. The wish to free himself from his limitations, viewed as a kind of degradation, and to regain freedom is a uniquely human characteristic .(52)

As the Cherokee dance the Eagle Dance and manipulate the feathered sourwood wands (ersatz wings), they reveal the human need for transcendence and freedom. These states define the universal human condition only once: in Paradise, before the fall from grace and unconstrained intercourse between the Upper and Middle Worlds ceased. To the Cherokee, the Eagle Dance, therefore, most importantly speaks of a human desire to return to Paradise.

The Eagle Dance, like the Booger Dance, also typically contains four distinct components.(53) However, the Booger Dance observed by Speck employs only the first part of the Eagle Dance: the defeat of the enemy. This sequence abolishes the Boogers from the Middle World, after they intruded upon it and ultimately destroyed it through the defilement of the Eagle Dance. The Boogers wreak havoc throughout the performance, but their blasphemous disregard for the sacredness of the Eagle Dance reveals their true nature as chaotic destroyers of the cosmos.

Speck records that the women's entrance into the dance is symbolic of the Cherokee's submission to the will of their invaders, including their sexual demands, as the Boogers indulge [page 83] in a highly suggestive and erotic pantomime, standing behind the women and thrusting their gourd phalli in pseudo-intercourse.(54) As suggested earlier, however, when viewed in the context of Eliade's theories, the sexual nature of the dance is indicative of chaos, "the beginning" before Creation, and indicates from a religious perspective the Cherokee desire to achieve a complete regeneration of time.

For Eliade, an orgy is the regression into the primeval chaos that precedes all creation, the manifestation of ordered form. The presence of the orgy among the ceremonials of the calendar shows the desire to abolish the past by abolishing all creation. Forms merge by the conquering of social conditions, by combining opposites, and by the suspension of all norms. To effect the dissolution of the world, of which the community is in microcosm, license is let loose, commandments are violated, and all opposites are brought together. Time is therefore restored to the mythical moment of the beginning (chaos), and is also the end (flood or ekpyrosis, apocalypse). As all forms fuse into one single, vast, undifferentiated unity, on a cosmological level, the "orgy" represents chaos or the ultimate disappearance of limits and will soon inaugurate the moment of creation.(55)

Eliade maintains that chaos is always followed by a new creation of the cosmos;(56) I propose that the critical moment of creation occurs when chaos intersects with the sacred symbols or hierophanies of the Upper World. This is the apparent case in the Booger Dance, for the Boogers, upon encountering the spirits of the Upper World in the Eagle Dance, abandon their intrigues and retreat to their proper place in the cosmos.

The Booger Dance therefore destroys the time of the past and brings about a "new time;" time is shattered by destroying the cosmos and returning it to the moments before the Creation. For the Cherokee, the regeneration of time demonstrated by the Booger Dance occurs seasonally, at the end of the calendar year, in the dark days after the harvest and before the sowing of fields. Many of the qualities identified by Eliade in "end of year/beginning of year" rites are easily discernible in the Booger Dance, including the driving out of "demons" and the expulsion of evil from a village; masked processions, with masks representing the dead or some [page 84] other entity from the Lower World (therefore representative of chaos) and the entertainment of these creatures and their eventual dispersion from the midst of the living; fights between two opposite forces; and a reversal of the normal order or "orgy".(57)