Once in seven years these secret woman-tamers hold a grand devil-dance (cha-du-el-keh), which is looked forward to by the women of the tribe with fear and trembling as the scourging visit of the dreadful Yu-ku-ku-la (the devil). As this society has its ramifications among the many Pomo tribes, this great dance is held one septennium in one valley, another in another, and so on through the circuit of the branch societies.
Every seven years, therefore, witnesses the construction of an immense assembly-house which is used for this special occasion only. I have seen the ruins of one which was reared in Potter Valley somewhere about the year 1860. The pit, or cellar, which made a part of it was circular, sixty-three feet in diameter and about six feet deep, and all the enormous mass of earth excavated from it was gouged up with small, fire-hardened sticks and carried away in baskets by both men and women, chiefly men. It was about eighteen feet high in the center, and the roof was supported on five posts, one a center pole and four others standing around it, equidistant from it and the perimeter of the pit. Timbers from six to nine inches in diameter were laid from the edge of the pit to the middle posts, and from these to the center pole. Over these were placed grass and brush, and the whole was heavily covered with earth. Allowing four square feet of space to each person, such a structure would contain upward of seven hundred people. In their palmy days hundreds and even thousands of Indians attended one of these grand dances.
When the dance is held, twenty or thirty men array themselves in harlequin rig and barbaric paint and put vessels of pitch on their heads; then they secretly go out into the surrounding mountains. These are to personify the devils. A herald goes up to the top of the assembly-house and makes a speech to the multitude. At a signal agreed upon in the evening the masqueraders come in from the mountains, with the vessels of pitch flaming on their heads, and with all the frightful accessories of noise, motion, and costume which the savage mind can devise in representation of demons. The terrified women and children flee for life, the men huddle them into a circle, and, on the principle of fighting the devil with fire, they swing blazing firebrands in the air, yell, whoop, and make frantic dashes at the marauding and bloodthirsty devils, so creating a terrific spectacle, and striking great fear into the hearts of the assembled hundreds of women, who are screaming and fainting and clinging to their valorous protectors. Finally the devils succeed in getting into the assembly-house, and the bravest of the men enter and hold a parley with them. As a conclusion of the whole farce, the men summon courage, the devils are expelled from the assembly-house, and with a prodigious row and racket of sham fighting are chased away into the mountains.