Shalako

For other uses, see Shalako (disambiguation).

Shalako refers to a series of dances and ceremonies conducted by the Zuni tribe at the Winter Solstice, and other Native American tribes of the American Southwest in the fall, typically following the harvest. It is notable in that unlike many other Zuni ceremonies that are closed to outsiders, non-Zuni are often invited to visit and watch portions of the Shalako dances. The American fascination with these ceremonies, dances, and proto-New-Age mysticism focused on Native American spiritual beliefs caused the word "Shalako" to be used as a place name or otherwise associated with ephemera of the frontier days of the American Southwest.

Film

Shalako (film)
File:100922.1010.A.jpg original movie poster
Directed by	Edward Dmytryk
Written by	J.J. Griffith Hal Hopper
Produced by	Euan Lloyd
Starring	Brigitte Bardot Sean Connery Stephen Boyd Jack Hawkins Honor Blackman
Cinematography	Ted Moore
Edited by	John D. Guthridge
Music by	Robert Farnon
Distributed by	Cinerama Releasing Corporation Anglo-Amalgamated Film Distributors
Release date	1968
Running time	113 min.

Notably, "Shalako" was a film starring Sean Connery and Brigitte Bardot. Stephen Boyd portrayed a classic English fop. Jack Hawkins played an upper class Englishman man abroad in the 'new' country. Honor Blackman portrayed an English lady.

Novel

Shalako is also a 1962 Western novel by Louis L'Amour and the name of a town that the author once intended to build. It would have been a working town typical of those of the nineteenth-century Western frontier, with buildings with false fronts situated in rows on either side of an unpaved main street and flanked by wide boardwalks before which, at various intervals, there were watering troughs and hitching posts.

The town was to have featured shops and other businesses that were typical of such towns: a barber shop, ahotel, a dry goods store, one or moresaloons, a church, a one-room schoolhouse, etc., and it would have offered itself as a filming location for Hollywood motion pictures concerning the Wild West. However, funding for the project fell through, and Shalako was never built. Shalako would have been named in honor of the protagonist of the novel by the same name.