He ne terra-toma, the mystical refrain of Torchbearers, was brought to the College by a professor, Frank P. Brackett, and a student, David P. Barrows, who may have been among the first non-Native Americans to witness the riveting circle dance that was the centerpiece of the 1890 Ghost Dance movement among tribes of the West and Plains.

The Cahuilla refrain they heard was incorporated into a hastily written College song, Ghost Dance, that proved popular on campus. Some years later, thanks to a former Pomona student familiar with the song, the name Terra Tomah Mountain was applied to a whalebacked peak, elevation 12,718 feet, in what is now Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.

When Ghost Dance was rewritten in 1930 and renamed Torchbearers, only the refrain was kept from the original lyrics. Although Torchbearers opens with a deep, vocalized drumbeat, one of the features that differentiated the 1890 Ghost Dance from other native dances was that it was not usually accompanied by drumming. Brackett's account mentions only a rattle, and Barrows' memoirs do not refer to any accompaniment.

What does the refrain He ne terra-toma mean? (Barrows wrote it as He-NO-terra-toma.) Neither Brackett nor Barrows was familiar with the Cahuilla language at the time, and neither mentions a possible meaning in their accounts of the dance. Few native speakers of Cahuilla remain today; one tribe member who grew up with a bilingual vocabulary said she could not identify the meaning.

Absent the precise pronunciation and context, a definitive translation may never be possible, but a 1979 Cahuilla dictionary may offer clues. According to the dictionary, the term hŽnew means to get mad, and tœmaw means to attack in surprise. No listed word has a pronunciation approximating that of terra.

Brackett and Barrows believed they were witnessing a war dance, and presumably were aware that the phrase they brought back to the College could have a combative tone. But one irony of the Ghost Dance was that although celebrants sometimes evoked past battles, and wore ochre paint associated with war--stoking fear among white settlers--the shaman who inspired the dance stressed nonviolence and racial harmony.