102 
called upon to execute their dance in 
order to attract the herds. According 
to an early observer, they never failed for 
they simply never ceased dancing till 
buffalo had been sighted. Prince Maxi- 
milian of Wied-Neuwied gives a good 
first-hand account of a performance 
witnessed by him in the early thirties 
of the last century. There were two 
men acting as musicians, with rattles 
and drums, one of them holding a gun. 
The leader woman 
wrapped in the skin of an albino buffalo 
cow. Inher right arm she held a bundle 
of twigs, tipped with plumes, with an 
was an_ elderly 
eagle wing and a drinking-vessel secured 
to the grip. There were seventeen 
women, all told, who took part. ‘Two of 
them wore skunk-skin head bands, the 
rest wore headdresses of white buffalo 
skin, decorated in front with owl or 
raven feathers. All the 
vermilion paint on the left cheek and 
eye, with two blue spots on the opposite 
They formed a circle, the musi- 
the women 
dancers had 
temple. 
cians began to sing and 
danced, taking up the tune at the same 
time. They waddled like ducks from 
side to side, raising each foot alternately 
higher than the other but never shifting 
their position. 
The Mandan Okipa represents again 
a wholly different type of dance. It 
was the great several days’ annual festi- 
val that corresponded to the Sun Dance 
of neighboring peoples. Ostensibly it 
was a commemoration of the subsidence 
of the deluge recorded in native mythol- 
ogy, and some of the important charac- 
ters of the myth were impersonated by 
performers. On the other hand, there 
was a great deal besides. A marked 
dramatic feature was supplied by numer- 
ous mummers representing animals and 
closely mimicking their peculiarities. 
Prominent among these were buffalo 
masqueraders who imitated the wallow- 
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
ing of the animals represented and whose 
actions were expected to entice the game 
to the village. 
tarily 
Many tribesmen volun- 
torture: their 
breasts were pierced, skewers inserted, 
and they were then made to swing sus- 
submitted to 
pended from a pole as in the more fami- 
liar Sun Dance. Altogether the Okipa 
was evidently a composite ceremony. 
Religious sacrifices and prayers were 
mingled with dramatic performances, 
magical rites and activities of a purely 
social order; and there can be no doubt 
that to the average Mandan who had no 
special office in the performance, it 
served the purpose of a free spectacular 
show “‘on the grandest scale within tribal 
comprehension.” 
The wide scope of activities embraced 
by the dances of our native American 
population makes perhaps the main point 
of interest over and above all special 
features. For what must strike every 
observer of primitive cultures most for- 
cibly is that things which we consider 
quite distinct, men of a ruder civiliza- 
tion join. Thus the stars are to us a 
subject for purely scientific study, but 
even our ancestors invested them with all 
sorts of mystical properties, and the 
North American Indian personifies them 
and identifies them with the heroes of his 
folk-tales. 
mental designs and often do not give 
Thus too, we have orna- 
themanysymbolic interpretation. Prim- 
itive man is indeed less given to symbol- 
ism than perhaps has been supposed; 
nevertheless his tendency to invest a 
geometrical pattern with meaning re- 
mains greater than our own. So danc- 
ing, which to us is merely a form of 
amusement and exercise, becomes in 
important 
social function, an opportunity for 
sleight-of-hand performances, for reli- 
gious ritualism, and may become charged 
with an atmosphere of supreme holiness. 
primitive communities an 
