KuRATH] IROQUOIS MUSIC AND DANCE 65 



tion nor produce identical results. The moderate, relaxing Trotting 

 Dance and its relatives, open and usually close an evening of social 

 dances and are inserted between strenuous dances. They draw a 

 large group into participation. Monotony is relieved not only by 

 melodic sjnicopations but also by counterpoint of dance steps. The 

 more vigorous Fish Dance type enlists a smaller group of partici- 

 pants than the stomp type. 



Laughter plays an important and beneficial part in Iroquois dances. 

 A few solemn moments, as the Drum Dance thanksgiving, are im- 

 mune from a byplay of clowning, but the most exclusive medicine 

 rites, as Dark Dance, release tension by outbursts of hilarity. In 

 this, the songs play their share. The spectators laugh in response to 

 False Face moans, to animal calls after Bear, Raccoon, Chicken 

 Dances, and to whimsical Trotting Dance antiphony. However, in 

 masked dances, Buffalo Dance and the like, how much of the humor is 

 due to the melodic character, how much to the song rendering, and 

 how much to mimetic clowning? 



ECOLOGY AND MIME 



The Iroquois give thanks to all living things. In the dances they 

 do not portray the qualities of plants, but they often reflect the habits 

 of animals. 



MAMMALS 



As already indicated in the dance descriptions, dancers suggest 

 beasts by posture and gait, though not by gesture. They enact more 

 symbolically other aspects of the animal's ways. 



Bu;ffalo: 



The American bison (Bison bison) "once roamed central North 

 America almost from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast in 

 numbers estimated at 60,000,000" (Hall and Kelson, 1959, p. 1024). 

 At one time, the Iroquois may have encountered these mammals in 

 western New York. In 1671, Claude Allouez reported occasional 

 "pisikiou" on the Fox and Wolf Rivers in Wisconsin, that is, in 

 Meskwaki territory (Roe, 1951, pp. 8, 224-225). During the 18th 

 centur}^ fair numbers congregated at the Kentucky Blue Licks and in 

 the highlands of North and South Carolina (ibid., pp. 233, 253). 

 They reached the Seneca at Licking Creek near the Allegheny River 

 and possibly Buffalo Creek near Buffalo, N.Y., probably by a route 

 south of Lake Erie, for they made rare appearances in Michigan or 

 adjacent Ontario (ibid., pp. 228, 254). They were extinct in the 

 East by 1810; survivors retreated west of the Mississippi River by 

 1832 (ibid., p. 226). Here a few Plains and Woodland buffalo survive. 



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