koonkt] CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DANCE 921 



accommodating the movement to their -weakness. Frequentlya woman 



will be seen to join the circle with an infant upon her back and dance 

 with the others, but should she show the least sign of approaching 



excitement watchful friends lead her away that no harm may come to 



the child. Dogs are driven off from the neighbor! 1 of the circle lest 



they should run against any of those who have fallen into a trance and 

 thus awaken them. The dancers themselves are careful not to disturb 

 the trance subjects while their souls are in the spirit world. Full 

 Indian dress is worn, with buckskin, paint, and leathers, but among 

 the Sioux the women discarded the belts ornamented with disks of 

 German silver, because the metal had come from the white man. 

 Among the southern tribes, on the contrary, hats were sometimes worn 

 in the dance, although this was not considered in strict accordance with 

 the doctrine. 



No drum, rattle, or other musical instrument is used in the dance. 

 excepting sometimes by an individual dancer in imitation of a trance 

 vision. In this respect particularly the Ghost dance differs from every 

 other Indian dance. Neither are any fires built within the circle, so 

 far as known, with any tribe excepting the Walapai. The northern 

 Cheyenne, however, built four fires in a peculiar fashion outside of the 

 circle, as already described. With most tribes the dance was performed 

 around a tree or pole planted in the center and variously decorated. 

 In the southern plains, however, only the Kiowa seem ever to have 

 followed this method, they sometimes dancing around a cedar tree. On 

 breaking the circle at the end of the dance the performers shook their 

 blankets or shawls in the air. with the idea of driving away all evil 

 influences. On later instructions from the messiah all then went 

 down to bathe in the stream, the men in one place and the women in 

 another, before going to their tipis. The idea of washing away evil 

 things, spiritual as well as earthly, by bathing in running water is too 

 natural and universal to need comment. 



The peculiar ceremonies of prayer and invocation, with the laying on 

 of hands and the stroking of the face and body, have several times 

 been described and need only be mentioned here. As trance visions 

 became frequent the subjects strove to imitate what they had seen 

 iu the spirit world, especially where they had taken part with their 

 departed friends in some of the old-time games. In this way gaming 

 wheels, shinny sticks, hummers, and other toys or implements would be 

 made and carried in future dances, accompanied with appropriate 

 songs, until the dance sometimes took on the appearance of an exhibi 

 tion of Indian curios on a small scale. 



THE CROW DANCE 



Within the last lew years the southern Arapalio and Cheyenne have 

 developed an auxiliary dance called the "crow dance,"" which is per- 

 formedinthe afternoon as a preliminary to the regular Ghost dance at 

 night. As it is no part of the original Ghost dance and is confined to 



