SONGS CONNECTED WITH DANCES AND GAMES 



Dances 



In every Sioux village there was a lodge of suitable size for social 

 tyatherings or dances. An old typo of Sioux dance lodge is showai in 

 plate 76, A, the walls being of logs and the roof of branches covered 

 with earth, a large smoke-hole being left in the center. Plate 76, B, 

 shows a lodge on the Standing Rock Reservation in which the WTiter 

 witnessed a dance in 1912. The following summer she learned that 

 it had been torn down, as the Government was enforcing more 

 vigorously the restrictions on dancing among the Indians. In this 

 lodge, as in the older type, the construction was of logs, branches, 

 and earth, but the shape was rectangular, the logs were plastered 

 with earth, and the roof was almost flat with projecting stovepipes, 

 indicating that the lodge was heated by stoves instead of an open fire. 



Concerning Indian dances it was said that — 



In dancing the Indians imitate the actions of animals. In the grass dance the 

 men imitate the motions of the eagle and graceful birds. In the buffalo dance they 

 imitate the buffalo. The old-time dancing dress of the Indians imitated the animals, 

 but there was always a charm or a headdress which indicated the personality of the 

 wearer. The Indians imitate the cries of birds or animals when they dance. Some 

 headdresses imitate the comb of a bird, and a man wearing such a headdress would 

 imitate the actions of that bird. The actions of a dancer always correspond to his 

 costume. This is a matter of choice and usually is not connected with a dream. 



THE GRASS DAXCE 



The grass dance (pezi' waci'pi) may be said to exist at the 

 present time among all the tribes of the northern plains, even to the 

 Kutenai. The name Omaha identifies it with the Omaha tribe, 

 from which it was received by many other tribes, but in transmission 

 it has lost its significance, having become simply a social dance. 

 According to Miss Fletcher, the dance originally was connected with 

 the Hethu'shka society of the Omaha, a society whose object "was to 

 stimulate an heroic spirit among the people and to keep alive the 

 memory of historic and valorous acts." * 



Miss Fletcher describes one of its meetmgs, stating that • — 



No clothing except the breechcloth was worn by the members, and a long bunch 

 of grass representing scalps the wearer had taken was fastened to the belt at the 

 back. . . . When the dance became known to the Dakota tribes and the Winne- 

 bago, the significance of the bunch of long grass having been forgotten, they gave the 



' Fletcber and La FJesche, The Omaha Tribe, op. cit., p. 459. ' Ibid., p. 4G1. 



468 



