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DENSMORE] NORTHERN UTE MUSIC 57 
yet the Indians seem to expect that snow will fall either during or soon 
after the dance. Some informants stated that the Bear dance was 
formerly in the nature of a courting dance, but sociability and general 
good feeling appear to be its chief characteristics at the present time. 
The custom of the Northern Utes seems to differ little from that of 
the Southern Utes as described by Verner Z. Reed,'* who witnessed 
the Bear dance on their reservation in Colorado in March, 1893. 
The Bear dance is held in a large circular space inclosed by a 
barrier formed of upright poles, between which the branches of trees 
are woven horizontally. The inclosure used for the Bear dance in 1914 
was visited by the writer. (Pl.8,a.) The walls were about 9 feet 
in height and the inclosure about 200 feet in diameter. At the side 
opposite the door was an excavation in the ground about 5 feet long, 
2 feet wide, and 2 feet deep. Over this, during the dance, there had 
been placed sheets of zinc on which the singers, seated around the 
sides, rested their morache. (See pl. 1.) This hollow (or cave) in 
the ground was said to be “connected with the bear,” and the rasping 
sound produced by the morache was said to be ‘like the sound made 
by a bear.” 
During the week which precedes a Bear dance the people rehearse 
the dancing. When the dance is formally opened they don all their 
finery and continue dancing for several days. The dancers take 
their places in parallel lines facing each other, the men in one line 
and the women in the other. They do not touch each other, neither 
do they progress during the dancing until the last day of the dance. 
If a dancer falls from exhaustion or from a misstep, the singing 
ceases and a medicine man or the leader of the dancers ‘restores 
the dancer.” Taking a morache from one of the singers, he places 
- the lower end of the notched stick against the body of the prostrate 
man and passes the rubbing stick rapidly up and down upon it. He 
begins this at the dancer’s feet and repeats the motion upward until 
the man’s head is reached, when he holds the notched stick toward 
the sky and passes the rubbing stick upward as though he were 
brushing something from the notched stick into the air. Sometimes 
two or more of these treatments are necessary before the man rises 
and resumes dancing. He is not required to give a present to the 
man who thus ‘‘restores’”’ him. 
On the final day of the dance, soon after sunrise, a man and a 
woman chase each other around the inclosure, and if they see anyone 
laugh at them it is the custom for them to appear ferocious, running 
toward the person and pretending to scratch him. Sometimes they 
apply red paint around the mouth to look as though blood were 
dripping from the jaws, suggesting the ferocity of the bear. The 
1s Reed, Verner Z., The Ute Bear Dance. Amer. Anthropologist, vol. 9, 1896. 
