File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (18156700052).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo15amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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INDIAN DANCES OF THE SOUTHWEST By Herbert J. Spinden T HE numerous dances of the Pueblo Indians are never en- tirely free from a religious idea. Some are so deeply religious that they are jealously guarded from all profane ej'es and are held at night in under- ground lodges. The War Captain's men keep watch at every road so that no out- sider can glimpse the masked (lancers imper- sonating gods. Even in the u nder ground lodges the faces of the uniniti- ated children are covered while the dance is in progress so that they may hear but not see. This secreti\'e- ness is most de- veloped in the villages along the Rio Grande, in New Mexico, where the native religion has en- countered the opposition of the Catholic Church for nearly four hundred years. Other dances are held in the plaza of the village, and here visitors are usually tolerated while on the annual feast day of each pueblo they are wel- comed to a more or less innocuous enter- tainment. The characteristic dances of the
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Photo by E. W. Deming From a performance of the Buffalo Dance twenty- two years ago Pueblo Indians are strikingly different from those wild gyrations that we asso- ciate with the nomadic and warlike Plains Indians. There are, to be sure, a number of such dances — Enemy Dances they are called — that have been taken bodily from this or that wild tribe and are known by the tribe's name, such as the Cheyenne Dance, the Pawnee Dance, the Navajo Dance. These foreign dances are mostly con- cerned with war and are not re- garded as having any important religious charac- ter. Yet it is significant that title to use them was obtained by purchase or trade before the dances were in- cluded in the village reper- tory. Of course the foreign songs had to be learned by rote and a special set of costumes made in keeping with the place of origin. In one of the introduced dances that is popular at Taos — a woman's dance and therefore not gymnastic — there is first, in the center, a chorus of men. Some of these sit around a large drum 103

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