Wauwatosa news. [volume] (Wauwatosa, Wis.) 1900-1948, 1915-05-21
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HE numerous dances of the
Pueblo Indians are never en-
- tirely free from religious
IESaS&I idea. Some are so deeply re-
ligious that they are jealous
ly guarded from all profane eyes and
are held at night in underground
lodges. The war captains men keep
watch at every road so that no out
slider can glimpse the masked dancers
lmpersonating gods. Even in the un-
derground lodges the faces of the un-
initiated children are covered while
the dance is in progress so that they
may hear but not see. This secretive-
ness is most developed in the viii
lagos along the Rio Grande, in New
Mexico, where the native religion has
encountered the opposition of the
Catholic church for nearly four hun
dred 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 welcomed to a more
or less innocuous entertainment.
The characteristic dances of the
Pueblo Indians are strikingly differ
ent from those wild gyrations that
we associate with the nomadic and
warlike Plains Indians. There are, to
be sure, 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 tribes name, such as the Cheyenne
dance, the Pawnee dance, the Navajo
dance. These foreign dances are
mostly concerned with war and are
not regarded as having any important
religious character. Yet it is signih-
cant that title to use them was OBJ
tanned by purchase or trade before the
dances were included in the village
repertory. OF course the foreign
songs had to be learned by rote and a
special set of costumes made in keep
ing with the place of origin.
In one of the introduced dances that
is popular 1t Taos-a womans dance
and therefore not gymnastic-there is
.-rst, in the center a chorus of men.
Some of these sit around large drum
which they beat in unison. while 9th
ers kneel and mark time by scraping
notched sticks that rest on a log for a
sounding board. Around them in a
circle, or half-circle. are dancing girls.
These are not in their everyday
Pueblo attire of woven blanket dress
with colored belt and whitened deer
skin boots but in the fringed deerskin
dress of their plains-bred sisters, with
moccasins and leggings. Scarcely
lifting their feet from the ground. as
they keep time to the song and the
throbbing rhythm of the drum and
the notched stick instruments. the
girls move slowly round the circle u.s.
Ing their two hands in a graceful
warding-off motion. Outside the circle
OF girls is a larger circle of men in
blankets, each resting his right arm
across the shoulder of the man in front
and all moving in a direction opposite
to that taken by the girl dancers.
These men represent Pueblo Indian
visitors at the camp of the Plains
lhulans. Inc girl dancers and the in
ner chorus of men are the hosts who
provide the entertainment.
While the steps in many Indian
dances are simple in the extreme.
there is a delicate pulsing rhythm
that affects the whole body and makes
the dance almost impossible of imita-
ton for one of another race. Dances
in which both men and women ap-
pear are perhaps more common