To seek to penetrate the origin of these dances is to
find ourselves in the darkness of antiquity.
Almost all Indian peoples have
the firmly fixed notion that the gods can be propitiated only by these
exhausting dances. Consequently they are not performed by a few
professional dancers, or even by certain families; all the people must
dance. The smallest child, as soon as he is able to understand, must take
his place with the elders, and the women and girls enter into the dances
with the same religious fervor and zeal that is displayed by the men. And
there is none of that sex enjoyment injected into their sacred dances, as
there is in the white man's pleasure dances. The Indian men dance together,
and the Indian women together, or, where both sexes participate, men are in
one row and women in another. So that Indian dances are not pleasure
dances. Neither are they competitive. There is none of the negro cake-walk
idea connected with them, nor the Italian peasant's carnival, where rivals
dance to gain the applause of the village.
Gifts Thrown to Spectators. During these dances at Tuba, gifts of corn,
squash, melons, flour, cloth of native texture, and loaves of unleavened
bread were brought and given with accompanying prayers to Mootchka, the
leader. Then, at certain times, these were thrown among the spectators and
eagerly caught, for not only were the articles themselves to be desired,
but there accompanied them the prayers of the original donors, which, in
some subtle manner, were supposed to bring good fortune to the final
recipients.
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