Spurred West. Ian Neligh

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СКАЧАТЬ and just the men would dance … there they would sing, there was a special song to sing. Some tribes called it a calling song. When you hear this song, they’re calling you to the circle, to the center of the camp.” Once called to the circle, the tribe’s leaders would explain why they were summoned and the singing and dancing would begin, while others would get into the center of the circle and reenact what they did through dance.

      “To tell their story, they had a buffalo robe and they would paint what their history was, their brave deeds, and how many coups they counted, their game [hunted] and all of that,” Gillette says. “And the women would stand at the outer edges and wear those [robes] to support their brother, husband … but they weren’t allowed inside the arena because that was just the warrior dance.”

      She says that in time the women and the children wanted to dance too, so within her tribe they had to be led into the dancing arena by a warrior. “And prior to that, you have to have your Indian name and your eagle feather. So when a song is sung and you’re out there, they can recognize you.”

      Gillette tells me about the enduring strength of Native Americans and the role of powwows. “As the wars went away, and all of that, they put us on reservations. We are a very resilient people. Our lifestyle changed as the world around us changed, and then [powwows] became social events like when there was a wedding or if someone came of age—they would have those kinds of ceremonies.”

       Voices of the Lakota

      Gillette says it was likely in the early to mid-1950s when competition dancing started in the powwows, and it has continued to evolve ever since. Today dancers are given numbers so that judges can watch their performances and give them points.

      The powwow’s dancing is divided into a host of categories—which is then further separated into different age ranges. For men and women, the styles of dancing include the Northern Traditional, which she tells me is the oldest of the dances, and the Southern Straight. The women’s dancing styles also include the Jingle Dress and Fancy Shawl dances. For men, there are Grass Dancing and Fancy Dancing, both of which have origin stories.

      Gillette explains the origin of the Grass Dance and the deeper meaning behind the movements. “From our region the origin legend for [the Grass] Dance style is there was a young man who couldn’t run, dance, play, and ride horses like the other kids,” she says. “So the family took him to the village healer and he suggested that this young man go fast and pray that the creator would show him the way to where he could do what he wanted. So as he sat on the plains and fasted … [the prairie] grass almost looked like ocean waves. And as he saw the prairie grass moving and swaying in the summer wind, it somehow took the form of a human being.” After the young man finished fasting, he returned to his village and told the healer what he had seen. He was then told that was how he should dance.

      “The original outfit for the grass dancer had the long prairie grass tucked around the waistline and around the legs, but now they use yarn, and some use ribbon,” Gillette says to describe how the dance has moved to modern times.

      As for the most contemporary of the dance styles, the men’s Fancy Dance, Gillette says it likely had its beginnings in one of the most famous shows of the Old West.

      “From the research I’ve done and the elders I’ve talked to, that kind of [dance] comes from the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows,” Gillette reveals. “When he took the Indians touring, not only in America, but in Europe, where they thought the traditional dances and the grass dances were too sedate, they wanted something more exciting.”

      As famous and popular Buffalo Bill was then and is today, he gets mixed reactions from historians about the role he played in introducing Native Americans to the rest of the country and world. But Gillette believes his reputation is a positive one.

      “He treated them with respect. He saw they were well taken care of and that they weren’t looked at as an oddity,” she says.

      She recounts a Buffalo Bill–related experience she and some other members of the March Powwow had years ago, when they and others traveled to Manchester, England. Her group was waiting in the Salford Quays area waiting for their guide when one of their dancers, who was also a spiritual leader, said he could hear voices in Lakota. He asked if he could sing to them and Gillette said he could, and soon an appreciative crowd formed to listen.

      “ When we were doing that our guide arrived, and he was just astounded to see [the dancer] doing that,” she says, adding the guide, who was normally talkative, had grown quiet for a time afterwards. He later thanked the dancer and told him about the history of the area where he had been singing.

      “Apparently on that very spot where we were was where Buffalo Bill had an encampment, and there were all kinds of teepees and Natives there,” Gillette says. In fact it was the exact site where in 1897 nearly one hundred Native Americans lived in their teepees while traveling with Cody’s show. During their five-month stay in Salford, there was one recorded death of a Lakota warrior who died from a lung infection. To this day it’s unknown where he was ultimately buried. For the Native Americans traveling with Cody, it was an opportunity to get away from an increasingly restrictive American government and a chance to continue to practice their traditions without hindrance. In some cases those who participated in the Battle of Little Big Horn, which resulted in the death of General George Armstrong Custer, were able to avoid the government while traveling with Cody’s show. The significance of the location wasn’t lost on Gillette and the others as they learned about the site.

      “I thought that was pretty darn cool,” she says. “It gave me the chills.”

       Committed to the Future

      Over time a career in office management pulled her focus away from the March Powwow and in another direction, and Gillette found herself less involved with the event and its organization. Then one day while looking at a story on the cover of a Denver newspaper, she read that someone on the powwow’s committee was misrepresenting the importance of the drums and songs used during the dance, calling them essentially meaningless.

      “He said, ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Just a bunch of chanting, it doesn’t mean anything.’ And I thought, what the heck? So that really got my attention. This was not right,” Gillette says. She adds that there is a great deal of meaning in the chanting and songs, which are sometimes very old. She tells me the songs are sometimes so old that it is impossible to know when it was first created.

      “Our history is oral, so I don’t think anybody can say that song was made in 1955 by so-and-so,” she says. “There are just some songs that have been around forever, and I don’t think any one person can be given a right of ownership.”

      Gillette says the person who spoke with the newspaper had “no knowledge” about the significance of the songs and drums. In fact, these were essential to the powwows.

      “Each society had different positions and within those societies there was always a drum keeper—and the drums are treated like a human being,” she says. “They are fed, they are given water, they are prayed with, they have a special place in the home of the drum keeper. It used to be not just anyone could go sit at the drum and sing. They had to be part of that drum keeper’s family, and they only sang certain songs at [specific] times of the year or for certain occasions.”

      She adds that at the intertribal powwow a lot of the drum groups still respect those ways. People don’t just sit down at a drum and start singing because it’s not respectful.

      “The answer this person gave who was a coordinator of the event … to say that they had ‘no meaning, it was just a bunch of chanting’—to me, it just rubbed СКАЧАТЬ