Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs

								

with the songs that invariably accompany the dance. Indian dances are
complex rather than simple. Their "spontaneous activity" is not the result
of "a dominating emotion" but of a desire to present dramatically certain
mental pictures. This is particularly true of dances which form a part of
religious ceremonials. As a consequence, none of these dances are
improvised. All follow forms that have been handed down through generations
and have become more or less conventionalized.
When the dance portrays a personal experience the dancer is allowed a
freedom of invention not elsewhere permitted. Even in this case the dancer
is obliged to follow certain conventional forms, as in the sign language;
otherwise his story would not be understood.
On the eastern continent the peoples from whom we are descended had songs
and dances peculiar to their different vocations, so on this western
continent the song and dance were the accompaniment of the Native
industries.
A study of the Indian dramatic dances shows that by means of them the
vocations of men and women were lifted out of drudgery, made types of
activity and allied to the forces recognized in the religious beliefs of
the people. The dances here given, those relative to the Corn and also the
H�de-wache, not only illustrate what has been said above but they reflect
back a light upon the religious dances that obtained among the eastern
nations of antiquity.
When the Indian dances, he dances with freedom; his whole body becomes
expressive of the actuating emotion of the scene he intends to portray.
Because of his freedom, his remarkable sense of rhythm and the strong
mental picture he aims to present, whether it be the flight of the eagle,
the sportive pleasure of birds, the movements of animals, the alertness of
the warrior in attack, or in eluding a blow, his motions are always sharply
vivid and natural.
It is a pleasure to be able to offer in the following pages a number of
Indian songs with their original accompaniment of action, as the two
complement each other for the expression of certain native thoughts and
aspirations.
Whoever takes part in the dances here presented should never attempt to
imitate what is supposed to be the Indian's manner of singing or his
dancing steps and postures; in either case the result would probably be an
unmeaning burlesque. Each dancer should have a clear mental picture of the
scene to be enacted and then give free play to bodily movements for its
expression, always keeping in rhythm with the song, so as to make sound and
motion a rhythmic unit.

THE LIFE OF THE CORN
A DRAMA IN FIVE DANCES

INTRODUCTION.--These Dances in their purport and music are taken from the
sacred rituals of the Omaha, the Osage and the Pawnee tribes. The richness
and beauty of symbolism in the original language suffer a loss of native
na�vet� in their English interpretation.
The American food plant known by the general term "Corn" was developed ages