spirittalknews.com

Celebrating Indian Culture & History

Spirit Talk News

Volume 13, Number 5

September-October-November 2007

          The Sun Dance is the central ceremony for most of the Northern Plains tribes. Traditionally, in the years prior to reservation life,  the Sun Dance often served as a unifying force to bring together the various hunting bands. Usually held when the tribe came together for the annual summer buffalo hunt, it involved dancing around a pole set inside a specially built dance arbor. While the actual ceremony and the frequency with which it was traditionally conducted varied among the tribes, there are several basic themes that are associated with the Sun Dance: (1) seasonal renewal, growth, and replenishment, and (2) the acquisition of spiritual power.

          For many Indian people today, participation in the Sun Dance is an affirmation of their Indian cultural identity. For this reason, the Sun Dance today can be found throughout the United States and Canada, not just in the Northern Plains.

          The term “Sun Dance,” while widely used today, is actually a misnomer. Non-Indians who saw the ceremony, not understanding either the language or the symbolic imagery, thought that the Indians were worshiping the Sun God with this ceremony. Hence the name Sun Dance. The popular misconception that this ceremony somehow involves worshipping the sun comes from an 1849 book by Mary Eastman about the Santee Sioux ceremony. This book contributed to the popularization of the term Sun Dance. Over time, the term has become the standard English designation for the ceremony, used both by non-Indians and by Indians when speaking in English.

          There are many theories about the origins of the Sun Dance and its diffusion among the tribes of the Northern Plains. There is some evidence that it may have originated with the sedentary Missouri River tribes (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara). Among the buffalo-hunting Plains tribes, it appears that the ceremony is oldest among the Algonquian-speaking groups, such as the Cheyenne, Arapaho, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventre (Atsina). Evidence from oral history, winter counts, and archaeology suggest that the ceremony spread among the Plains tribes during the first half of the eighteenth century. Its spread was enhanced by the adoption of the horse and the migration of many different groups from the Great Lakes area out into the Great Plains. While the present form of the Sun Dance may date from the eighteenth century, many of the elements utilized in the Sun Dance, however, are probably very ancient.

          The Sun Dance has borrowed elements from many different tribes. This has resulted in some similarity in the ceremony among culturally diverse groups. Some of the different ceremonial elements may include:

• Piercing: placing skewers of wood, bone, or antler in the chest or other parts of the body
• Flesh offerings: small pieces of flesh are cut from the arms and offered as sacrifices.
• Sand painting
• Face and body painting: in some instances there are different designs for each day of the ceremony
• Lodge-pole painting
• Adoption ceremonies
• Wife exchange among members of the warrior societies
• Sun Dance Doll: for some groups the Sun Dance Doll is the center source of spiritual power for the ceremony

All of the elements listed above are found in some tribes. Not all of the tribes, for example, will have piercing. Among some tribes, both the dancers and the spectators may do flesh offerings. While some may create a sand painting as a part of the ceremony, others do not. Among the Cheyenne and Arapaho body painting is an important part of the ceremony, while this is absent among many of the other tribes.

          Among the Crow, the Sun Dance was not traditionally an annual ceremony (though it is today), nor was it a demonstration of piety. It could be used, for example, as a way of calling for spiritual assistance in seeking revenge. During the Sun Dance, the entire tribe would unite to focus their medicine powers to gain victory over the enemy. Thus the ceremony was conducted as needed and it was not uncommon for three or four years to pass between ceremonies.

The traditional Crow Sun Dance involved five stages:

• A man in mourning for a loved one slain by an enemy would make a vow to start the Sun Dance cycle
• There would be a public announcement of the vow and the consecration of the tribal venture through four buffalo hunts. The buffalo tongues from these hunts would be distributed to twenty warriors. The warriors who distributed the buffalo tongues would dramatize their entry into the camp as if they were a returning war party. They would call out the names of the distinguished pipe holders and other warriors whose wives would cook the tongues.
• A Sun Dance bundle owner would be selected to supervise the ceremony
• The Sun Dance lodge would be constructed and consecrated
• The dance for power would be held in the Sun Dance lodge

          The traditional Crow Sun Dance required that a woman who was deemed “virtuous” serve as the tree notcher. To find a woman willing to serve in this role, a cooked buffalo tongue with a long stick run through it would be carried from tipi to tipi until a woman accepted the offer.

• The Crow Sun Dance pole (cottonwood) would be symbolically struck by the virtuous woman and then it would be cut down by berdaches (men who had adopted women’s roles in Crow society). In addition to the Sun Dance pole, a small pine tree was also erected in the dance arbor. A Sun Dance doll fastened to a willow hoop would be tied to the top of the pine tree facing east and seven eagle feathers hung from the hoop.
• The traditional Crow Sun Dance had a great deal of ceremonial variation.  Crow attitudes toward religious ceremony did not require that every performance of the Sun Dance should be just alike. Although they were sensitive to ceremony, the Crows were not strict ritualists, and historically speaking, no ceremony was without variations.
• While the pledge for the traditional Crow Sun Dance stemmed from the death of a loved one at the hands of an enemy and sought power for vengeance, today’s Crow Sun Dance, which was reintroduced to them from the Shoshone, is focused on curing sickness, preventing sickness and early death, preventing accidents, and obtaining good luck and wealth for the pledgers and their families.

Following Crow convention in which a couple may join the Tobacco Society together, in the Sun Dance a man and wife may dance as a team in order to change their luck or to forestall disaster. However, the women do not take part in the ceremonial sunrise greeting.

         Among the Arikara, the Sun Dance was traditionally a minor ceremony which was associated with war. Among the Hidatsa the ceremony is called the Hidebeating Ceremony and is directed to the “people above” and particularly to the Moon.  Among the Plains Cree, the Sun Dance is called the Thirsting Dance (nipakwe cimuwin) because the participants do not drink during the ceremony.

          Among the Lakota during the nineteenth century, the Sun Dance was essentially a warrior ceremony. In the ceremony the participants would pray for the power to achieve success in battle and to capture horses or they would fulfill the vows which they made in thanksgiving for such success. With regard to the origin of the Lakota Sun Dance, the ceremony was adapted from the medicine-lodge ceremony of the Cheyenne. Most of the activities and artifacts connected with the ceremony were borrowed from the Cheyenne and then subjected to the individualism of the Lakotas.  Today, the Sun Dance is one of the defining symbols of Sioux culture.

          Gros Ventre Chief Running Fisher said of the Sun Dance in 1913: “The sun dance is a custom among the Indians which seeks to elevate a spirit of honour among men as well as women.” Among the Gros Ventre men did not traditionally take part in the ceremony until they had received recognition as a warrior. According to Running Fisher: “The men emulate the deeds of their fathers in order that they may take part in the sun dance. And thus this wonderful dance becomes a school for patriotism among the tribes and a stimulus to deeds of valour as well as an incentive to virtue.” 

          Among the Blackfoot, a woman must make a vow for the Sun Dance to take place. Traditionally, a woman would make this vow during a time of personal crises or illness. For the men, the Sun Dance is a time to show their bravery. Traditionally, this was a time when the older warriors would recount their coups.

          The traditional Assiniboine Sun Dance—Medicine Lodge Dance—lasted two nights and one and a half days. The dancers fasted—no food and no water—during the entire ceremony. In the traditional ceremony, the men would pierce their breasts. If the fasting and piercing were done correctly, then the dancer would receive a favorable vision while in a trance.

           In the traditional dance, the Assiniboine would make prayers and offerings to Thunder Bird, the one who controls the rain. At the end of the Medicine Lodge Dance a dark cloud would usually came up in the west late that evening. This would be followed by rain accompanied by much thunder and lightening. This signifies that the Thunder Bird and his helpers are coming for the offerings.