The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians
Its Development and Diffusion (Classic Reprint)
Description:... Excerpt from The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians: Its Development and Diffusion Most Plains tribes had the sun dance: in fact, it was performed by all the typical tribes except the Comanche. Since the dance has not been held for years by some tribes, viz., Dakota, Gros Ventre, Sutaio, Arikara, Hidatsa, Crow, and Kiowa, the data available for a comparative study vary widely in value.
The chief sources of information outside of this volume are the accounts by G. A. Dorsey for the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Ponca; Kroeber for the Arapaho and Gros Ventre; Curtis for the Arikara; and Lowie and Curtis for the Assiniboin. There is no published informa tion for the Fort Hall Shoshoni, Bannock, Kutenai, or Sutaio.
So far as I am aware there has been no general discussion of the sun dance. Hutton Webster in his Secret Societies considers it, without giving proof, an initiation ceremony. It is the aim of the present study to reconstruct the history of the sun dance and to investigate the char acter of the factors that determined its development. By a discussion of the distribution of traits - regalia, behavior, ideas of organization, and explanatory myths - it will be shown that the ceremony among all the tribes has grown chiefly by intertribal borrowing. It will be demon strated further that the center of development has been in the central Plains among the Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Oglala, and that the original nucleus of sun dance rites probably received its first specific character at the hands of the Arapaho and Cheyenne, or of this couple and the Village tribes. The character of transmission has been such as to produce a greater uniformity throughout the area in the distribution of regalia and behavior than of the ideas, organizing and mythical, associated with them. The corollary of this is that tribal individuality has been expressed principally in pattern concepts of organization and motiva tion. Since there is no difference in the character of borrowed or in vented traits which are incorporated in the sun dance and those which are rejected, it follows that the determinants must be sought in the conditions under which incorporation proceeds. It will be Shown that the character of individual contributions to the ceremonial complex and the diversity in receptiveness and interest, explain in part the ela horation and individualization of the several sun dances.
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