Indian Buffalo Thunder Dance

by Janice Pariza

Title

Indian Buffalo Thunder Dance

Artist

Janice Pariza

Medium

Photograph - Photograph

Description

This was photographed in Cortez, Colorado on a trip to Mesa Verde in August of 2011. The most exciting event of the year's festival was the Buffalo Dance. Eight men participated, wearing buffalo skins on their backs and painting themselves black, red, and white. Dancers endeavored to imitate the buffalo on the prairie.
The Buffalo Dance, or Bison Dance, is an annual dance festival of many North American Plains Indians, including the Mandan, Sioux, Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Omaha, among others. The festival traditionally coincided with the return of the buffalo herds, and included a feast and a dance with a number of men wearing buffalo and other animal skins.
As the buffalo, or bison, was so central to society, it was important to assure the return of the herd and an abundance of food and resources.
A short, 16-second, black-and-white, silent film 1894 film, Buffalo Dance shows people performing the dance. It is notable for being one of the earliest films made featuring Native Americans.
The Buffalo Dance can also refer to section of larger ceremonies and dances, such as the Sun Dance. In some societies it was also a dance more associated with curing the ill, calling on the spirit of the buffalo.
Each dancer held a rattle in his right hand, and in his left a six-foot rod. On his head, he wore a bunch of green willow boughs. The season for the return of the buffalo coincided with the willow trees in full leaf.

Another dance required only four tribesmen, representing the four main directions of the compass from which the buffalo might come. With a canoe in the center, two dancers, dressed as grizzly bears who might attack the hunters, took their places on each side. They growled and threatened to spring upon anyone who might interfere with the ceremony.

Onlookers tried to appease the grizzlies by tossing food to them. The two dancers would pounce upon the food, carrying it away to the prairie as possible lures for the coming of the buffaloes.

During the ceremony, the old men of the tribe beat upon drums and chanted prayers for successful buffalo hunting.

By the end of the fourth day of the Buffalo Dance, a man entered the camp disguised as the evil spirit of famine. Immediately he was driven away by shouts and stone-throwing from the younger Mandans, who waited excitedly to participate in the ceremony.

When the demon of famine was successfully driven away, the entire tribe joined in the bountiful thanksgiving feast, symbolic of the early return of buffalo to the Mandan hunting-grounds.

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Uploaded

February 22nd, 2013

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