Dancing at Halftime: Sports and the Controversy over American Indian Mascots

Dancing

Dancing The passage of time, the changing of the seasons, a new status in a person’s life— birth, death, graduation from school, or return from war—any of these can be marked by appropriate dance and music in an American Indian community. Dance can be religious or social, and is often both at the same time. Dancing expresses and consolidates a sense of belonging. Charlotte Heth, an authority on Native American dance, says that “Indian dance is not particularly acrobatic. It is in fact somewhat restrained, with the dancers staying close to the earth, for practical as well as philosophical reasons. Dancers usually take small steps—because of space, the number of participants, or the need to conserve their strength in order to dance for long periods of time (sometimes all day or night).” She also points out that there are few solos, but many ensemble forms. Dancing is one activity that non-Indian people recognize as distinctly Indian. What do American Indians do when they are not attacking wagon trains with bows and arrows? They play drums and dance, usually around a fire, and they always dance before they go on the warpath. We prefer it if they do these dances gaily costumed and painted. We prefer it if they dance with wild abandon. Non-Indian Americans have been ambivalent about Indians dancing. Although spectators flocked to watch Pueblo festivals, and although Wild West shows featured Indian dancers and were popular all over the country, the government and church groups feared the deeper significance of dancing and ceremony in American Indian life. The power of dance to unite tribes and create cohesion made the government uneasy. And missionaries were frustrated by the 189 tenacity with which Indians held on to their religious beliefs. So church reformers and government agents did everything possible to suppress dancing as a ritual that had deeper meaning and to reinvent Indian dancing as a superficial entertainment that they controlled. The Civilization Act of 1819 called for the active destruction of Native religions . Missionary efforts on reservations were subsidized and supported from the 1870s onward. Church groups did not acknowledge that Indian people had a real religion, of course. But they did have dancing, whose meaning these observers failed to comprehend. Dancing frequently became the target of forced assimilation policies, something to be suppressed as quickly as possible, at any cost. In the nineteenth century, everyone knew what was about to happen whenever Indians danced—they were about to go on the warpath. Secretary of the interior Henry Teller created the Courts of Indian Offenses in 1883. These courts were presided over by American Indian judges who were under the jurisdiction of the agents on the reservations. Teller had already written to the commissioner of Indian affairs the year before to make his case: I desire to call your attention to what I regard as a great hindrance to the civilization of the Indians, viz, the continuance of the old heathenish dances, such as the sun-dance, scalp-dance, &c. These dances, or feasts, as they are sometimes called, ought, in my judgment, to be discontinued, and if the Indians now supported by the Government are not willing to discontinue them, the agents should be instructed to compel such discontinuance. These feasts or dances are not social gatherings for the amusement of these people, but, on the contrary, are intended and calculated to stimulate the warlike passions of the young warriors of the tribe. This was not mere talk. The Courts of Indian Offenses had the power to investigate all Indian religious activities and to convict and punish those who did not comply. Two years later, the Office of Indian Affairs implemented regulaDANCING 190 tions that called for Indians who participated in their traditional rituals to be imprisoned for thirty days. One agent, quoted in the commissioner’s report for 1885, reports that “Since the organization of the court dancing has been discontinued and plural marriages are unknown.” The Sun Dance of the Plains Indians, which had sustained Plains tribes through difficult times, was outlawed in the 1880s and Sun Dancers were imprisoned . The government’s fear of the religious revival called the Ghost Dance and its determination to suppress it culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. Estimates of the dead range from 150 to nearly 400 men, women, and children. Congress awarded eighteen Medals of Honor to members of...