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7 The Powwow: From the South to the Subarctic When I pointed out to a northern friend how different powwow songs are from the old hunting songs, he replied that the Cree have been trading with Plains people since time immemorial, and that powwow may not be an entirely new sound in Canada’s north. There is good evidence of a longterm Cree exposure to southern Native music. For example, neighbouring Algonquian speakers, the Ojibwe, received a large bass drum along with the Southern Dream Dance in Berens River, Manitoba, in the late 1800s.1 Not only did the Cree trade with southerners, but also they travelled south to trade. Hudson’s Bay Company records tell of a group of Cree hunters who left York Factory, Manitoba, on 23 August 1765 and journeyed south to the Riding Mountains (a direct distance of approximately 650 miles), hunting and trapping as they travelled. On 5 May 1766, they set out for the north again (Beaumont 1990, 14). Trips of this sort undoubtedly continued well into the next century, as long as European demand for furs made them worthwhile. So it is likely that some northern Cree heard Plains music, but so far there is no evidence to show they adopted any of it before the late twentieth century. In fact, Plains powwow music in its present form would not have been heard in the eighteenth century, for it did not take its contemporary form until a century later; the modern powwow may have begun in Oklahoma during the armistice celebrations of 1918–19. William Powers states that the word pauau, of Algonquian origin, originally referred to a curing ceremony which might be attended by a great number of people (1971, 175). A brief history of powwow will show us how the powwow came to be, and finally, how it travelled to the north. The origin of the powwow is in the grass or Omaha dance of the early 1800s. After the Omaha migrated west, their society was seriously weakened by disease and Sioux attacks.2 One of their men’s societies was joined with the Pawnee Iruska to form the Hethushka Society, later named the grass or Omaha dance. “The Omaha Dance was intended to stimulate an heroic 113 spirit among the people and to keep alive the memory of historic and valorous acts” (Fletcher and La Flesche 1911, 459). In turn, the Omaha dance was taken up by the Yankton and then the Teton Sioux. The Dakota contributed their songs and not only elaborated upon the form but spread it across the northern plains. By the 1870s, the grass dance had reached many Plains peoples such as the Blackfeet, the Gros Ventre, the Hidatsa, the Crow, and the Piegan. In the 1880s, the Sarcee and the Bloods received the Grass Dance. It was observed among the northern Blackfoot in 1907, with the attendance of Sarcee and Cree visitors (Wissler 1913, 455). As the grass dance diffused, its sound changed. Orin T. Hatton writes that “the Teton contributed a strident quality to the vocal production and heavier pulsations on sustained tones.… From 1890 to the 1920s the Sioux dominated the Grass Dance. A northern style developed which was slower, introduced triplet rhythms in the vocal pulsations and a smooth falsetto vocal production for the introductory song phrases” (1986, 202). Hence the Sioux were instrumental in the spread and the sound of grass dance music. Not only did the Sioux trade songs into Canada, but they also brought them after fleeing the violence in Minnesota in 1862. As refugees in Canada, the Dakota and other groups were impoverished, yet by exploiting all available resources they managed to survive, and historical sources show that they continued to dance. Fort Ellice journals indicate that when food was plentiful in the spring of 1872, they celebrated with a dance (Elias 1988, 226). In a letter written in 1907, Reverend John Thunder, a Presbyterian missionary at Oak Lake, objected to their dances and particularly the giveaways associated with them, which the non-Native population viewed as profligate (117). In 1884 or the following year, an agent complained that the Dakota spent much of the winter dancing and holding giveaways, giving much of their crop from a successful year to the neighbouring Cree (151). Indian dancing was threatened in the south of Canada following the Indian Act of 1876. This act enabled the Canadian government to pass laws in the 1880s to suppress the Sun Dance with its...

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