Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo15amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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INDIAN DANCES OF THE SOUTHWEST 107 which they beat in unison, while others kneel and mark time by scraping notched sticks that rest on a log for a sounding board. Around them in a circle, or half- circle, are dancing girls. These are not in their everyday Pueblo attire of woven blanket dress with colored belt and whitened deerskin boots but in the fringed deerskin dress of their Plains- larger circle of men in blankets, each resting his right arm across the shoulder of the man in front and all moving in a direction opposite to that taken by the girl dancers. These men represent Pueblo Indian visitors at the camp of the Plains Indians. The girl dancers and the inner chorus of men are the hosts who provide the entertainment. ^Ye see
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I'fwtu by H. J. Spinden The costumes of the Tablet Dance at San Ildefonso ai-e simple but pleasing. The men wear dance aprons embroidered with designs representing clouds and rain. From the back of the belt hangs a fox skin. Sprigs of aspen are stuck in the arm bands. The women wear the old-fashioned Pueblo dress and are barefooted bred sisters, with moccasins and leggings. Scarcely lifting their feet from the ground, as they keep time to the song and the throbbing rhythm of the drum and the notched stick instruments, the girls move slowly round the circle using their two hands in a graceful warding-off motion. Outside the circle of girls is a in this the dramatic instinct which in many Pueblo ceremonies is developed to a high degree. The famous Snake Dance of the Hopi is a partial dramatization of an important myth. ^Yhile the steps in n'lany Indian dances are simple in the extreme, there is a delicate pulsing rhythm that affects the

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