Now I never agreed with the ecclesiastical gentleman who thought that the Hopi mesa system was wholly one of beauty and idealism. But the writing man did force on me a realization of the utility and sanity to be found in the life that the Hopi had unconsciously adopted. Begun as a defense against enemies, the result in peace times was for good, if accompanied by sanitation and the protection of the younger generation. And I accepted a new view of the Indian ceremony and dance. [[208]]
Until we furnish something as good in place of the Indian social dance, why rave about it? We might easily have a large number of low-spirited, sullen, and even dangerous Indians on our hands if it were not for these joyous occasions. So long as the dances are clean, can any one quarrel with a Ya-be-chai of the Navajo, a Corn Dance of the Hopi, or one of the Pueblo spectacles, half pagan, half Catholic? I have seen scores of such dances, not as a tourist, but as the man on the ground in charge, and I have not been able to figure out that they are one bit worse than a country picnic among our own bucolic population of Texas or South Dakota, for instance. I have seen a South Dakota Rotary Club cut as many fool antics as a Southwest Indian clan.
I recall an illustration from my very short stay among the Sioux in 1922. It was the Fourth of July, and I had permitted the old Indians to hold their dance on the hills. It had long been the custom to stop their merrymaking at sunset, and a very good ruling too. But this Fourth was unusually quiet, the booze-runners not having appeared as per schedule. The Indians petitioned me to permit just a little dancing after nightfall. It had been very quiet, and my special police force was large enough, and seemed loyal enough, to assure good order.
“All right,” I said. “But please remember that I shall have a squad of police there, and I shall be there myself; so don’t start any shines.”
They had a very creditable evening party, and the peace was not broken. Later I visited the Agency amusement hall where a number of whites, visitors from the countryside and more than one mixed-blood couple of education, were enjoying themselves to the latest jazz. Now I am no authority on dancing and, having lived among Indians, [[209]]I am not easily shocked; but the postures and attitudes of those South Dakota whites were—well, a trifle extreme, to say the least of it.
“We have looked at them both,” said an old Sioux to me, anxiously. “Au-tay-ah-pe (Father), there may be something wrong with the Indian’s drum dance, but—I do not like the white man’s fiddle dance.”
I told him very frankly which I thought the worse. There is no use in trying to bluff an old Indian. He can see through a hypocrite quicker than any man I know.
This is not a sentimentalist defence of the old Indian dance. I have bitterly excoriated the “secret” dances of the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico, but could never get sufficient backing from the Department to end them. Such indecencies may be found among all primitive peoples, and those of the Pueblos who indulge in them are most primitive—the barbarians of San Felipe, Santo Domingo, and other decadent backward pueblos. But I have tried to envision the social side of an alien people who have no other form of diversion than the spectacle of the dance. Were the Government to put them on a moving-picture circuit—but we were discussing the decencies.
And, to repeat: When we have established among them an amusement as appealing, simple, and inoffensive, it will be time for the condemnation of those features that are innocuous and foreign. And it will be long before I shall forget the comparison, by an Indian, between the dance of the Sioux with drums and sleighbells, a noisy soul-stirring hullabaloo, and—the seductive, suggestive “white man’s fiddle dance.” [[210]]