At the dancing season certain persons become possessed, or as the An-ko-me-nums say, “the you-an, or dance-spirit, is on them.” They dream dreams and see visions, and move about in a hypnotic state, unable, or at least declining, to work, and roaring out at intervals a sort of mournful sobbing, “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.” Then they go from house to house, hunting up every kind of food they can get hold of, and gorging themselves many times a day. At night these dancers, all daubed and plastered with grease and paint, would gather in the large houses, where the people were assembled, and work themselves up into a frenzy, prancing up and down and round about, performing numerous contortions. Then they would break out in song, or in monotonous recitation relate their dreams and visions and tell many weird tales. Then round and round, and up and down again, they would prance, until they dropped from sheer exhaustion, or fell, perhaps, into the fire, and another took their place. All this time the onlookers watched and listened to the chanting and the story, or screamed and pounded in frantic accompaniment to the dancing.
The heathen dance is certainly demoralizing, and, like everything of heathenism, is of the devil.
White Man’s Dance vs. Indian Dance.
Early in my stay at Nanaimo four or five of the leading chiefs came to me with the proposition that if I would allow them to go on with their potlatching and wild dancing every day in the week, they would come to church and rest on Sunday.
“No; you had better stop all your heathenism,” was my answer.
Nothing daunted, they came back again later. Now they would all be good on Sabbath and stand by me if they could dance. It was not very bad, and they had to keep up a little of what their fathers told them. And if I would not speak against it or pray against it they would all be good soon and would have all their children go to school.
“No, I cannot have anything to do with the old way, the dance, the potlatch, etc., it is all bad,” I said.
Then they whispered to each other, “Oh, he is like a post; you cannot move him.”
To give an idea of the scenes witnessed on these dancing occasions: Old Sna-kwe-multh, a man who had been taken a slave by some northern tribe, but who had found his way home, wished to demonstrate his bravery. At a great feast he came rushing in half naked and danced before the people. As his frenzy increased he slashed at his thighs with some kind of sharp instrument, and then with both hands caught up his own blood and drank it, to prove himself a brave.