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Sonja Boekhorst
Alle rights reserved.®© 2001
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Sonja Boekhorst
The Buffalo Dance
Eight men participated, wearing buffalo skins
on their backs and painting themselves black, red, and white.
Dancers endeavored to imitate the buffalo
on the prairie.
Each dancer held a rattle in his right hand, and in his left a six-foot rod.
On his head, he wore a bunch of green willow boughs.
The season for the return of the buffalo coincided with the
willow trees in full leaf.
Another dance required only four tribesmen, representing the four main
directions of the compass from which the buffalo might come.
With a canoe in the center, two dancers, dressed as grizzly bears
who might attack the hunters, took their places on each side.
They growled and threatened to
spring upon anyone who might interfere with the ceremony.
Onlookers tried to appease the grizzlies by tossing food to them. The two
dancers would pounce upon the food, carrying it away to the prairie as
possible lures for the coming of the buffaloes.
During the ceremony, the old men of the tribe beat upon drums and
chanted prayers for successful buffalo hunting.
By the end of the fourth day of the Buffalo Dance,
the entire tribe
joined in the bountiful thanksgiving feast,
symbolic of the early return of
buffalo.
