For many, if not most, of the Northern Plains tribes, the Sun Dance was the central ceremony and often served as a unifying force to bring together the various hunting bands. Usually held when the tribe came together for the annual summer buffalo hunt, it involved dancing around a pole set inside a specially built dance arbor. While the actual ceremony and the frequency with which it was traditionally conducted varied among the tribes, there are several basic themes that are associated with the Sun Dance: (1) seasonal renewal, growth, and replenishment, and (2) the acquisition of spiritual power. In spite of attempts by Christian missionaries and the United States government to suppress the Sun Dance, it has continued. For many Indian people today, participation in the Sun Dance is an affirmation of their Indian cultural identity.
In general, the Sun Dance lodge is a circular open frame structure with a center pole. The actual structure varies from tribe to tribe, with ridge poles from the frame to the center pole in some tribes while in other tribes these features are lacking. In many ceremonies, there are sacrifices—most often strips of cloth today—hanging from the center pole. The structure is erected and used only once. With regard to the Sun Dance lodge, religion professor Joseph Epes Brown,in his book The Spiritual Legacy of the American Indian, writes:
“The large, circular open frame lodge is ritually constructed in imitation of the world’s creation, with the sacred cottonwood tree at the center as the axis linking sky and earth.”
Shown above is an old photo of a Peigan Blackfoot Sun Dance lodge on display in Fort MacLeodd, Alberta.
There are many theories about the origins of the Sun Dance and its diffusion among the tribes of the Northern Plains. There is some evidence that it may have originated with the sedentary Missouri River tribes. Among the nomadic Plains tribes, there is some evidence that the ceremony is oldest among the Cheyenne, Blackfoot, and Gros Ventre (Atsina). According to Anthropologist D. B. Shimkin, in his book The Wind River Shoshone Sun Dance:
“The Sun Dance appears to have originated among the Algonquian Plains tribes, most probably the Arapaho and Cheyenne, possibly no earlier than the first half of the eighteenth century.”
In her book North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account, Alice Beck Kehoe writes:
“The basic form of the Sun Dance was remarkably similar throughout the Plains among the nomads, which suggests that it may have been a recent introduction, perhaps in the late eighteenth century. Its popularity must have been due in part to its capacity to include any number of participants, and in part to the wonderful aptness of the lodge as a symbol: transient, open to the sky, walled with leaves, it perfectly expresses the circle of the universe within which humans reside, while the center pole, axis mundi, draws our attention towards the Almighty Power that gives us being.”
Shown above is another old photo from Fort MacLeod.
In her chapter on the Sun Dance in the Handbook of North American Indians, JoAllyn Archambault writes:
“The Sun Dance was a complex, beautiful, and powerful ceremony that during the nineteenth century was the highlight of the annual summer encampment of almost all the Plains buffalo hunters.”
According to Gloria Young, in her chapter on intertribal religious movements in the Handbook of North American Indians:
“For most tribes the Sun Dance was an earth-renewal ceremony and a prayer for fertility; however, the ideology of the ceremony varied widely from tribe to tribe.”
Anthropologist Robert Lowie, in his book Indians of the Plains, writes that the Sun Dance
“does not revolve about the worship of a particular deity, the popular English name for it being a misnomer.”
The English designation Sun Dance and the popular misconception that it somehow involves worshipping the sun comes from an 1849 book by Mary Eastman about the Santee Sioux ceremony. According to JoAllyn Archambault:
“Her book contributed to the popularization of the term Sun Dance, which eventually became the standard English designation for the ceremony, used both by non-Indians and by Indians when speaking in English.”
According to former Commissioner of Indian Affairs John Collier, in his book Indians of the Americas, the Sun Dance “was the integrative and structuring institution of the Plains tribes.” Sun Dancer Leonard Peltier, in his book Prison Writings: My Life is a Sun Dance, says:
“Sun Dance is our religion, our strength. We take great pride in that strength, which enables us to resist pain, torture, any trial rather than betray the People.”
Anthropologist Ruth Underhill, in her book Red Man’s Religion: Beliefs and Practices of the Indians North of Mexico, writes:
“The Sun Dance, in its complete form, was a new ceremony for the Indians, although it was composed of ancient elements.”
She feels that the Sun Dance developed in the Plains with the coming of the horse and the migration of people into the area.
The Sun Dance is widespread among the Plains tribes and it takes on many different forms. The Sun Dance is often an intertribal ceremony with borrowing of ceremonial elements among the different tribes. According to D. B. Shimkin:
“the Sun Dance is at present, and appears to have been in the past, a vehicle of intertribal participation.”
Among some tribes, the ceremony includes piercing, while among others it does not. Among some tribes, the Sun Dance leader is also the keeper of a Sun Dance doll which is the central source of supernatural power for the dance, while other tribes do not have a Sun Dance doll. Some of the ceremonial elements which are included by some, but not all, tribes were: sand painting; face and body painting; lodge-pole painting; and adoption and wife exchange among members of the warrior societies.
Among some of the tribes, such as the Blackfoot, Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho, both dancers and spectators make flesh sacrifices by cutting small pieces of flesh from their arms.
Among the Cheyenne and the Arapaho, the dancers wear elaborate body paint.
Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century were shocked and offended by the Sun Dance. Consequently, it was outlawed by both the United States and Canada. The Sun Dance, however, continued away from the missionaries and government agents. Today, the Sun Dance is a common tribal ceremony and its participants include many non-Indians.
Indians 101
Twice each week Indians 101 explores different American Indian topics. More about American Indian ceremonies from this series:
Indians 101: Some Pawnee Ceremonies
Indians 101: The Southern Plains Vision Quest
Indians 101: The Northern California Jumping Dance
Indians 101: Some Apache Ceremonies
Indians 101: Spirituality and Jimsonweed among California Indians
Indians 101: Some Cayuga Ceremonies
Indians 201: Wobziwob's Ghost Dance
Indians 101: Some "Amazing" Ceremonies
