Native American Sun Dance

Native American Sun Dance

Before the settlements of Europeans, Native Americans occupied many parts of the land in North America. However, there are many different groups of Native Americans, which shared similar rituals. For the Plains Nations, Tribes of Native Americans who live on the plains and rolling hills of the Great Plains of North America, a religious ceremony called Sun Dance is one of the particular rituals that most of Plains Tribes would practice. These tribes varied greatly in how they performed, and different groups had different purposes for the Sun Dance. Many groups also had different names for the same ritual. "Evidence suggests that the Sun Dance was invented by Plains Algonquians, perhaps the Cheyenne, as early as 1700." (Jorgensen, 1972, p.17) "The Sun Dance ranks as the most conspicuous rituals of about twenty Plains tribes." (Lowie, 1954, p.197) In the following paragraphs, I will illustrate the importance of rituals and explained why rituals are needed for human beings around the world.

Ritual is a performance for specific occasions by an individual, a group, or the entire community. It is important to every human being in the world because these practices are traditions of a community or a religious group that is passed down from generation to generation. All communities and religious groups have their own unique rituals for worship. I believed that the acts of rituals are an important bond among people of a group because it is another way to express emotions without using verbal communication to communicate with one another. There are many ways to perform a ritual. Singing and dancing are the most common rituals among the Plains Tribes.

Other than communication, rituals are also used for psychological comfort. For instance, Native Americans of the Plains Tribe practice the Sun Dance Ritual in hopes to communicate with the gods for a better future. These groups of people believe that the rituals can bring

them benefits such as peace, understanding, and prosperity. However, in reality it is just an act that does nothing but only help them cope with their feelings about the uncertainties of the future.

Ritual is one of the particular important elements throughout history that leads archaeologists to the understandings of a civilization. "There is a widespread archaeological understanding that ritual is a form of human action that leaves material traces, whereas religion is a more abstract symbolic system consisting of beliefs, myths, and doctrines." (Fogelin, 2007, p. 55) Therefore, material traces of the Sun Dance ritual documented important cultures throughout history for people to studied and learned from such practice.

"All traditional cultures are drawn together by ritual or liturgical calendars that link the human, the natural, the celestial, and the divine realms. (Versluis, 1994, p.43)" Rituals are also important because it shares the traditions of a community for later generations. For instance, the ritual for the Sun Dance requires singing and dancing. Therefore, by teaching later generations the ways of the rituals, helped shared the traditions of this community. Every civilization possesses this trait of wanting to share the traditions for the later generations through rituals.

Native Americans utilized unique ways to express their beliefs though different rituals. One of the examples is the Sun Dance ritual. The name of Sun Dance, also "the sun gazes at the dance," is given by the Sioux; however, it also goes by several different names, Cree called it "dance without drinking", Cheyenne named it as the "ceremony of the life renewal." (Barrett, C. & Markowitz, H. 2004)

"The dance was usually vowed by some individual who planned to avenge a death, lead a successful hunt, or insure a bountiful supply of buffaloed. Because dances were usually performed only after vows were made, the ceremonies were not necessarily annual affairs" (Jorgensen, 1972, p.18)

"Though in many tribes the performance was annual, it hinged on some distressed tribesman's vowing to have it held if he were relieved of his worries." (Lowie, 1954, p.199)

"Evidence suggests that the Sun Dance was invented by Plains Algonquians, perhaps the Cheyenne, as early as 1700. After 1750 this ceremony diffused rapidly throughout the Plains by channels created by the nomadic plainsmen." (Jorgensen, 1972, p.17) For Instance,

At times alliances were made between tribes, and they banded together to hunt and raid. Intertribal marriages and joint participation at ceremonial were common products of these alliances. Sometimes members of otherwise hostile tribes fraternized while trading with members of the so-called village tribes of the Missouri River, such as the Mandan and Hidatsa. At still other times, especially following raids when captive were taken;