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Show wwsMOWB] NORTHERN TJTE MUSIC 57 yet the Indians seem to expect that snow will fall either during or soon after the dance. Some informants stated that the Bear dance was formerly in the nature of a courting dance, but sociability and general good feeling appear to be its chief characteristics at the present time. The custom of the Northern Utes seems to differ little from that of the Southern Utes as described by Verner Z. Reed, 16 who witnessed the Bear dance on their reservation in Colorado in March, 1893. The Bear dance is held in a large circular space inclosed by a barrier formed of upright poles, between which the branches of trees are woven horizontally. The inclosure used for the Bear dance in 1914 was visited by the writer. ( PL 8, a.) The walls were about 9 feet in height and the inclosure about 200 feet in diameter. At the side opposite the door was an excavation in the ground about 5 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 2 feet deep. Over this, during the dance, there had been placed sheets of zinc on which the singers, seated around the sides, rested their morache. ( See pi. 1.) This hollow ( or cave) in the ground was said to be " connected with the bear," and the rasping sound produced by the morache was said to be " like the sound made by a bear." During the week which precedes a Bear dance the people rehearse the dancing. When the dance is formally opened they don all their finery and continue dancing for several days. The dancers take their places in parallel lines facing each other, the men in one line and the women in the other. They do not touch each other, neither do they progress during the dancing until the last day of the dance. If a dancer falls from exhaustion or from a misstep, the singing ceases and a medicine man or the leader of the dancers " restores the dancer." Taking a morache from one of the singers, he places the lower end of the notched stick against the body of the prostrate man and passes the rubbing stick rapidly up and down upon it. He begins this at the dancer's feet and repeats the motion upward until the man's head is reached, when he holds the notched stick toward the sky and passes the rubbing stick upward as though he were brushing something from the notched stick into the air. Sometimes two or more of these treatments are necessary before the man rises and resumes dancing. He is not required to give a present to the man who thus " restores" him. On the final day of the dance, soon after sunrise, a man and a woman chase each other around the inclosure, and if they see anyone laugh at them it is the custom for them to appear ferocious, running toward the person and pretending to scratch him. Sometimes they apply red paint around the mouth to look as though blood were dripping from the jaws, suggesting the ferocity of the bear. The u Reed, Verner Z., The Ute Bear Dance. Amer. Anthropologist, vol. 9,1896. |