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<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>Heres' the description of a
"Squaw Dance" as promised. This particular event happened at Forty Mile on
the Yukon River, around 1890 I think, though he doesn't say. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>" 'Squaw dances' were one of the most
bizarre social customs practised in the Yukon. One newcomer to Forty Mile
witnessed one the the first day he arrived. </FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2> <EM>" We were attracted
by ... a row of miners, who were lined up in front of the saloon engaged in
watching the door of a large log cabin opposite, rather dilapidated, with the
windows broken in. On being questioned, they said there was going to be a
dance, but when or how they did not seem to know: all seemed to take only a
langiud looker-on interest, speaking of the affair lightly and flippantly.
Presently more men, however, joined the group and eyed the cabin
expectantly. In spite of their dispclaimers they evidently expected to
take part, but where were the fair partners for the mazy
waltz?</EM></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><EM><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2></FONT></EM> </DIV>
<DIV><EM><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>The vening wore on until ten o'clock
when in the dusk a stolid Indian woman, with a baby in the blaket on her back,
came cautiously around the corner, and ... made for the cabin door, looking
neither to the right nor left. She had no fan, nor yet an opera cloak; she
was not even decollete; she wore large moccasins on her feet ... and she had a
bright coloured handkerchief on her head. She was followed by a dozen
others, one far behind the other, each silent and unconcerned and each with a
baby upon her back. They sidled into the log cabin and sat down on the
benches, where they alson deposited their babies in a row: the little red
people lay there very still, with wide eyes shut or staring, but never crying...
The mothers sat awhile looking at the ground in some one spot and then slowly
lifted their heads to look at the minors who had slouched into the cabin after
them - men fresh from the diggings, spoiling for excitement of any kind.
Then a man with a dilapidated fiddle struck up a swinging sawy melody, and in
the intoxication of the moment some of the most reckless of the miners grabbed
an Indian woman and began furiously swinging her around in a sort of
waltz, while the others crowded around and looked on.</FONT></EM></DIV>
<DIV><EM><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2></FONT></EM> </DIV>
<DIV><EM><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>Little by little the dusk grew deeper,
but candles were scarce and could not be afforded. The figures of the
dancing couples grew more and more indistinct and the faces became lost to view,
while the sawing of the fiddle grew more and more rapid and the dancing more
excited. There was no noise, however; scarcely a sound save the fiddle and
the shuffling of the feet over the floor of rough hewn logs; for the Indian
women were stolid as ever, and the miners could not speak the language of their
partners. Even the lookers on said nothing, so that these silent dancing
figures in the dusk made an almost weird effect.</FONT></EM></DIV>
<DIV><EM><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2></FONT></EM> </DIV>
<DIV><EM><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>One by one, however, the women dropped
out, tired, picked up their babies and slouched off home, and the men slipped
over to the saloon to have a drink before going to their cabins. Surely
this squaw dance...was one of the most peculiar balls ever seen. No sound
of revelry by night, no lights, no flowers, no introductions, no
conversations. Of all the muses, Terpsichore the nimble-footed, alone was
represented, for surely the nymph who presides over music would have disowned
the fiddle."</FONT></EM></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>All this comes from Michael
Gates' "Gold at Fortymile Creek - Early Days in the Yukon"
Vancouver: UBC Press 1994. The quote originated with Josiah Edward
Spurr "Through the Yukon Gold Diggings" Boston: Eastern Publishing
1900.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>I suspect that a squaw dance in the general
sense was a dance where all the women were "Indians".</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face="Calisto MT" size=2>Susan</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>