"squaw dance"

[robsue]

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. 

" '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.  

    " 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?

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.

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.

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."

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.

I suspect that a squaw dance in the general sense was a dance where all the women were "Indians".

Susan
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