Southwest Indians

Southwest Indians is a combination of the remaining material from two films made by George Clyde Fisher, curator in the AMNH Department of Education: Indian Dances and Southwest Indians. Against a background of teepees, the film opens with Indians (perhaps Taos) in ceremonial costume performing the hoop dance. To these Indians, the hoop or circle is symbolic of the complete and perfect life as well as tribal unity. A man and a boy, covered in white earth and painted with designs, wear breechcloths as they dance in and out of the hoop. Shaking bells tied to their legs and torsos, along with the circle of feathers fastened to their backs, dramatize the difficulties encountered in life. The second dance is a simple "two-step" performed to the beat of a drum by two men before a large audience (the specific dance has not been identified, but the men surrounding the drummer appear to be Dakota). The dancers wear costumes of fur scapulars (capes), skirt-like skins, and fox furs on their backs. Feather headdresses, with projecting arrowhead ornaments, and body-paint complete the costumes. The next segment of footage shows a dance performed at a pueblo with a mesa visible in the background. Two men with elaborate feathered wings on their arms ascend and descend a stucco staircase in a duet of the eagle dance. A woman is seen making "piki" bread in the following segment; after grinding corn with a stone metate and mano, she mixes the meal with water and a dash of wood ash lye. To cook this mixture she uses the palm of her hand to spread it over a hot stone. The film closes with two men, wearing buffalo heads and carrying rattles and feathers, engaged in the buffalo dance. A woman known as the Buffalo Maiden accompanies them; she is dressed in a cloth skirt and blouse, with feathers in a pouch on her back.