Bear Dance is a Native American ceremonial dance that occurs in the spring. It is a ten-day event to strengthen social ties within the community, encourage courtship, and mark the end of puberty for girls. [1]
For the Utes, it is a ten-day event of dancing, feasting, games, horse racing, and gambling. It is one of the oldest Ute ceremonies. The bear symbolizes leadership, strength, and wisdom. A group of men have played musical rasps for the dance. [1]
The bear dance is performed by the Ute Indians after the first sound of thunder is heard as spring comes. [2] This tradition began in the fifteenth century taught to humans by bears. [3] The primal ancestor of the Ute Indians are believed by themselves to be bears. [4] The reason for this dance was to help wake up the hibernating bears in winter, and the Indians from being inside during the cold season. Along with waking up for winter finding a new mate for the new season is another reason this dance is performed by bears, and humans. [5] Men, women, and children are involved in this yearly dance. For this dance the men are to prepare everything for the performance. During the dance women invite men to dance in order to find a mate, and dance together. [6]
Out of all the Ute ceremonies, the Bear Dance is said to be one of the oldest. [7] It lasts a week to ten days. The Ute Indians start the bear dance in the spring when they hear the first thunder. [8] The Ute Indians were now able to break winter camps and look for food and game. [9] The Ute were able to come outside again and release any stress or tensions that were there. Both men and women prepared for the bear dance. Clothes are made for families to be worn during the dance by the women. [8] Each year, a new corral is made and is placed at the entrance of the dance. [9] The corral and other things related to the dance are made by men. [8] When the bear dance begins, a medicine man or chief directs the dance. [7] Songs are played during the event, and children and adults dance like they saw the bears do. Legends say that the songs played by the Ute Indians showed respect to the bears spirits. [8] These songs are played with wooden notched sticks by musicians. [9] They also use drums and other musical instruments to play music. When the drums are played, they sing an incantation. They believe the incantation takes the noises to the caves of the bears which are then transformed into thunder. [7] They dance and socialize until the ceremony is concluded. As the ceremony concludes, feasting begins and the dance was over. [7]
The Ute mythology is the mythology of the Ute people, a tribe of Native Americans from the Western United States.
The Algic languages are an indigenous language family of North America. Most Algic languages belong to the Algonquian subfamily, dispersed over a broad area from the Rocky Mountains to Atlantic Canada. The other Algic languages are the Yurok and Wiyot of northwestern California, which, despite their geographic proximity, are not closely related. All these languages descend from Proto-Algic, a second-order proto-language estimated to have been spoken about 7,000 years ago and reconstructed using the reconstructed Proto-Algonquian language and the Wiyot and Yurok languages.
Rinpoche, also spelled Rimboche and Rinboku, is an honorific term used in the Tibetan language. It literally means "precious one", and may refer to a person, place, or thing—like the words "gem" or "jewel".
Alfred Irving "Pete" Hallowell was an award-winning American anthropologist, archaeologist and businessman.
William N. Fenton was an American scholar and writer known for his extensive studies of Iroquois history and culture. He started his studies of the Iroquois in the 1930s and published a number of significant works over the following decades. His final work was published in 2002. During his career, Fenton was director of the New York State Museum and a professor of anthropology at the State University of New York.
The bile up is considered the cultural dish of the Kriols of Belize. It is a combination of boiled eggs, fish and/or pig tail, with cassava, yams, or sweet potatoes, plantains, and tomato sauce.
Walter Hough, Ph.D. (1859–1935) was an American ethnologist who worked for the Smithsonian Institution.
Edward Pasqual Dozier was a Pueblo Native American anthropologist and linguist who studied Native Americans and the peoples of northern Luzon in the Philippines. He was the first Native American to earn a PhD in anthropology in the United States.
Bride service has traditionally been portrayed in the anthropological literature as the service rendered by the bridegroom to a bride's family as a bride price or part of one. Bride service and bride wealth models frame anthropological discussions of kinship in many regions of the world.
The Pueblo clowns are jesters or tricksters in the Kachina religion. It is a generic term, as there are a number of these figures in the ritual practice of the Pueblo people. Each has a unique role; belonging to separate Kivas and each has a name that differs from one mesa or pueblo to another.
Cora Alice Du Bois was an American cultural anthropologist and a key figure in culture and personality studies and in psychological anthropology more generally. She was Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris Zemurray Stone-Radcliffe Professor at Radcliffe College from 1954. After retirement from Radcliffe, she was Professor-at-large at Cornell University (1971–1976) and for one term at the University of California, San Diego (1976).
Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons was an American anthropologist, sociologist, folklorist, and feminist who studied Native American tribes—such as the Tewa and Hopi—in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. She helped found The New School. She was associate editor for The Journal of American Folklore (1918–1941), president of the American Folklore Society (1919–1920), president of the American Ethnological Society (1923–1925), and was elected the first female president of the American Anthropological Association (1941) right before her death.
The Nacotchtank were an indigenous Algonquian people who lived in the area of what is now Washington, D.C., during the 17th century. The Nacotchtank village was within the modern borders of the District of Columbia along the intersection of the Potomac and the Anacostia river.
Jeffrey H. Cohen is an American anthropologist.
Ute music constitutes the music of the Indigenous Northern American Ute tribe. Much of this music has been recorded and preserved. Each song of the Ute tribe has a meaning or is based on an experience. These experiences may be social, religious or emotional. Many Ute songs are social songs. They include war songs, social dance songs, parade songs, medicine songs, love songs, game songs and story songs.
Language and Mind is a 1968 book of three essays on linguistics by Noam Chomsky. An expanded edition in 1972 added three essays and a new preface.
The Family Among the Australian Aborigines: A Sociological Study is a 1913 anthropological book by the Polish scholar Bronisław Malinowski.
Marlene Dobkin de Rios was an American cultural anthropologist, medical anthropologist, and psychotherapist. She conducted fieldwork in the Amazon for almost 30 years. Her research included the use of entheogenic plants by the indigenous peoples of Peru.
Language and Linguistics: An Introduction is a 1981 book by Sir John Lyons.
Sharlotte Kathleen Neely is an American anthropologist who is known for her research on Native North Americans, especially the Cherokee Indians. As of 2017, she was Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Northern Kentucky University.