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Performing Archive

"Girl"

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In the early years of the nineteenth century various explorers noted that the bands dwelling along the upper course of the Columbia, among which the Nespilim were included, wore practically no clothing. Excepting as the cold made some protection necessary. The hair of the women was arranged in two knots at the sides of the face ? a method of hairdressing still in vogue among the Salish on Fraser river. Prior to the middle of the century the use of deerskin garments had become common, and gradually other customs such as the style of hairdressing here illustrated, were borrowed from the tribes east of the Rocky mountains
The subject is clothed in a heavily beaded deerskin dress of the plains type. The throat is encircled by strands of shell beads of native manufacture, heirlooms which were obtained by the original Wishham possessor from the Pacific slope. Pendant on the breast are strands of larger beads of the same kind, as well as of various kinds brought into the country by the traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. An indispensable ornament of the well-born person was the dentalium-shell thrust through a perforation in the nasal septum; occasionally, as in this case, two such shells were connected by means of a bit of wood pushed into the hollow bases. Tied to the hair at each side of the face (see the following plate) is another dentalium-shell ornament, which is in reality an ear pendant transferred from the lobe of the ear (where its weight would be inconvenient) to the hair. The head-dress consists of shells, shell beads, commercial beads, and Chinese coins. The coins made their appearance in the Columbia River region at a comparatively early date. This form of head-dress was worn on special occasions by girls between the age of puberty and their marriage.
Clam-shell beads of the kind here shown are still made by some of the old men. Fragments of shell are pierced and strung on a stem of the scouring-rush (Equisetum), which is then drawn backward and forward on a flat surface of sandstone until the fragments have become nearly circular. The feathered ornament is an ear-pendant, which in this case, because of its length and weight, is attached to a strand of hair. The large, dark-colored bead on one strand of the necklace is a cylinder of magnesite, a highly valued object
The Buffalo dance of the Keres is almost exactly the same as that of the Tewa. The performers are two young men with head-dresses of buffalo-hair and horns, and a girl wearing the usual female costume and a pair of small horns. The head of the hunters' society plays the part of guard. The dance is very strenuous, and the simulated actions of t he buffalo are quite realistic and readily comprehended by the spectator.
The Buffalo dance is performed, though the original object of exerting prenatural influence on the abundance and accessibility of the buffalo no longer prevails. The two male dancers are accompanied by the Buffalo Girl, who is fully clothed in native costume and has a pair of small horns on the head. These three give a very striking and dramatic performance under the watchful eye of the head of the hunters' society.