Tent of Many Voices: 04130502A

from all over the country and also from your community so with us today we have some really incredible dancers who are from new toown they are the eagle feather dance club and we want to share some of their dances with you so let's give them a warm welcome everybody um we're the new we're from Newtown Public Schools this is the eagle feather IND Club various grades attend to go to Eagle Feather Club from kinderg all the way up to high school the club me we be throughout the school year to learn about the cultures of the Mand people these tribes make up the three G tribes of the fort BR Indian Reservation um what you guys know as paas most of us call celebrations they so many different things going on besides STC and we have religious ceremonies aing ceremonies giveaways this is in this presentation you'll learn about American Indian danc and the different dance stat formed at cele oh w he no few things i' like to out first um some outfits the cost of an outfit is really high because of the that you have and traditional Danes to the best time to learn to dance when you just now learn how to walk because when you're just how to the first Dan styles that we will be performing for you are the men and women's CH Dan the men's traditional dance is the original dance of most of the tri it is called this dance dan sucessful or success in Battlefield their dance together includes the bu now when you're young usually you start out with ro or hot like Mark this is Mark Jun his muscle is made out of goose and if you grow up into a young adult you get to wear the right to wear eagle feathers but in order to wear eagle feathers one must have the right to wear them right are pass on from older relatives and you should have the eagle feathers are pass are obtained in the eagle permit program in the US Fish and Wild service it is a federal crime to obtain Eagle FS illegally Vine is $5,000 per Fe American Indians can possess vs with participation and ceremonies non indans can not possess Evil Brothers unless they given to them some cery it takes four to 5 years to get EV Mar Jun is also wearing the feather cap usually feather are made up with different feathers his just like turkey or but feather CS were warn by the g dog Souls of society this this Society was made up of fierce Warriors who guarded the camp and usually the first in battle they were similar to the green and Special Forces today the this is a life what he's wearing is a head roach this is the most common headdress worn by men Danes Ro are made up of deer tail hair and porcupine hair with leather or metal spreader sitting on top with ro hold two feathers the dancers Al the dancers are also wearing chokers and breast plate which are made up the hair pipe B before the rifle appeared they were used for protection and battle against arrows spirits and bers are also wearing de tricks Bri cloth leggings bells and O carrying Dan sticks and some dancers also carry shields in the past dancing sticks were on War cles the ReUse in battle of count during battle it was embarrassing for warrior to return from the battle beat up in Brut it signifi weakness the traditional B only Dan for many generations the B stay be and stop Dr traditional dancers never dance backwards like to talk about dance to this is the oldest style of dance for women for hundreds of years women do not dance in area they stayed on the outside wa for the singing of the be this develop today into today's traditional dance the dancers bend their knees slightly to the beat of their Trum as they dance and move their head in the past this signified that they were waiting for husbands Sons fathers or other Villers to return safely from a hunt to war party they stay de of the song and stop at the end of the song the dancers were buck skin or clo they have matching leging moccasins a leather belt and a purse they also wear leather or me hair to and they also wear a feather or PL in their hair and a children they car that some dancers raise his hand during the honor beats the song h a gr St originated from the of people is a faster danc into this one in the past another tribe moved new location we on a war party hunt the grass St Society members selected where they place they camp for theight they selected the spot in the middle of the camp during the evening when it was time to celebrate the grass Dan first Dan when they dance it knock down the tall prair grass with their dance if you have ever seen tall grass and a prair moving side to side Wind Blows this is how the Yar or outfits move when they dance this is wearing head roach with choker Bells leing ox and to be work their shirts pants and cl long are written on repres gr this dance is a graceful dance when you see him Dan what he's going to do is he's going to mimic his movement so whatever he does to the left side he's going to do it to the right la Hal this is Skyler Julia if you go dress and Cha people Minnesota andc this was the first Style dance for the dress dance originated hundreds of years ago it reappeared in the late 1800 the Spirit came in dream to medicine that the very that to bring dance back to the people he make his daughter well again when the man awoke he shared his dream with his wife they made four dresses for their daughter they taught them how to dance and cele and dance with the people afterwards the SI daughter became migan therefore this dance is called the healing dance and the healing dress dance almost disappeared again and reappeared in the May 1970 is very popular dance the dance is wear a dress with hundreds of cones on it this dress has its own unique sound the cones are made from snuff Cannon lims or ttin the dancers wear plums or feathers in their hair chokers maing leggings and and some carry e is a faster style of dance and next performing women the the dance originated from the Oklahoma the danc the dance work its way up to the nor PL it is also known as the butterfly dance you will see this when they start dancing this is a fast dance style the dancers must be light on their feet the dancers also wear ribbon cloth dress with C shirt crashing leggings that they wear feather or p and hair hair ties they wear shw with long over their back hey the next St we will be performing social dance during the celebration we also danc a social song He songs about many people many songs Eng a dance need some people surely we've got some helpers here any ever Dan before great no one else want to help if I say please going to join in the dancing come on more of you coming back and join in it's lots of fun oh here's another volunteer to join you take care no it's not play keep there few things we like to one thing is we don't dress like this all the time we dress just like you guys normal clothes get our clothes and B canand you know kid go to hot and all other St another thing we don't live TV to Earth lodges we live normal housing you know Apartments trailers um I like to go hunting but I don't like to go hunting that much to get my own food we like to go to um supermarket and bu our food this right day um well we'd like to thank you and if you has any questions time wonderful this was amazing to get to watch all these young people dancers regalia regia that's what this is called it is an outfit for a specific purpose to this regia the regalia is absolutely beautiful and I'd like to thank you for coming today and let's give them one more big anyone have any question they would like to ask all right then if we're through with our questions thank you all for coming in time to se um Welcome to our s many voices here in tent we have all kinds of presentations and from all over the country and all over your community as well where are you guys from which is in which town Dickinson okay wow not very close but I just wanted to welcome you here and have you welcome our presenter our presenter is Aubrey Williams he is representing John Shields the blacksmith of the Lewis and Clark expedition so let's give him a warm welcome everybody okay thank you very much uh um what I'm going to try and explain to you a little bit is the the everyday technology that Lewis and Clark WR with because they were bringing modern industrial technology to the Great Plains and admittedly some of it was here the things were here you're not quite loud enough let's see if we can move you up just a little okay okay let's try that I'll be too loud now but okay but admittedly on the Great Plains particularly with the Earth Lodge people European technology was here the iron was here the tools Etc but the thing that Lewis and Clark brought and don't think they recognized what they were doing before they started they didn't just bring things they brought the technology of how to do it so the Native American could see that there was another way of doing things and that made a very dramatic difference uh the blacksmith for Lewis and Clark and there were four of them that had the technology anyway uh my character John Shields Alexander Willard William Bratton and to some degree John CER they were they had Frontier skills uh they weren't specifically trained you know for but they had learned to do things just in the process of living on the frontier and to a great degree that's why John Shields was alone now John Shields his major function was to fix things you know that's why he was there he's a blacksmith he was a gunsmith his job was to fix things for the Expedition and he made repairs as they came along I found it with the boats I make repairs too uh it's just the nature of the beast but is they saw his function as one of being repair when they reached the Earth Lodge Villages during the winter of 184 and five there's suddenly a different role for John Shields instead of being just the guy who fixes things and he was to a great degree uh throughout the fall well they didn't get here till November but during November and December Shields did an awful lot of work fixing things for Native Americans for the core Etc you know he sharpened axes he sharpened H you know just basic maintenance stuff but begin beginning in January of 185 he started doing something that changed the the nature of the Expedition because the Earth Lodge people soon grew tired of trading for beads uh they were well aware that there was a lot more to be had from the the Expedition and just a few beads they started taking advantage of the metal technologies that they had uh when Lis and Clark got here the Native Americans had a great deal of familiarity with this is the old style spont tun ax uh the French had been trading him for years and they liked them so John Shields made some but even that wore out after a while and the big change came about when a Native American came to John Shields and said can you make me one of these it's a Native American design Shields did not bring this with him from Back East it's a Native American design they brought the design Shields them manufactured it and he was busy making these until they left now instead of just a rle of fixing things all of a sudden Shields is in the role of manufacturing and it came close to being being that because they had three to four blacksmiths working all the time and they couldn't get them done fast enough and that there's a big difference there from just simply passing out or trading for something made back East to following a Native American design creating something that they wanted and you realize the change in the relationship when that happened you know according to the leadership of the Expedition when they got here they were bringing all the wonderful stuff of the the E to give to the poor people out here and it was all one way but with with that axe it changes and it's not the white man talking down to the Native American in Shield's shop if was a customer talking to a Craftsman it was a more equal level one of the things I like about John Shields after they had left there's an interview with a hadat a chief named leborn and he says he told one of the Englishmen in the area he says if it were up to me I'd kill them all like wolves on a prairie except for the worker of iron and the fix of guns they saw the everyday technology as more important than anything else and I think it it changed what the Native American expected from not only the discovery Expedition for later Traders and it changed to a degree the way Lewis and well the way Clark particularly dealt with Native Americans after he became the governor of what is it no he wasn't the governor he was the Indian agent in charge of the West because in many of those treaties that he negotiated from then on one of the things included that was provided for the tribe was a blacksmith they sent people to the Native Americans to help them with this particular type of Technology yeah sorry that gets a little bit philosophical but my point is the everyday stuff the mere process just of fixing something or building something that somebody wants changes everything makes a whole difference okay one more thing this is called the experiment it's the creation of mar weather Lewis uh he had it designed at Harper's Ferry Virginia well he did design it um it was not his Universal his originally the design had been used in Europe for a long time but it's a metal framed boat now I've just got one section and there were two sections like this and six that were as he described them semicylindrical they fit in between the front and the back the idea was we take these pieces out west when we get to a point where we can no longer use the killboard or the proges or even the canoes then we get this thing out and it came in a box that was about 5 foot square and about so thick and these guys slept that stuff all the way from Pittsburgh to the other side of Great Falls Montana and then they stopped and they put it all together Louis thought it'd go together in an afternoon and they took something like eight days to put it together and the idea was okay put the metal frame together then you put take saplings and split them and line them here so there's a wooden lining then the idea is okay we'll cover this with skins you know elk Buffalo whatever you can find cover it with skins and that'll make a boat now at Harper's Ferry they' done it it worked great each one of these sections will carry about a th000 pounds and it would work except this is a big exception you got to have some way to seal the seams you know where you've sewn it together back East Lewis had used pitch a kind of pintar and in his letter to Jefferson he said the bark and sealing materials will be available in every corner of the country except for Great Falls they didn't have anything to seal the seams with they tried Tallow they tried some waxes didn't work put the thing in the water floated for about 30 minute Bo right to the bottom just didn't work the idea was fine but at the time they believed in something called Continental symmetry you know they believed that one side of a continent would be just like the other side and if it existed on the East Coast sure it'd be there on the west coast didn't work that way as a result now the experiment failed out west as a result they ended up cutting canoes out of logs but it's a good example of plans made with expectations that are not valid okay any questions think I can answer for yeah return back uh who was what was the blacksmith's name was that Shields yeah mhm uh Clark uh wanted his rifle uh re recut recut what tools would he carry with him at that time okay to recut a rifle barrel all you need some lead something to melad in uh a rod to put it on and a small piece of Steel maybe that big and you put the rod in the barrel and you pour lead around it so it matches the grooves of the rifling you take that out you cut the groove away and put put that steel bit in there and then you drag that through the barrel on the end of that rod and it will cut out just a little bit of metal and after you've done it once well then you shim it up with something a little piece of paper or something and cut it again but all he needed was the lead which he already had uh a rod and ram rod works just fine and a small piece of Steel and I'm pretty sure he had that in terms of a knife blade or something of that sort when he Carri his metal working tools like his anvils and files uh those stayed at Great Falls uh all he had with him was out there was just the be bare minimum um I expect there was a hammer and a pair of tongs and not much beyond that uh you can build a fire with charcoal and get it to heat for simple jobs you can forge just on a stump but uh he did some remarkable work with just the stuff he had in his pocket and sorry I didn't bring that demonstration with me Mr Williams thank you very much thank you for coming and thank you all for coming too um we do have some more stations for you to see and a lot more to explore we're going to send e