Sun Dance

« https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vioh7ML75Cg Sun Dance The Sun Dance was an Indian ceremony, one of the most spectacular and of the most important to the Indians of plains.

It took place once a year during the summer solstice, during the full moon of the end of June at the beginning of July and could last of four in eight days. We so name it because it was made by looking at the sun; this rite had to represent symbolically the link which exists between life and death and to assert that the death was not the end but the beginning of a new cycle. Several tribes as Lakota, Cheyenne, Crow, Sioux, Omaha practised traditionally this ceremony, and of course every tribe practised its own rites but they possessed all common points as the dance, the song, the prayers or still the sacrifices and the sufferings to guarantee the harmony between the human beings. As most of the other religious ceremonies, the Sun Dance stages and the honnore the bison, one of the sacred animals of Indians.

Numerous songs and dances were dedicated to this animal because they symbolized the life and because tribes depended on him to eat, make their teepees, weapons and tools.

And according to tribes, the bison participated in various ways in the rite: we could decree that all the sacred objects introduced into the Dance were connected to the bison, or still to fill the cavities of the skull of the bison with the grass which would represent the abundance of the food.

Of one certain way the worship of the bison allowed to treat him respectfully.. »