Who can be a Straight Dancer

[travelingmocs]

I would like to add something to the last post. The hethuska came from the Poncas and the Omahas. The Commanches were given the war dance by Poncas. First in like 1917 or soemthing like that, and then in the 60's it was givien back to the commanches by Silvester Warrior.
The pawnees do have a dance, and several on the pawnee singers like Frank, Herb, Adson and several other people sing at are invited to sing at the Oasge inlonskas..........

[BaloneySkin]

Eshop !!

Shore like it for your handle !!!

You are correct in that the straight dance is NOT of Osage origin. The Osage people were given this dance, the drums and the songs from the Ponca and Kaw a little over a hundred years ago. There was a reason for this and I will not go into it on these boards. All of it was good and it stll continues to this day in the good spirit that it was given. Nuff said.

[STATE]

Right on!!!The Poncas are the originators and gave the dance to other tribes. One being the Comanches. Man, if I tell all the Comanches that I heard a Comanche say they got straight dance from the Kiowas..............no way, no how, no, no, no. LOL The Poncas gave the dance and the songs to other tribes and the Osages have beautiful ceromonies each year. Same with the Poncas, there are over 200 straight dancers in one arena. They follow the strict rites that go with that dance, too. It is a beautiful dance to participate in and to watch. And so true, every southern man eventually gets to straight dance , because they get too slow to fancy!!! LOL My dad included. He was a fancy dancer, but eventually became a straight dancer and that was his niche. He won the LittleWalker trophy at Ponca 4 times and had to retire from that arena. He was old school, though, before this era we watch now. But, after all is said and done, it is a true gentleman's dance and I enjoy watching it, whoever is dancing it, as long as they respect it and treat it right.

[CHEROSAGE]

We (Osages) have Three main dances, Hominy, Greyhorse and Pahuska. It is true that the Poncas are attributed for giving us our Ilonshka. Some Poncas and Poncamixes do come and help our Drum Keepers.

The Poncas have also given the Apaches in the Ft Sill OK area their Formal Dance. I was honored to be able to dance this dance while stationed at Ft Sill. I have also been priviledged to dance the Black Moccasin dance with these Apaches. A-Ho!

The O ma ha's still open their dances with a tail session.

The greatest thing anyone can see is several hundred Straight dancers dancing at one time. Both very young to very old. We do have a guest section of our seating. If anyone has the oppertunity to attend an Ilonshka/Hethuska do so. Be advised that these ceremonies are not the Powwow Intertribal dances.

[records_all_drumz]

Originators hmmmmmm? Don't know about any of that, as all I know my Pawnee relatives have their own way of Hethoskah! They have their own songs, their own veterans songs, own scalp dance songs, trot dance (which they keep at home), flag song. That's not to say other tribes don't have these as i don't know, I just know what our tribe has. All are original, nothing taken from other surrounding tribes. We hear alot of our tunes from surronding tribes, but that is a whole different story.

Pawnees, Wichitas and Arikara's share some common ground in regards to this style of dance. There are other dances our tribe has which no other tribe has since we have four main (bands) groups that make up the tribe. These ceremonial dances have similar songs of our war dance and our war dance came from these ceremonial dances. Our very own ceremonials, now in our opinion that is original, we received from the creator, how original do you want to be?

We have never sold out our dances to non-indians either, as the creator gave it to us, if he wanted other tribes to have it the creator would have chosen them.

[Historian]

An interesting discussion.

[_wuliechsin_]

This thread is getting very interesting. Keep it up, I would like to hear what you have to say Historian.