nd there on backs, breasts and arms coinciding splendidly with the
flecks of eagles-down that quiver in the wind down their black bodies,
and the long black hair of the accompanying hunter, as flecks of foam
would rise from waterfalls of dark mountain streams; and the feathers
that float from the tips of the buffalo horns seem like young eaglets
ready to leave the eyry, to swim for the first time the far fields of
air above and below them, to traverse with skill the sunlit spaces
their eyes have opened to with a fierce amazement. Even the clouds of
frozen breath darting from the lips of the dancers served as an
essential phase of the symbolic decoration, and the girdles of tiny
conchlike shells rattling round their agile thighs made a music you
were glad to hear. The sunshine fell from them, too, in scales of
light, danced around the spaces enveloping them along with the flecks
of eagle-down that floated away from their bodies with the vigors of
the dance, floating away from their dark warm bodies, and their
jet-blue hair. It is the incomparable understanding of their own
inventive rhythms that inspire and impress you as spectator. It is the
swift comprehension of change in rhythm given them by the drummers,
the speedy response of their so living pulsating bodies, the
irresistible rapport with the varying themes, that thrills and invites
you to remain close to the picture. They know, as perfect artists
would know, the essential value of the materials at their disposal,
and the eye for harmonic relationships is as keen as the impeccable
gift for rhythm which is theirs. The note of skill was again
accentuated when, at the close of the season's ensemble with a
repetition of the beautiful eagle dance, there appeared two
grotesqueries in the form of charming devil spirits in the hues of
animals also, again in startling arrangements of black and white, with
the single hint of color in the red lips of the masks that covered
their heads completely from view, and from which long tails of white
horsehair fell down their grey white backs--completing the feeling
once again of stout animal spirits roaming through dark forests in
search of sad faces, or, it may even be, of evil doers.

All these dances form the single spectacle surviving from a great race
that no American can afford actually to miss, and certainly not to
ignore. It is easy to conceive with what furore of amazement these
spectacles would be received if they were broug