Produced by Tor Martin Kristiansen, Joseph Cooper and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net ANTHROPOLOGICAL PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY VOL. XVI, PART VI NOTES ON THE KIOWA SUN DANCE BY LESLIE SPIER NEW YORK PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES 1921 NOTES ON THE KIOWA SUN DANCE. BY LESLIE SPIER. ILLUSTRATIONS. TEXT FIGURES. PAGE. 1. Groundplan of Dance Lodge 441 NOTES ON THE KIOWA SUN DANCE. The following notes were obtained from Andres Martinez (Andele, a Mexican captive of the Kiowa whose history[1] is well known) in August, 1919. Attention was directed in the first instance to the organization of the dance, but a brief description of the whole ceremony was also obtained, chiefly by way of comments on Scott's account.[2] The last Kiowa sun dance was held in 1887.[3] The Kiowa sun dance is the prerogative of the individual who owns the sacred image, the _tai´me_. He deputes the ancillary offices where he sees fit, although there is a well-defined tendency for them to be hereditary. The predominant idea of this image is that of a war medicine. Thus the dance is fundamentally like that of the Crow, but it differs from it in two important respects. First, the Kiowa rites cluster about only one particular medicine, whereas among the Crow, any one of a number of medicine dolls may be used in the ceremony. The question arises whether the dozen minor Kiowa images, which are sometimes brought into the dance, were more recently acquired or constructed in order to reproduce the functions of the _tai´me_, or whether one medicine doll has completely overshadowed all the others, as seemed about to happen among the Crow. The evidence favors the first view, since no rites, other than those attendant on any personal medicine, are described, or even intimated, for the minor images. The second difference is, that while the Crow shaman invokes his medicine for any one who appeals to him for aid, acting only in a directive capacity, the Kiowa _tai´me_ owner is himself the principal suppliant. Were it not for the hereditary bias in the distribution of ceremonial functions, the Kiowa sun dance would be the prerogative of one man as completely as that of the Crow is, when the latter is once under way. The hereditary principle does not appear in the military societies except in the ownership of the medicine lance or arrow (_zë´bo_).[4] The Kiowa sun dance (_k'oθdun_ specifically the name for the lodge) was an annual tribal affair, in which the associated Kiowa Apache freely joined.[5] It was danced in an effort to obtain material benefits from, or through, the medicine doll in the possession of the medicineman, who is at the same time director and principal performer.