Indian Dance Circle, August 1960
In the 1950's, Westerns (TV and movies) portrayed Native Americans in a fairly negative light most of the time. They were always attacking wagon trains and forts, and were shown to be cruel and bloodthirsty. So Walt's Indian Village was fairly progressive for its day, presenting an assortment of shelters, crafts, spiritual beliefs, and family dynamics of various tribes, in a respectful manner.
Almost every photo of the Indian Dance Circle shows pretty good-sized crowds of curious onlookers, who were undoubtedly impressed with the exotic costumes, music and dances.
5 comments:
Beautiful pictures! So colorful and sunny, every day should be this nice!
Sad that this tradition faded and disappeared. I wish I could have had the experience.
That’s a colorful set of images with those clear beautiful blue skies. While I might be able to appreciate this now, back then as a kid, I found myself becoming fidgety when sitting through one of these performances.
This was one of my Dad's favorite places to go when we went. I have a home movie of the dancing. Transferred it and all my home movies to VHS some years ago but that's as far as I've gotten.
That first pic almost reminds me of a ViewMaster image.....clear blue sky in the background and so many things visible in one pic in addition to the main subject....Cascade Peak, Fort Wilderness, and a jam-packed Columbia.
Nancy, I think that the Native Americans were not happy working at Disneyland any more, and perhaps the audiences were not as interested in the show; maybe the time for a performance like that had passed.
K. Martinez, I remember seeing an Indian Dance show somwhere in Virginia when I was a kid (near a place known as Dismal Swamp!), and I was not too interested at the time.
Irene, quick, you need to transfer those VHS tapes to a DVD! I think Costco can do it, maybe Target as well.
TokyoMagic!, it's funny you should mention Viewmasters, I was just going through my collection and thinking about scanning some for a few posts. That clear blue sky has an ugly watermark in it!
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