Though perhaps not a Sun Dance, John White depicted a Native American dance he witnessed in the 1500s.

The Sun Dance is a ceremony practiced by several North American Indian Nations.

The Sun Dance is practiced differently by different Nations, but many of the ceremonies have features in common, including dancing, singing and drumming, the experience of visions, fasting, and, in some cases, self-torture.

The most notable feature of the Sun Dance was the self-torture many young men endured as part of the ritual. Frederick Schwatka wrote about a Sioux Sun Dance he witnessed in the late 1800s:

Each one of the young men presented himself to a medicine-man, who took between his thumb and forefinger a fold of the loose skin of the breast—and then ran a very narrow-bladed but sharp knife through the skin—a stronger skewer of bone, about the size of a carpenter's pencil was inserted. This was tied to a long skin rope fastened, at its other extremity, to the top of the sun-pole in the center of the arena. The whole object of the devotee is to break loose from these fetters. To liberate himself he must tear the skewers through the skin, a horrible task that even with the most resolute may require many hours of torture.

Though only some nation's version of the ceremony included this feature, the United States government outlawed the practice of the Sun Dance in 1904.

External link

• An explanation of the Sun Dance