Jingle dress

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Jingle dress is a dance dress worn by women participating in the "Jingle Dress Dance" at a Pow wow. Made of cloth, the dress includes several rows of metal cones, which are sewn across the dress on the blouse and repeated on the skirt. The metal cones create a jingling sound as the dancer moves. The Jingle Dress Dance is characterized by the jingle dress and light footwork danced close to ground. The dancer dances in a snake-like pattern around the drum; her feet never cross, nor does she dance backward or turn a complete circle.

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[edit] Origins

Origin of the jingle dress is attributed to three different Ojibwa communities: Mille Lacs Indians, Red Lake Band of Chippewa and the Whitefish Bay Ojibwe. In both the Mille Lacs Indians and Whitefish Bay Ojibwe versions, the dresss and the dance appeared in a reccuring vivid dream that was realized about the year 1900. In both versions, the dream came to a Midewinini. In both dreams, there were four women, each wearing a jingle dress and dancing. Each dream also gave instructions on how to make the dresses, what types of songs went with them and how the dance was to be performed. In the Mille Lacs' version, the Midewinini upon awakening, he and his wife made four dresses, he showed his wife how to dance in the dress to which showed the four women he had dreamed about the same by calling the four women who in his dream wore them, dressed them in the dresses, brought them forth at a dance, told the people about the dream, and how the way the Midewikweg were to dress and dance.

The Mille Lacs' version of the story continues that the reason for this recurring dream was because the daughter of the Midewinini was gravely ill. When it came time for the drum ceremony, the man and his wife brought their little girl. They sat at the ceremony, and the girl laid on the floor because she was quite ill. After the ceremony, the Midewinini got up and told the people about his dream. Then he brought out the four women and said they were going to dance in the style he had dreamed about. The drum started, the people began to sing, and the women danced. Soon, their daughter perked up, lifted her head to watch the women dance. As the evening went on, pretty soon she was sitting up and watching. Before the night was over, the girl was so moved by the dancers that she was following the women and dancing around. Whitefish Bay's verson is nearly identical, but with the ill child being the granddaugher of the Midewinini. Due to both versions of the story, some women adopted the jingle dress as a healing dress.

Due to the strong family connections between the Removable and Non-Removable Mille Lacs Indians of the Mille Lacs and White Earth Indian Reservations, the Mille Lacs Indians' version spread to White Earth and to other Ojibwe Reservations. In the late 1920's, the White Earth people gave the jingle dress to the Lakota and it spread westward into the Dakotas and Montana.

[edit] Original Design

Jingle dresses were originally made of fabric in solid "healthy" colors each - red, green/yellow, black and blue. Each dress was adorned with 365 jingles on a dress, each representing a prayer and a day of the year. The jingles were made from tin lids from chewing tobacco cans, rolled into a cones.

[edit] Contemporary Design

Contemporary jingle dresses introduced in the 1980's are made from multi-coloured fabric decorated with tin jingles, and with each dress piece adorned with matching beadwork designs. The jingles count on a dress ranges anywhere from 100 to over 400 per dress. The contemporary dancer carries a wing fan, often wearing an eagle plumes/feathers in her hair. Compared to the original dance, the contemporary dance can be fancier with intricate footwork, and the dress design often is cut to accomodate for these footwork manoeuvres.

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[edit] References

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