IMAGE CITATION
Date: 1914 ca
Subject:
Orignal Work:
Place: Nova Scotia
Source: McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montréal
Reference Number: Notman Photographic Archives MP2034
Please contact McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montréal for use of this image.
IMAGE INFORMATION
Five men and two women dancing on a planked platform outside a large "circus" tent, probably at a provincial exhibition. Three of the men wear coats, two wear dance skirts. The women wear peaked caps. All are dancing around a seated male in ordinary coat and hat. The dance skirts worn here are interesting costumes of a "modern traditional" type thought to have been based on the Nova Scotia coat of arms—which shows an "Indian" wearing a skirt of leaves, a high feather headdress, and nothing else. (This in turn had been based on sixteenth-century French illustrations of natives from Brazil.) Although no mention is made of this dress in historical documentation, such costumes begin to appear in various photographs of Mi'kmaq and Maliseet men about 1890, almost universally on the occasion of St. Anne's Day, 26 July. Evidently it was thought by priests on the reserves that dressing the parishioners up in a more "Indian" style would lure tourists to St. Anne's Day celebrations, resulting in greater offerings. The McCord Museum of Canadian History in Montréal owns four of these costumes, the only surviving examples of their kind. They are catalogued as "Warrior Dance Dresses" and alleged to have been worn before the Prince of Wales in 1860 by Mi'kmaq dancers. Job lots of cloth and decorative materials were provided to the Mi'kmaq at Halifax in 1860, and a dance performance was given. If these are the costumes produced for the dancers, then they seem to have been revived around 1890, to be worn by younger men in the context of some sort of religious society. [Ruth Holmes Whitehead. "A Brief Glimpse of Micmac Life: Objects from the McCord Collection." Wrapped in the Colours of the Earth. Montréal, McCord Museum of Canadian History, 1992:75-79.]
KEYWORDS
men; women; caps, women's; peaked caps; beadwork; coats; medals; exhibitions, provincial; headdresses, feather; dance; dance costumes; Nova Scotia
