nápe (dance)
Nápe (dance) in the Awatíkihu (Five Villages) could serve many functions. Some were performed according to a yearly calendar, attuned to events in the natural world. Others were specific to the rites of their associated óhate (society). Still others were designed for sharing with outside communities, both Native and non-Native, as a way to (at least momentarily) join different groups together for purposes of trade, military alliance, or peace. The dances that Awatíkihu village óhate members performed at Fort Clark fall into this last category and demonstrate how nápe could be used to affirm kinship obligations on the Middle Ground.
During the nineteenth century, Native nápe loomed large in the non-Native artistic imagination, with western artists like George Catlin and F. O. C. Darley executing dozens of paintings and prints of Native nápe. These non-Native visitors and artists often claimed a kind of secret knowledge for their depictions. In reality, most visitors could not distinguish the various iterations of dances that might exist in different contexts.
As a trade center for Native peoples across western North America, the Awatíkihu had long used nápe to extend hospitality to their trading guests. Built through the accretion of various remnant people bands over many centuries, the Awatíkihu may have used the occasions of hosting nápe as a means to strengthen bonds across the villages’ linguistic and cultural differences. The adoption dance hosted by Nuptadi (Second Village) for Mít uta ha'kosh (First Village) on January 15, 1834 may have been an instance of this. Cultural differences across the Awatíkihu also produced village-specific variants of shared nápe.