Music, Dance, and the Community
Music and dance are an integral part of social cohesion in Southern Utah. Indigenous communities and later Euro-American settlements used music and dance for more than just entertainment, but for a social and religious connection that brought together individuals, families, and communities.
First Peoples
Indigenous peoples employed song and dance in their religious and social gatherings. Southern Paiute peoples had many important dances, such as “The Cry” and the “Bear” Dance.[1] The “Circle” was a popular social dance, used for community enjoyment and courtship. “It was usually performed around a juniper or other tree with people holding hands while dancing clockwise. There were many, many songs to accompany the dance.”[2] These dances were an important connection to the wider community as independent bands came together and formed a larger shared identity. They performed together, told stories, socialized, and played games.
Winter was a popular time for storytelling.[3] Stories were told for both entertainment and religious instruction. Dialogue between characters were often sung, with different songs associated with different characters. These stories and songs were sometimes original, but many were handed down by storytellers before. Intergenerational stories, songs, and dances gave the people a sense of belonging not only to their community, but to their ancestry.[4] Southern Paiute bands today continue to gather and celebrate with music and dance.[5]
Healers also used music and dance as an important part of their religious and healing rituals.[6] These songs and dances could sometimes continue over multiple days as the shaman labored to treat their patient.[7]
Through dance, Southern Utah’s Paiute people also participated in larger Indigenous movements. Increased Euro-American takeover and settlement of the western United States in the second half of the nineteenth century dramatically affected the Indigenous population, landscape, and livelihood.[8] It also contributed to major ecological change. The Ghost Dance Movements of the 1870s through the 1890s sought to return the environment, power, ancestors, and customs back to pre-white encroachment. They attempted this through shared religious dance. Though the Ghost Dances originated from the Northern Paiute, Southern Paiute peoples actively participated in and helped spread the movements.[9]
Latter-day Saints
Music and dance were important parts of Utah’s Latter-day Saint settlements. Music was used for entertainment, social gatherings, and religious services. Martha Rees Alexander wrote that she used to sing and dance on her journey across the plains to Utah.[10] When St. George was just an encampment, Robert Gardner Jr. wrote of a warm 1861 Christmas dance: “It began to rain and we began to dance and we did dance and it did rain and we danced until dark, then we fixed up a long tent and then we danced, but the rain continued...we had neither rich nor poor amongst us. Our teams and wagons and what was in them was about all we had."[11]
On January 9th, 1862, the citizens of St. George decided that the first building for their new community would be a stone building for “educational and social purposes.”[12] The small community worked together to fund and construct the edifice. At least 120 settlers donated almost $3,000 dollars for the construction; “not one of these subscribers had a roof over his own head as yet.”[13] This became the St. George Social Hall.
A decade later, Elizabeth Kane remarked on the Social Hall, “once or twice a week ever since I came here I have watched the figures of dancers bobbing past the lighted windows ere I closed my own.”[14] She later attended a “Militia Ball” at the Social Hall where the community came together to decorate, dance, and socialize.[15]
Churches were important locations not only for religious services, but for music, education, and art. Mary Ann Hafen, a Swiss Santa Clara resident, wrote
During those earliest years our Sabbath services were held under a big cottonwood tree. Then the people built a meeting house where we could have dances and socials as well as a church and school. For our dance orchestra, we had a violin, an accordion, and a horn.[16]
The Church sponsored musical and dramatic events.[17] In addition, Church leaders used music as an important part of religious services.[18] Choral music often supplemented religious instruction.
The Opera House later replaced the Social Hall for dances, drama, and other social events. The Biz-Ray Dance Hall, near the Opera House, was another important music and dance venue in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[19] Local Bands performed for major events, such as dances, holidays, weddings, and missionary homecomings, and were sometimes paid for their services in wine, fruit, or other goods.[20]
Silver Reef
Silver Reef was an active mining town in Washington County. During its heyday in the 1870s and 1880s, Silver Reef brought in many miners and businesspeople. Many aspects of Silver Reef culture, including demographics, religion, and entertainment differed greatly from their Latter-day Saint neighbors.[21] A popular spot for entertainment was the Metropolitan Dance Hall, known for their “Excellent music, perfect decorum, genteel attendants, and bright-eyed partners.”[22] The site was also known for its less decorous elements, including gunfights.[23] Silver Reef also held dances and dramatic performances in a Citizens Hall.[24]
A Catholic Church in Silver Reef featured an organ and choir that performed for religious services and holidays.[25] The most storied account of intercommunity collaboration between Silver Reef and St. George occurred in 1879. Catholic Father Lawrence Scanlan worked with Latter-day Saint choir director John M. Macfarlane to train a combined choir of Silver Reef and St. George singers for a High Mass inside the St. George Tabernacle.[26]
Citations
[1] Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, Nuwuvi: A Southern Paiute History (Reno, NV: Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, 1976), printed by the University of Utah Printing Service, 18-19.
[2] Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, Nuwuvi, 18.
[3] Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, Nuwuvi, 19.
[4] Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada, Nuwuvi, 18.
[5] Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, "44th Restoration Gathering and Pow-Wow," accessed September 5, 2024, https://pitu.gov/pow-wow-2024/.;
Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, “Our Culture," accessed September 5, 2024, https://pitu.gov/culture/.
[6] Isabel T. Kelly, "Southern Paiute Shamanism," Anthropological Records 2, no. 4 (November 1939), 151-167, Utah Tech University Special Collections and Archives.
[7] Kelly, "Southern Paiute Shamanism," 154.
[8] Richard W. Stoffle et al., “Ghost Dancing the Grand Canyon: Southern Paiute Rock Art, Ceremony, and Cultural Landscapes,” Current Anthropology: A World Journal of the Human Sciences 41, no. 1 (February 1, 2000): 12-13, doi:10.1086/300101.
[9] Stoffle et al., “Ghost Dancing the Grand Canyon," 15.*;
Elizabeth W. Kane, A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 1872-73: Elizabeth Kane's St. George Journal (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Tanner Trust Fund, 1995), 93-96.
*Lynda D. McNeil disagrees with Stoffle et al’s interpretation that the 1890 Ghost Dance movement among the Southern Paiute was based on Wovoka’s teachings. McNeil argues that this later movement among many Southern Paiute may have instead been a continuation of the 1870 movement or even “backlash against Wovoka’s accommodationist message.” Lynda D. McNeil, “On ‘Ghost Dancing the Grand Canyon,’” Current Anthropology 42, no. 2 (April 1, 2001): 277, doi:10.1086/320008.
[10] Martha R. Alexander, “Autobiography of Martha Rees Alexander,” Dictated to Charles Wilkinson, In Washington, UT, 1951, Accessed in Utah Tech University Special Collections, 286.
[11] Robert Gardner Jr., Robert Gardner Jr.: Self History/Journal, transcribed by Reed M. Gardner (Salt Lake City: 2009), Internet Archive, 38, https://archive.org/details/RobertGardnerJrUtahPioneer/mode/2up
[12] James G. Bleak, Annals of the Southern Utah Mission, (Greg Kofford Books, 2019), 55.
[13] Bleak, Annals, 55-57.
[14] Elizabeth W. Kane, A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 1872-73: Elizabeth Kane's St. George Journal (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Tanner Trust Fund, 1995), 79.
[15] Kane, A Gentile Account, 79-82.
[16] Mary A. Hafen, Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: With Some Account of Frontier Life in Utah and Nevada, 2nd ed., (St. George, UT: Heritage Press, 1980), 44.
[17] Park, "Sunday School "Jubilee"," Deseret News (Salt Lake City), February 25, 1874, 14, Utah Digital Newspapers, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s65t4f07/2614817.
[18] Elizabeth W. Kane, A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 59.
[19] John H. Schmutz, "Interview with John Henry Schmutz," by Delmar D. Gott, transcription, interviewed November 21, 1974, The Delmar D. Gott Oral History Collection Utah Tech University Special Collections and Archives, 10-11.;
Lynne Clark, Images of Faith: A Pictorial History of St. George, Utah (Salt Lake City: Artistic Printing Company, 2012), 240.
[20] John H. Schmutz, "Interview with John Henry Schmutz," 9.;
Mary A. Hafen, Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860, 49, 61, 85.; Juanita Brooks, “This is Your Life: Mary Hafen Leavitt,” Manuscript, November 5, 1967, typescript, Utah State History, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, 3-4, https://collections.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s61c6gxs.;
Charles L. Walker, Diary of Charles Lowell Walker: Volume I, edited by A. Karl Larson and Katherine M. Larson (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1980), 268, https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/171/.
[21] Paul Dean Proctor and Morris A. Shirts, Silver, Sinners and Saints: A History of Old Silver Reef, Utah (Provo, UT: Paulmar Publishers, Inc., 1991), 87, 115-116.
[22] M. L. Garrity, "The Attraction!," The Silver Reef Miner (Silver Reef, UT), April 15, 1882, 4, Utah Digital Newspapers, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6w997ft.
[23] "The Fatal Pistol Again," The Silver Reef Miner (Silver Reef, UT), February 18, 1882, 3, Utah Digital Newspapers, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6n64kqf.;
Elaine Young, “Williams Wyatt,” 2018, Washington County Historical Society, https://wchsutah.org/people/william-wyatt1.pdf.;
Mark A. Pendleton, "Memories of Silver Reef," Utah Historical Quarterly 3, no. 4 (October 1930), 108, 117, https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/volume_3_1930.
[24] "The Greely Combination" and “Grand Social Ball,” The Silver Reef Miner (Silver Reef, UT), January 14, 1882, 3, Utah Digital Newspapers, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6548mx1.
[25] "Local Intelligence," The Silver Reef Miner (Silver Reef, UT), April 12, 1879, 3, Utah Digital Newspapers, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6b62j3d.;
"Midnight Mass,” The Silver Reef Miner (Silver Reef, UT), December 31, 1881, 3, Utah Digital Newspapers, https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s68w9cnf.
[26] "Local Intelligence." Silver Reef Miner (Silver Reef, UT). April 24, 1879, 3. Utah Digital Newspapers. https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/ark:/87278/s6t49sc6.;
Mark A. Pendleton, "Memories of Silver Reef," Utah Historical Quarterly 3, no. 4 (October 1930), 116, https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/volume_3_1930.;
Proctor and Shirts, Silver, Sinners and Saints, 89-90.
Images
Dance Orchestra, Bart Anderson Slide Collection, WASH-032, Utah Tech University Special Collections and Archives, https://archives.utahtech.edu/repositories/2/resources/43.
"The Dixie" 1914 (St. George, UT: St. George Stake Academy), digital page 7, Utah Tech University Special Collections and Archives, https://digital.library.utahtech.edu/items/show/782#?c=&m=&s=&cv=.
Horse and Wagon on Main Street, DSU photographs-St. George Related- St. George Post Office & Main Street, Accession 1900-669, Utah Tech University Special Collections and Archives.
John K. Hillers, Taʹ-vo-kok-i, or The Circle Dance, 1873, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, https://www.loc.gov/resource/stereo.1s00831/.
Silver Reef Catholic Church, Bart Anderson Slide Collection, WASH-032, Utah Tech University Special Collections and Archives, https://archives.utahtech.edu/repositories/2/resources/43.