Buffalo Dance (1894)

Directed by

William K.L. Dickson, William Heise

Genre

documentary film, short film, silent film

Country

United States

Runtime

16 min

Rating

4.8 of 10 from 45 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is a very short silent film from 1894 showing three Sioux dancers and two drummers performing in a studio. The dancers wear traditional costumes and paint as they move in a circle to drumming.

oldsilentshortstagedhistoricalobservationalprimitivearchive-like

What happens

Buffalo Dance is an 1894 black-and-white silent film from Edison Studios, produced by William K. L. Dickson with William Heise as cinematographer. Filmed on a single reel, using standard 35 mm gauge, it has a 16-second runtime. The film, with English intertitles, was shot in Edison's Black Maria studio at the same time as Sioux Ghost Dance. These are two of the earliest films made which feature Native Americans. According to the Edison catalog, the performers in both films were Sioux people wearing traditional costumes and war paint. All were veterans of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Buffalo Dance has three dancers and two drummers. Hair Coat, Last Horse and Parts His Hair dance in a circle while drummers Pine and Strong Talker provide their rhythm. Native Americans were among the first subjects of the new film media, with Thomas Edison recording Hopi Snake Dance for the Chicago world's fair in 1893, followed by Sioux Ghost Dance and Buffalo Dance in 1894, and later Indian Day School in 1894 and Indian Wars Refought in 1914. The silent film era crystalized stereotypical representations of Native Americans. Film historian Alex Bordino notes that films such as Buffalo Dance and Sioux Ghost Dance offered little, if any, educational value since they lacked any commentary. Instead, they gave viewers "a new kind of endlessly available tourist gaze for the masses, recycling contemporary racist modes of understanding 'exotic' cultures; and they challenged already prevailing notions of Native Americans as an extinct people relegated to dusty anthropological monographs and sepia-toned photographs". (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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