Men's & Woman's Categories Smoke Dancers @ The 170th Tuscarora Nation Annual Picnic on Saturday July 11th 2015 in Tuscarora Nation Reservation, New York, USA.
Lead singer & drummer Jordan Smith is from the Bear Clan
A Haudenosaunee dance, Smoke Dance is uncommon outside of the eastern region. As with many native dances, it has multiple tales of origin. The home-grown theory: At Haudenosaunee longhouses, the open fire pits would create thick smoke. Young men would dance to create enough air movement to push the smoke upward toward longhouse vents; young women would help out with movements of their own. Yet though this is the theory that most closely relates to the dance’s name, it’s also the most unlikely. Osage and Haudenosaunee elders talk of the dance as a transfer between nations: The Osage did a dance until the mid-19th century that accompanied gift-giving, either to visitors or within the Osage community. Key participants smoked pipes, hence the dance’s terminology of Smoke Dance.
But the likeliest origin of Smoke Dance probably has little to do with smoke, and more to do with war. The Six Nations had dances that would help warriors prepare for battle; once nations stopped warring, the dances became ceremonial, an honoring of those who came before