medicine dance

American  

noun

1. a ritual dance performed by some North American Indians to invoke supernatural assistance as for driving out disease.

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Etymology

Origin of medicine dance

First recorded in 1800–10

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

medicine dance

The object of the medicine dance is to work up the dancer to a state of trance, in which he receives a revelation in regard to the matter under consideration.

From The Arrow-Maker A Drama in Three Acts by Mary Hunter Austin

When I told 'em about the offer to me of sixty or a possible sixty-five, they at once done a medicine dance.

From Ma Pettengill by Harry Leon Wilson

Occasionally there was a medicine dance away off in the woods where no one could disturb us, in which the boys impersonated their elders, Brave Bull, Standing Elk, High Hawk, Medicine Bear, and the rest.

From Indian Boyhood by Charles Alexander Eastman

It may be the boy’s medicine dance, part of the ritual which will keep harm away from him.”

From Boy Scouts in Glacier Park The Adventures of Two Young Easterners in the Heart of the High Rockies by Walter Prichard Eaton

Cloudy Sky could not, according to the laws of the Sioux, throw off his mourning, until he had killed an enemy or given a medicine dance.

From Dahcotah Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling by Mary H. (Mary Henderson) Eastman