SUN DANCE [FURTHER CONSIDERATIONS]. The Plains Indian Sun Dance is typically a ceremony of about twelve days duration. Three to four days of this period consist of the dance itself, danced by men (and, increasingly, women) who commit themselves to a self-sacrificing discipline of abstinence from both food and water throughout the dance. Typically, the four days before the dancing are set aside as a period of preparation and purification and the four days following are set aside for a series of ceremonies that bring the whole to a close.

The historical tradition was to hold the Sun Dance in an elevated place, usually on a plateau. With the advent of the reservation era and federal prohibitions against observing the ceremony, the sites were often moved to sheltered and hidden places in physical depressions in the landscape where the ceremony could avoid...