"The Texas Cattle Country and Cowboy Square Dance" – Olcutt Sanders
This article, scholarly yet accessible, provides an excellent look at square dancing in west Texas in the late 1800s. He starts with a look at the conditions that set this region apart from others:
"The West Texas cattle country as distinct from the East Texas cotton culture and the northern Great Plains, however, is a clear sub-region. ... It is my intention to consider one West Texas cattle country institution—the traditional square dance in relation to the regional setting. Some of the factors might be: remoteness from population centres, relative scarcity of women, a marked cultural unity, social democracy, frontier pace of living, informal social controls, and certain specific aspects of the occupation."
He looks at the role that the vast distances and difficulties of transportation played in affecting the social life on the frontier, discusses musicians, and describes the social makeup:
"Men were scarce and women were scarcer. ... For the first grand ball in Amarillo, marking the formal opening of the Polk County courthouse in 1888, five ladies and more than a hundred men attended; some of the cowboys had ridden 75 miles for the event."
He notes the similarities between the dances of the Southeast and those found in West Texas:
"It is estimated that 90 per cent. of cowboys at the beginning of the trail-driving period were from the South-east. Though the Southern "big set" of more than four couples has not been retained in West Texas (it is known somewhat in East Texas), many of the figures and much of the patter would appear to have Southern roots. ... Of about 1OO South-eastern square dance figures I included in a list in the Southern Folklore Quarterly (December, 1942), about a third were known also in the Southwest. The music perhaps even more shows its Southern origins."
Olcutt discusses the several aspects of the caller's patter:
"The work lingo found its place in the colourful vocabulary of the dance callers. The square dance call has offered a fair opportunity for reflecting the culture of the region. In the first place, though the basic figure is pretty well set, a great deal is left to the discretion of the caller; he is in a sense a creative artist who leads the dancers through a series of movements as he sees fit. In the second place, the square dance call in the South-west is seldom bound to a special tune and is thereby more flexible than a song. To fill the gap until the dancers are ready for the next direction and to add spirit to the dance, the caller employs traditional or impromptu patter. (Some claim this to be a post-Civil War innovation.)"
Moving beyond the 19th century, he examines more recent changes in square dancing:
"... the characteristics I have outlined are most readily pointed out with fewest exceptions in the period from 1865 to 1885. Nonetheless, the square dance is still to be found rather widely in Texas to-day. Let us consider briefly how changes in characteristics of the region have affected the dance.
"With more frequent dances and wider contact, the repertoire of the individual caller has grown from 15 simple figures to 50 or more, including a number of intricate ones. No longer are dancers satisfied to repeat a figure during the evening, and callers are tending more and more to use 2 to 4 distinct major figures in a single dance. The calls are becoming fancier and showing some more modern allusions in the patter. Round (couple) dances have in some places. crowded the squares nearly off the programme, though among some more ardent modern square dance groups the trend is now away from round dances."
Writing in 1951, Sanders looks at the changes he sees happening in the square dance and correctly predicts the influence that will be played by this region:
"Literally thousands of dancers and large numbers of spectators overflow gymnasium or coliseum for occasional citywide and regional festivals, while hundreds of clubs meet weekly all over the state. And though there has been considerable borrowing of figures from other regions, the basic style has not been seriously altered. Singing calls, widespread in the East, are slow to take hold in Texas, for example. If any style is going to dominate urban dancing over the country, it is as likely to be the South-west and the kindred West as any other."
Subjects: Traditional Western (pre-1940)
Tags: cowboy, Olcutt Sanders, Texas, West Texas
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This article, scholarly yet accessible, provides an excellent look at square dancing in west Texas in the late 1800s. He starts with a look at the conditions that set this region apart from others:
"The West Texas cattle country as distinct from the East Texas cotton culture and the northern Great Plains, however, is a clear sub-region. ... It is my intention to consider one West Texas cattle country institution—the traditional square dance in relation to the regional setting. Some of the factors might be: remoteness from population centres, relative scarcity of women, a marked cultural unity, social democracy, frontier pace of living, informal social controls, and certain specific aspects of the occupation."
He looks at the role that the vast distances and difficulties of transportation played in affecting the social life on the frontier, discusses musicians, and describes the social makeup:
"Men were scarce and women were scarcer. ... For the first grand ball in Amarillo, marking the formal opening of the Polk County courthouse in 1888, five ladies and more than a hundred men attended; some of the cowboys had ridden 75 miles for the event."
He notes the similarities between the dances of the Southeast and those found in West Texas:
"It is estimated that 90 per cent. of cowboys at the beginning of the trail-driving period were from the South-east. Though the Southern "big set" of more than four couples has not been retained in West Texas (it is known somewhat in East Texas), many of the figures and much of the patter would appear to have Southern roots. ... Of about 1OO South-eastern square dance figures I included in a list in the Southern Folklore Quarterly (December, 1942), about a third were known also in the Southwest. The music perhaps even more shows its Southern origins."
Olcutt discusses the several aspects of the caller's patter:
"The work lingo found its place in the colourful vocabulary of the dance callers. The square dance call has offered a fair opportunity for reflecting the culture of the region. In the first place, though the basic figure is pretty well set, a great deal is left to the discretion of the caller; he is in a sense a creative artist who leads the dancers through a series of movements as he sees fit. In the second place, the square dance call in the South-west is seldom bound to a special tune and is thereby more flexible than a song. To fill the gap until the dancers are ready for the next direction and to add spirit to the dance, the caller employs traditional or impromptu patter. (Some claim this to be a post-Civil War innovation.)"
Moving beyond the 19th century, he examines more recent changes in square dancing:
"... the characteristics I have outlined are most readily pointed out with fewest exceptions in the period from 1865 to 1885. Nonetheless, the square dance is still to be found rather widely in Texas to-day. Let us consider briefly how changes in characteristics of the region have affected the dance.
"With more frequent dances and wider contact, the repertoire of the individual caller has grown from 15 simple figures to 50 or more, including a number of intricate ones. No longer are dancers satisfied to repeat a figure during the evening, and callers are tending more and more to use 2 to 4 distinct major figures in a single dance. The calls are becoming fancier and showing some more modern allusions in the patter. Round (couple) dances have in some places. crowded the squares nearly off the programme, though among some more ardent modern square dance groups the trend is now away from round dances."
Writing in 1951, Sanders looks at the changes he sees happening in the square dance and correctly predicts the influence that will be played by this region:
"Literally thousands of dancers and large numbers of spectators overflow gymnasium or coliseum for occasional citywide and regional festivals, while hundreds of clubs meet weekly all over the state. And though there has been considerable borrowing of figures from other regions, the basic style has not been seriously altered. Singing calls, widespread in the East, are slow to take hold in Texas, for example. If any style is going to dominate urban dancing over the country, it is as likely to be the South-west and the kindred West as any other."