On Nov. 2, 2011, the Piscataway Indian Singers and Dancers came to perform in Jarman Auditorium at 8:00 pm. The troupe consisted of four members: Mark Tayac, his son, Naiche Tayac, and the elder Tayac's nephews, Eagleboy Coe and Dicky Ridgeway. Explaining the identity of his nation, Mark Kayac said that the range of the Piscataway and other Eastern Woodland Algonquian speakers extended from Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware to the Ohio Valley. He also revealed that the name "Tayac" designates the Piscataway hereditary chiefs. Introducing the presentation as "sharing the beauty of our culture and traditions," Mark Tayac explained that his troupe's responsibilities extended at first to instilling cultural pride in young people. Eventually, they began to travel in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe on a thirty-year career to "change perceptions of Indians." The dancers now consist of twenty members.
The first myth Mark Tayac exposed was the Hollywood drum beat. The beat of the native drum, representative of the heartbeat, is sped up in the popular imagination to frequencies that Tayac joked was the heartbeat of a very unhealthy person. Tayac said that wrapped into the traditions of the drum were also lessons for the acceptance of religious and ethnic variety.
Next, the Piscataway demonstrated a number of powwow dances, including a grand entry dance, a war dance that Tayac connected to counting coup, and the Eastern seaboard stickball games used to settle disputes and which are the ancestors of LaCrosse. Selecting eight audience members, the group had them stand around a dancer who moved around quickly and unpredictably until he lashed out at one of the participants in a dramatic feint. By touching someone with a feather, Tayac indicated that life was being respected. Next, they demonstrated a tracking dance and a men's war fancy dance, which reflects sportsmanship and originated in the 1930s.
Next, Tayac discussed the diversity of 500 nations in the United States that are bound by the shared identity of Indian blood. The shared tradition of many native peoples was that of a gathering after dinner at which stories could be told. Another dance was held with male and female pairs, at the end of which a mock marriage was held. Afterwards, the Eagle Dance and Crowhop were demonstrated.
Before the meeting, Anna Riggs, organizer of the project, commented on several parts of the process. On her experience with the Piscataway Dancers, Riggs said,
"They got here around six o'clock. I met with them, helped them get their car situated, all of that. And then, Caitlin and I brought them to the dining hall so we could eat and get to know them better. We talked about any accommodations they would need while here, about their event, found out where they came from and got to know them a little more. Then we came over here, helped them unload all their stuff…and then we helped them take pictures…so we're trying to be as accommodating as possible."
Riggs also said, "I think it's important because it's really important that Longwood gets to see different cultures, different diverse events, and I think this culture fest week has been awesome."
Confessing that she had been in the role of Performing Arts Director for only a week and a half, Riggs said, "I just got kind of handed these events, but I've been able to make Facebook groups, flyers, and send emails to certain groups around campus that I thought might be interested. I Reached out and tried to publicize as much as I could in that week and a half."
After the event, Naiche Tayac said a few words about some cultural wares being sold at the production. He said "There's a purple shell out there on the table. It's called wampum. It's from the quahog clam shell. It was a form of money to us, it also described our stories, our legends, and what we'd do with that wampum is we'd have cutting mechanisms and we'd cut the beads out of it. And each bead would be hand cut and put on sinew, which is the dried out rawhide of a deer from [its] tendons. So we turn that strand into a belt. Just like a regular belt, they could be a few inches wide and five feet long. And it could tell a story or it could tell a song. It could tell what happened in a time period. If there were wars, if there were alliances, if there was sickness…so it could tell many different things. That's pretty much what I know about wampum. There are dream catchers up there, which symbolize catching bad dreams if they come near you. There's a circle there and nothing can come through that [but good dreams]."
He continued, saying, "That wampum out there doesn't record anything because its just a shell, but when you cut a bead, you can cut maybe twenty, thirty beads out of one little shell and then it's placed where it's supposed to be placed…just like this is placed…[He points at a section of his regalia] it goes white, it goes black, its goes turquoise and so on and if you see how that goes, that's how a wampum belt could go, it could just be changed."
Tayac, when asked if there was anything he wanted to leave with the Longwood audience, he said, "We're just like everybody else, there's nothing different except for the color of our skin, and how we grew up and how you guys grew up. We grew up in two different worlds. We have one foot in the real world and one foot in the native world… I'm no different except for when I wear my traditional clothing to show you guys my traditions that were saved during the dark ages…they were saved by the generations before us….they were passed down from one generation to the next generation to the next generation just so they wouldn't be lost."
