suddenly, the two men with the kaiila quirts struck her across the back and, before she could do more than cry out, she was, too, pulled to her feet and forward, on the two tethers.

She then stood, held by the tethers, wildly, before the pole.

Cancega pointed to the pole.

She looked at him, bewildered.

Then the quirts, again, struck her, and she cried out in pain.

Cancega again pointed to the pole.

Winyela then put her head down and took the pole in her small hands, and kissed it, humbly.

"Yes," said Cancega, encouraging her. "Yes."

Again Winyela kissed the pole.

"Yes," said Cancega.

Winyela then heard the rattles behind her, giving her her rhythm. These rattles were then joined by the fifing of whistles, shrill and high, formed from the wing bones of the taloned Herlit. A small drum, too, then began to sound. Its more accented beats, approached subtly but predictable, instructed the helpless, lovely dancer as to the placement and timing of the more dramatic of her demonstrations and motions.

"It is the Kaiila," chanted the men.

Winyela danced. There was dust upon her hair and on her body. On her cheeks were the three bars of greases that marked her as the property of the Kailla. Grease, too, had been smeared liberally upon her body. No longer was she a shining beauty. She was now only a filthy slave, an ignoble animal, something of no account, something worthless, obviously, but nonetheless permitted, in the kindness of the Kaiila, a woman of another people, to attempt to please the pole.

I smiled.

Was this not suitable? Was this not appropriate for her, a slave?

Winyela, kissing the pole, and caressing it, and moving about it, and rubbing her body against it, under the directions of Cancega, and guided sometimes by the tethers on her neck, continued to dance.

I whistled softly to myself.

"Ah," said Cuwignaka.

"It is the Kaiila!" chanted the men.

"I think the pole will be pleased," I said.

"I think a rock would be pleased," said Cuwignaka.

"I agree," I said.

Winyela, by the neck tethers, was pulled against the pole. She seized it, and writhed against it, and licked at it.

"It is the Kaiila!" chanted the men.

"It is the Kaiila!" shouted Cuwignaka.

A transformation seemed suddenly to come over Winyela. This was evinced in her dance.

"She is aroused," said Cuwignaka.
Winyela's Pole Dance

"Yes," I said.

She began, then, helplessly, to dance her servitude, her submission, her slavery. The dance, then, came helplessly from the depths of her. The tethers pulled her back from the pole and she reached forth for it. She struggled to reach it, writhing. Bit by bit she was permitted to near it, and then she embraced it. She climbed, then, upon the pole. There her dance, on her knees, her belly and back, squirming and clutching, continued...

Winyela now knelt on the pole and bent backwards, until her hair fell about the wood, and then she slipped her legs down about the pole and lay back on it, her hands holding to the pole behind her head. She reared helplessly on the pole, and writhed upon it, almost as though she might have been chained to it, and then, she turned about and lay on the pole, on her stomach, her thighs gripping it, her hands pushing her body up, and away from the pole, and then, suddenly, moving down about the trunk, bringing her head and shoulder down. Her red hair hung about the smooth, white wood. Her lips, again and again, pressed down upon it, in helpless kisses....

Winyela, helplessly, piteously, danced her obeisance to the great pole, and, in this, to her master, and to men...

In her dance, of course, Winyela was understood to be dancing not only her personal slavery, which she surely was, but, from the point of view of the Kaiila, in the symbolism of the dance, in the medicine of the dance, that the women of enemies were fit to be no more than the slaves of the Kaiila. I did not doubt but what the Fleer and the Yellow Knives, and other peoples, too, might have similar ceremonies, in which, in one way or another, a similar profession might take place, there being danced or enacted also by a woman of another group, perhaps even, in those cases, by a maiden of the Kaiila. I, myself, saw the symbolism of the dance, and, I think, so, too, did Winyela, in a pattern far deeper than that of an ethnocentric idiosyncrasy. I saw the symbolism as being in accord with what is certainly one of the deepest and most pervasive themes of organic nature, that of dominance and submission. In the dance, as I chose to understand it, Winyela danced the glory of life and the natural order; in it she danced her submission to the might of men and the fulfillment of her own femaleness; in it she danced her desire to be owned, to feel passion, to give of herself, unstintingly, to surrender herself, rejoicing, to service and love.

"It is the Kaiila!" shouted the men.

"It is the Kaiila!" shouted Cuwignaka.

Winyela was dragged back, toward the bottom of the pole on its tripods. There she was knelt down. The two men holding her neck tethers slipped the rawhide, between their fist and the girl's neck, under their feet, the man on her left under his right foot, and the man on her right under his left foot. But already Winyela, of her own accord, breathing deeply from the exertions of her dance, and trembling, had put her head to the dirt, humbly, before the pole. Then the tension on the two tethers was increased, the rawhide on her neck being drawn tight under the feet of her keepers. I do not think Winyela desired to raise her head. But now, of course, she could not have done so had she wished. It was held in place. I think this is the way she would have wanted it. This is what she would have chosen, to be owned, to serve, to be deprived of choice.

The men about slapped their thighs and grunted their approval. The music stopped. The tethers were removed from Winyela's neck. She then, tentatively, lifted her head. It seemed now she was forgotten.