A Little Pow, A Lot of Wow

When the Armells invited us to the Pow Wow being held at the Sho-Ban High school, I hesitated. It had been an active day and I was tired. Then, too, I'd seen Sho-Ban dancers on several occasions at the Rexburg Dance Festival and once up close when another teacher and I took our combined Junior English/Junior History class to Fort Hall.

Bu we love the Armells and couldn't stand to disappoint them, so we went. It was hot, loud, sweaty - - and absolutely wonderful!

There were more cute kids than you could shake a stick at (a behavior which I am not in the habit of doing.) Some of them had on costumes that bespoke hours and hours of hand labor.

The young men seemed magnified in body and in spirit when they boldly whirled about the gym floor, doing what is inaptly called "the chicken dance." There was nothing chicken about these guys! The serious looks on some of their faces reminded me how one of my female German ancestors shuffled off her mortal coil in the 17th Century (that's the sixteen hundreds, you know.)

And then came the ladies. I asked one man and his wife if it would be alright for me to photograph her, honestly stating that her outfit was the most beautiful thing of its kind in the building. They consented.

When I climbed back up to the bleachers, Aric asked me if I knew who the lady was. "No," I said simply. Grinning, Aric informed me that she was the girl (back in her teens) who posed for the Sacajawea dollar! She's the second photo down in the pictures you see here.

The first picture here is some high school age girl whom I caught in passing, "a target of opportunity" as pilots like to say. The Book of Mormon prophecy which says that the Lamanites will become a "delightsome people" seems already fulfilled in her artistically perfect face.

The little kids seemed delighted to be asked to pose. Some of them I got from a distance without letting them know; camera sniping, I guess you'd call it.

If you ever get the chance to spend an hour or two at one of these Pow Wows, you'll be as wowed as we were, I'm sure.