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We aren’t supposed to get mad. INDIAN BOY at Hoopa Jump Dance.

It was September 25, 1966. I waited inside the station wagon for the start of Hoopa’s Jump Dance. My car was one of three parked side by side on a shady terrace overlooking the Trinity River. Each one held female visitors from outside the twelve-mile-square Hoopa Reservation.

A slender elderly woman emerged from the end vehicle. In a pale blue and white polka dot pleated silk dress, matching cashmere sweater, single strand of pearls, and with white marcelled hair, she stretched stiffly, careful to protect the camera on a strap around her thin neck. She turned towards the river.

Two encampments were already set up. At the nearer one, in the shade of a huge oak tree, people sat around a picnic table, playing cards, visiting. Four women wearing aprons tended large enamel pans simmering on an iron-plate over the fire-pit. Wood shelves nailed onto a tree trunk held cans of coffee, plastic containers, pot cleaners, cartons of eggs. On the ground sat wash-tubs, stacks of firewood. At a shiny trailer house nearby teen-age girls dropped off their shell dresses, protected by plastic garment bags with long zippers.

Closer to the Trinity River out in the hot sun, a second encampment sported similar cooks and supplies, and inside an old tent, stacks of faded bedding and garments on wire hangars.

On beyond, out of sight, were Hoopa’s rebuilt sweat house and family house; and further yet, in front of a curved fence made of upright cedar planks, its Jump Dance ground.

Red and white checkered tablecloths covered the tables. Children ran around, asked for something to eat. One bright-eyed boy dashed by our three cars shouting, “We aren’t supposed

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