Probably less than a minute, b&w, silent.
Source : revised Lumière catalogue no. 96 (1000)
This “view” was shot by the leading Lumière cameraman, Gabriel Veyre, on 2 or 3 September 1898, when he was travelling through Canada on his way to Japan. It seems to be the only “view” that Veyre shot while in Canada, though it is possible that others may not have survived.
It is described in the Lumière catalogue as showing a dance involving three men and as being shot on Kahnawake, the Mohawk reservation on the south side of the St. Lawrence river across from Montréal.
As an example of early footage of North American Native peoples shot on location, this “view” is second only to the footage of the Snake Dance at the Hopi Orayvi pueblo and of a Navajo “tournament”, shot some two weeks earlier, in August 1898, by Burton Holmes’s cameraman Oscar Depue. It is certainly the first moving image film of a Canadian indigenous group.
It also predates, albeit by only a matter of two or three days, the celebrated footage shot on 5 and 6 September 1898 by Alfred Haddon on Mer Island in the Torres Strait, which is commonly said to be the first example of an ethnographic film shot in the field.
Text: Aubert and Seguin 1996: 70.
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