Edith Thaxton on Dances in the Bighorn Basin

Edith Thaxton, born in 1898, was interviewed in December 1987 by volunteers from the Washakie Museum in Worland, Wyo. This excerpt was prepared for the museum’s summer 2012 exhibit about early settlers in Wyoming’s Bighorn Basin, Voices of the Basin: History in their Own Words. Thaxton recalled the dances of her youth.

Transcript:

We used to have dances around the different homes where they had places big enough to dance, the neighbors would get together and there were several of the men that played the violin and once in a while there’d be somebody that’d have an organ that they’d second on.   And we went to these dances and at that time the girls didn’t smoke or drink, either one.  We went to the dance and we stayed in the hall.  We went horseback or with a team.

Transcription by Washakie Museum and Cultural Center, Worland, Wyo.