Science Quote by James Mooney

A hat in a dance sounds like nothing, until Mooney frames it as borderline heresy. The sentence is doing two things at once: it records an ethnographic detail, and it quietly stages a clash between lived practice and official rule. “On the contrary” signals that we’re in comparative mode, likely after a description of northern tribes doing it differently, and the blandness is strategic: the most charged idea here is smuggled in under the calm cadence of field notes.

The key word is “doctrine.” Mooney isn’t talking about fashion; he’s mapping belief systems as if they operate like churches, with orthodoxies and minor transgressions. That’s late-19th-century anthropology in miniature: a scientist’s urge to classify ritual into “correct” and “incorrect,” even when the community’s own boundaries may be looser, negotiated, or situational. By noting that hats were “sometimes” worn, he marks the act as an exception, then reinforces the authority of the rule by citing “strict accordance” even as he documents the rule being bent.

Subtext: cultures aren’t monoliths, and ritual isn’t a museum piece. The dancers are not merely obeying tradition; they’re interpreting it, testing it, adapting it. Mooney’s phrasing also reveals his position as an outsider who has heard the rule (perhaps from religious specialists or elders) and observed its breach (perhaps among younger people or in less formal settings). The sentence captures a familiar dynamic: institutions love clean doctrine; people live in improvisation.