If you’ve ever watched much of the Three Stooges, you’ve seen it: One of them drops a weight–it might be a large rock, or a cannonball, or what have you–on his foot. Then the injured Stooge starts hopping around the way you do when you hurt your foot, saying, Ow-ow-ow!. Then the other two start hopping around doing a strange dance, shouting something like, “Hyutya-hah! Hyutha-ho! Hyutyahah!..” and so on.
My question is, what if any was the cultural reference there? Did a Riverdance troupe tour the States in 1938? Or is it some kind of American folk dance now forgotten?
That sounds right to me. Many old movies had stereotyped Indians doing a dance around a campfire in that fashion, and making those grunting sounds. These were the same Indians who said “Ugh” and “How.” We don’t see it any more because it was a stereotype, rolling all Indiian tribes into one made-up culture.