22 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 48 



a snake. Soon the coil becomes so close it is impossible to move farther; thereupon 

 the participants release their hold on one another and cease dancing. As will be 

 seen, the song belonging to this dance is very simple, but it is repeated many, many 

 times, being sung during the entire time consumed by the dance, said to be an hour 

 or more. This dance is shown in plate 22. The snake dance closed the ceremony. 



d: 



^^ipll 



Ta yo yve ha ta yo we ha ta yo we ha ta yo we ha 



The Bayou Lacomb Choctaw always danced at night, never during 

 dayhght hours, the snake dance, the last of the seven, ending at 

 dawn. Tliis agrees with the statement made by Bossu just one and 

 a half centuries ago that ''nearly all the gatherings of the Chactas 

 take place at night."" 



Neither the men nor the women of this branch of the tribe appear 

 to know of any special dances, although it is highly probable that in 

 former years distinct ceremonies were enacted on particular occasions. 



Until a few years ago there were several hundred Choctaw living 

 in the vicinity of Bayou Lacomb within a radius of a few miles. 

 Their dance ground was in the pine woods a short distance north of 

 the place where the few remaining members of the tribe now dwell. 

 There they would gather and with many fires blazing would dance 

 throughout the night. No whites ever were permitted to witness 

 the dance. It is said that if the Indians suspected a white man was 

 watching them they would extinguish the fires at once and remain 

 in darkness. During the dances one man acted as leader. He held 

 two short sticks, hitting one on the other to keep time for the singing, 

 as shown in plate 21. 



The only musical instrument known to the Choctaw of Bayou 

 Lacomb is the drum (the'ha), a good example of which is repre- 

 sented in plate 7. This is 30 inches in height and 15 inches in diam- 

 eter. It is made of a section of a black gum tree; the cylinder 

 wall is less than 2 inches in thickness. The head consists of a piece of 

 untanned goat skin. The skin is stretched over the open end, while 

 wet and pliable, and is passed around a hoop made of hickory about half 

 an inch thick. A similar hoop is placed above the first. To the second 

 hoop are attached four narrow strips of rawhide, each of which is 

 fastened to a peg i)assing diagonally through the wall of the drum. 

 To tighten the head of the drum it is necessary merely to drive the 

 peg farther in. In this respect, as well as in general form, the drum 

 resembles a specimen from Virginia in the British Museum,'' as well 

 as the drum even now used on the west coast of Africa. It is not 

 possible to say whether this instrument is a purely American form or 

 whether it shows the influence of the negro. 



1 Nouveaux voyages aux Indes occidentales, ii, 104, Paris, 1708 [written in 1759]. 



b The Sloane Collection in the British Museum, American Anthropologist, n. s., vni, no. 4, 671-685, 1906. 



