Chafe] SENECA THANKSGIVING RITUALS 5 



distinct from that wliich accompanied the initial and final group of 

 songs. The fu-st spoken interval was punctuated at several points 

 by a single beat of the drum. At its conclusion the speaker changed 

 from a speaking to a singing voice for the linguistically meaningless 

 syllables kiod: hih, and introduced the second interval of monotone 

 singing. On this occasion the syllables of the second interval were 

 the meaningless wihiyah yowihiyah. Others which occurred during 

 subsequent intervals were yowihiyah yowihiyah yowihiyah,- yowihih 

 yowihih, and to:k£S ne^ho watdkotha? konehoo^, the last meaning 'truly 

 the Thanksgiving Dance is being performed', but with the form 

 konehoo? that, intriguingly, looks like a survival of an earlier stage of 

 the word koneoo^. It is said that there is no fixed order for these 

 monotone phrases ; that the speaker intones the first one that comes 

 into his head, although he tries to avoid immediate repetition of any 

 particular one. The speaker observed privately that his mind was 

 always occupied during these intervals with the content of the 

 following speech. 



At the end of the last spoken section, which ended only a minute 

 or two before noon (Morgan, 1901, vol. 1, p. 184), the speaker uttered 

 the conventional Seneca conclusion td: ne^hoh 'that is it', and resumed 

 his place at the end of the costumed dancers for the last group of 

 songs, which were eight in number and consumed 5 minutes. Some 

 uncostumed dancers joined the others during these songs, and the 

 total number of women dancers, some accompanied by children, sur- 

 passed that in the first song group. All of the songs were repetitions 

 from the first group, in the same order but with many omissions. 



The morning concluded with announcements by several difl'erent 

 individuals, including one by the principal speaker to the effect that 

 the Bowl Game and Personal Chants would be performed on the fol- 

 lowing morning, and there was a shorter version of the Thanksgiving 

 Speech, the whole consuming about another half hour. 



The third ritual whose content is similar to that of the Thanks- 

 giving Speech and Thanksgiving Dance is the speech accompanied 

 by the burning of tobacco, called by Fenton (1936, pp. 13, 16) the 

 Tobacco Invocation. Seneca terms for it are less standardized than 

 those for the first two rituals, but it may be called either hatiye^ko:- 

 thwas 'they are burning tobacco', kay0kothw£-J 'tobacco burning', or 

 kajiyothw£-J 'dog burning'. The last name accords with the observa- 

 tions of early writers that this speech was an accompaniment to the 

 burning of the white dog, a ritual now long extinct. The Tobacco 

 Invocation is performed on the fifth day of the New Year's Ceremony 

 at Tonawanda, on the sixth day at Cattaraugus, and on the eighth 

 day at Allegany (but see Fenton, 1936, pp. 11 f.). At Allegany it is 

 also part of the third day of the Green Corn Ceremony, but is absent 



