COUNCILS AND CEREMONIES OF ADOPTION OF NEW YORK INDIANS 355 



The preliminary ceremony, called, At the Wood's Edge 



1 Greatly startled now have I been today 



By your voice coming through the woods to this clearing. 

 With a troubled mind have you come 

 Through obstacles of every kind. 



2 Continually you saw the spots where they met, 

 On whom we depended, my children 



How then can your mind be at ease? 

 Ever you saw their footprints, 



3 Those of your forefathers. And even now 

 Almost might the smoke have been seen 



Where together they smoked. How can your mind 

 Then be at ease, when weeping you come on your way? 



4 Great thanks, therefore, we give, that safely 

 You have arrived. Now then together 



Let both of us smoke. For all around indeed 

 Are hostile powers, which are thinking thus : 



5 I will frustrate their plans. Here are many thorns, 

 And here falling trees, and here the wild beasts wait. 

 Either by these might you have died, my children, 

 Or here by floods might you have been destroyed, 



6 My children ; or here by the hatchet 

 Raised in the dark, outside the house. 

 Every day by these are we wasting away. 

 Or by deadly and invisible 



7 Disease might you have been destroyed, 

 My children. Great thanks, therefore now, 

 That safely you have traversed the forest. 

 For painful would have been the results 



8 If you had perished -by the way, or startled 

 One had said : Lo ! bodies are lying yonder ; 

 Yea, and those of chiefs ! And they would think 

 In dismay, it was startling, my children. 



9 Our forefathers made the rule, 



And they said : Here shall they kindle a council fire, 

 Here at the forest's edge, they will condole each other 

 With very few words. But they have referred 



