128 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



occasion was indeed peculiar. A kettle being brought, hot and 

 smoking from the fire, and placed in the center of the council 

 house, there proceeded from a single person, in a high shrill key, 

 a prolonged and monotonous sound, resembling that of the syllable 

 wah or yah. This was immediately followed by a response from 

 the whole multitude, uttering in a low and profoundly guttural but 

 protracted tone, the syllable wke or swe, and this concluded grace. 

 It was impossible not to be somewhat mirthfully effected at the 

 first hearing of grace said in this novel manner. It is, however, 

 pleasurable to reflect that the Indians recognize the duty of ren- 

 dering thanks to the Divine Being in some formal way, for the 

 bounties and enjoyments which he bestows; and were an Indian to 

 attend a public feast among his pale faced brethern he would be 

 effected, perhaps to a greater degree of marvel, at witnessing a 

 total neglect of this ceremony, than we were at his singular way 

 of performing it. 



After supper commenced the dances. All day Tuesday, and on 

 Wednesday, up to the time that the places of the deceased sachems 

 had been filled, everything like undue joy fulness had been restrained. 

 This was required by the respect customarily due to the distin- 

 guished dead. But now, the bereaved sachemships being again filled, 

 all were to give utterance to gladness and joy. A short speech 

 from Captain Frost, introductory to the employments of the evening, 

 was received with acclamatory approbation; and soon eighty or 

 ninety of these sons and daughters of the forest — the old men 

 and the young, the maidens and matrons — were engaged in the 

 dance. It was indeed a rare sight. 



Only two varieties of dancing were introduced the first evening — 

 the trotting dance and the fish dance. The figures of either are 

 exceedingly simple, and but slightly different from each other. In 

 the first named, the dancers all move round a circle, in a single 

 file, and keeping time in a sort of trotting step to an Indian song 

 of Yo-ho-ha, or yo-ho-ha-ha-ho, as sung by the leaders, or occa- 

 sionally by all conjoined. In the other, there is the same movement 

 file round a circle, but every two persons, a man and a woman, or 

 two men, face each other, the one moving forward and the other 

 backward, and all keeping step to the music of the singers, who 

 are now, however, aided by a couple of tortoise or turtle shell 

 rattles or an aboriginal drum. At regular intervals there is a sort 

 of cadence in the music, during which a change of position by all 

 the couples take place, the one who had been moving backward 



