The ordinary word for house is still wikwam, wigwam, while a brush-hut is called pimoakan. I was particular to inquire if, as far as now known, the Lenâpé ever occupied communal houses, as did the Iroquois. Mr. Anthony assured me that this was never the custom of his nation, so far as any recollection or tradition goes. Every family had its own lodge. I called his attention to the discovery in ancient village sites in New Jersey of two or three fire-places in a row, and too close to belong to different lodges. This has been adduced by Dr. C. C. Abbott as evidence of communal dwellings. He replied that these were the sites of the village council-houses; he himself could remember some with two or three fires; but their only permanent occupants were the head chief with his wives and children.
Though most of the national games are no longer known to the rising generation, in my informant’s boyhood they still figured conspicuously by the native firesides, where now “progressive euchre” and the like hold sway. One such was qua'quallis. In this a hollow bone is attached by a string to a pointed stick. The stick is held the hand, and the bone is thrown up by a rapid movement, and the game is to catch the bone, while in motion, on the pointed end of the stick. It was a gambling game, often played by adults.
A very popular sport was with a hoop, tautmusq, and spear or arrow, allunth. The players arranged themselves in two parallel lines, some forty feet apart, each one armed with a reed spear. A hoop was then rolled rapidly at an equal distance between the lines. Each player hurled his spear at it, the object being to stop the hoop by casting the spear within its rim. When stopped, the shaft must lie within the hoop, or the shot did not count.
A third game, occasionally seen, is maumun'di. This is played with twelve flat bones, usually those of a deer, and a bowl of wood, constructed for the purpose. One side of each bone is white; the other, colored. They are placed in the bowl, thrown into the air, and caught as they descend. Those with the white side uppermost are the winning pieces. Bets usually accompany this game, and it had, in the old days, a place in the native religious rites; probably as a means of telling fortunes.
The Delawares on the Ontario Reservation have long since been converted to Christianity, and there is little trace left of their former pagan practices. If they remain anywhere, it is in their medical rites. I inquired particularly if there are any remnants of the curious adoration of the sacred twelve stones, described by Zeisberger a century and a quarter ago. I found that the custom of the “sweat-lodge,” a small hut built for taking sweat-baths, still prevails. The steam is generated by pouring water on hot stones. This is done by the “medicine-man,” who is known as quechksa'pict. He brings in one stone after another, and pours water upon it until it ceases “to sing;” and invariably he uses precisely twelve stones.
Probably some of the more benighted still seek to insure the success of their crops by offering food to the m’sink. This is a false face, or mask, rudely cut from wood to represent the human visage, with a large mouth. The victuals are pushed into the mouth, and the genius is supposed to be thus fed.
Our word cantico, applied to a jollification, and by some etymologists, naturally enough, traced to the Latin cantare, in reality is derived from the Lenâpé gentkehn, to sing and dance at the same time. This was their most usual religious ceremony, and to this day gendtoma means “to begin religious services,” either Christian or heathen; and gendtowen signifies “to be a worshipper.” These dances were often connected with sacred feasts, toward which each participant contributed a portion of food. To express such a communal religious banquet they used the term w’chindin, and for inviting to one, wingindin; and they were clearly distinguished from an ordinary meal in common, an eating together, tachquipuin or tachquipoagan.
My informant fully believes that there is yet much medical knowledge held secretly by the old men and women. He has known persons bitten by the rattlesnake who were promptly and painlessly cured by a specific known to these native practitioners. It is from the vegetable materia medica, and is taken internally. They also have some surgical skill. It was interesting to learn that an operation similar to trephining has been practiced among the Lenâpé time out of mind for severe headaches. The scalp on or near the vertex is laid open by a crucial incision, and the bone is scraped. This perhaps explains those trepanned skulls which have been disinterred in Peru and other parts of America.
The national legends have mostly faded out, but the Lenâpé perfectly remember that they are the “grandfather” of all the Algonkin tribes, and the fact is still recognized by the Chipeways and some others, whose orators employ the term numoh'homus, “my grandfather,” in their formal addresses to the Lenâpé. The old men still relate with pride that, in the good old times, before any white man had landed on their shores, “the Lenâpé had a string of white wampum beads, wapakeekq’, which stretched from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and on this white road their envoys travelled from one great ocean to the other, safe from attack.”
There are still a few among them who pretend to some knowledge of the art of reading the wampum belts. The beads themselves are called keekq’; a belt handed forth at a treaty is nochkunduwoagan, literally, “an answering;” and after the treaty has been ratified the belt is called aptunwoagan, the covenant.