I spent several days at Calais, while collecting traditions with the phonograph, and also visited Pleasant Point, where I made the acquaintance of some of the most prominent Indians, including the governor. Most of them speak English very well, and are ready to grant their assistance in preserving their old stories and customs. The younger members of the tribe are able to read and write, and are acquainted with the ordinary branches of knowledge as taught in our common schools. I should judge from my own observations that the language is rapidly dying out. The white women who have married into the tribe have generally acquired the language more or less perfectly. In their intercourse with each other, Indians make use of their own language.
In taking these records with the phonograph I had an interesting experience. The first time I met Noel Josephs, I greeted him after the Zuñi fashion. I raised my hand to his mouth, and inhaled from it. He followed in identically the same manner in which a Zuñi Indian would respond. I asked him what it meant. He said that it was a way of showing friendship. He remembered that, when he was a boy, a similar mode of greeting was common among Indians.[3] Mrs. Brown recalled having seen a similar ceremony after she was received into the tribe. The meaning of this similarity I leave to others to conjecture. In a legend mentioned by Mrs. Brown concerning a game of "All-tes-teg-enuk," played by a youth against an old man, the latter, who has magic power, has several times regained his youth by inhaling the breath of his young opponent.[4]
THE SNAKE DANCE.
The Passamaquoddies, no doubt, in old times, had many dances, sacred and secular. Some of these were very different from what they now are, and in consequence it is not easy to recognize their meaning. Indians declare that in their youth dances were much more common. Possibly some of these will never be danced again. That the Micmacs, neighbors of the Passamaquoddies, had dances in which elaborate masks were worn, seems to be indicated by pictographs found on the rocks in Nova Scotia. Mrs. Brown has in her possession a head-band made of silver, similar to those worn in ancient times on festive occasions, and probably at dances. It was not necessarily a badge of a chief. In excavations made at East Machias, an Indian was found with a copper head-band and the remnant of a woven tiara. These relics are now in the hands of Dr. Shehan, of Edmunds, Maine. Copper head-bands have repeatedly been found on the skulls of Mound Indians. When a boy, I myself was present at the work of excavating an Indian burial place on the banks of Charles River, near the end of Maple Street, Watertown. With one of these skeletons a turtle shell was found, which was possibly an old Indian rattle.
One of the most interesting of the selections mentioned is the Song of the Snake Dance, No. 8. Although the ceremonial element has now disappeared from this song, it may be presumed that it originally had a religious importance similar to that of the Snake Dances of the Southwest, since the extent of the worship of the snake among North American Indians is known. The same dance is also celebrated by the Micmacs, having been performed by them during the past year. In both nations, it is generally united with other dances, and seems to be an appendage to the more formal ones.
The general impression among the Passamaquoddies is that this dance never had a sacred character. The name is said to have been derived from the sinuous course of the chain of dancers, and from its resemblance to the motion of a snake. While there is nothing to prove that it is a remnant of an ancient snake worship, still it is natural to presume that such is really the case. There are several tales relating to the manner in which men were turned into rattlesnakes, and how the noise of the rattlesnakes has its lineal descendant in the rattles of the dancers. The Indians told me of several songs used for snake dances, but in those which were sung I think I detected the same music, and am confident that the words as given occur in most of them. The discord at the end of the first line is also a feature of the snake dances which I have heard.[5]
The dance is performed at weddings and other festive occasions. It is not used alone, but only with others, and, as I am told, is employed at all times of festival.
SNAKE SONG.
The words of the first strain are as follows:—
Wăy' ho yārhnie, way ho yārhnie.