Other officers selected for the meeting are a speaker (usually at the time of the writer’s visit, Chief Charley Elkhair), two singers, called Taleʹgunŭk, “Cranes,” whose duty it is to beat the dry deerskin drum and sing the necessary songs, and a chief hunter who is supposed to provide venison for the feast.
PREPARATIONS
Fig. 8.—Ceremonial fire-drill used at the Annual Ceremony. (Length of shaft, 29.5 in.)
Arrived at the Big House, the attendants begin at once to prepare the building for use after its year of idleness. The first act of the men is to make mortar of mud, in the old style, and stop the cracks between the logs of the house. Then they cut two forked saplings, and set them in the ground about ten feet apart, some distance in front of the Big House (see [pl. VII]); upon these is laid a pole, running east and west, to support the twenty-gallon kettle used in preparing hominy for the feast. After this they gather about a cord of wood for the fires inside the Big House and the cooking fire outside. Then the first night, a fire pure and undefined by the white man and his matches, is made with a fire-drill ([fig. 8]). This is operated on the principal of a pump-drill, like the ceremonial fire-drills of the Iroquois. This fire, and this only, may be used in the temple, and no one is permitted to take it outside for any purpose.
PL. VI
LENAPE ANNUAL CEREMONY IN PROGRESS
Native Painting by Earnest Spybuck, a Shawnee