“When the dance is over all the people go out and stand in a single line from east to west with their faces to the south. Then they kneel down and pray, and then go home. We do not know the origin of the worship dance, but the old Indians claim that the Great Spirit came many years ago and instructed it and also gave them the wampum.”
In spite of several inaccuracies, such as the statement that the people face south (instead of east) while praying after the ceremony, this account is valuable on account of the additional data it furnishes on several points of interest, especially the tradition concerning the prophecy of the coming of the whites.
Another Form of the Annual Ceremony
It appears that in former years there was, in addition to the rite just described, another form of the Annual Ceremony practised by the Lenape, before their removal to what is now Oklahoma from Kansas, where the last man to “bring in” such a meeting was John Sarcoxie, now dead.
The ceremony, which was called MuxhatoLʹzing, seems, from the accounts given the writer by his informants, to have taken place in a similar building, and to have been similar in ritual to that just described, except that it was held for only eight days instead of twelve, and that, after the return of the hunters the skin of one of the deer they had brought in was stuffed with grass and stood up by the central post of the Big House, antlers and all, while about its neck hung a string of wampum—perhaps as a propitiatory offering.
Moreover on the morning of the last day of the ceremony a large sweathouse was built and stones heated; then about noon the men who had been reciting their visions went into it, each taking one of the hot stones with him. This privilege was not confined to the actual celebrants however, for every one blessed by a guardian spirit even if they had not sung their visions in the meeting, was entitled to carry in a stone and join them.
The entrance was then closed and water poured upon the stones; and while the steam rose and the sweathouse grew hotter and hotter the perspiring occupants prayed to their guardian spirits and recited their visions. These finished, with a shout of “There go our prayers to Those Above,” the cover was suddenly snatched from the sweathouse so that the steam it had contained rose in a puff. If the steam cloud went straight up into the air it was thought that the prayers would be heard and answered, and that all was well, but if it broke and spread out the people felt that something had gone wrong, and that their prayers were of no avail.
In endeavoring to explain the presence of such variations of the Annual Ceremony, it should be remembered that the Lenape now in Oklahoma whom the writer has called for convenience “Unami,” are not really pure descendants of this tribe, but probably have a large proportion of the blood of the Unala‛ʹtko or Unalachtigo, whose dialect, according to Heckewelder, was very similar, and a smaller proportion of Minsi and even Nanticoke blood. Perhaps then the first form of Annual Ceremony described may have originally been purely Unami, and the second Unalachtigo, or Minsi, or vice versa; but later, when the remnants of these tribes became amalgamated their mixed descendants inherited both forms.
The second form seems to be a variant of the rite mentioned by Zeisberger[49] who describes it as follows: