At the June ceremony fresh strawberries were made into a drink for the people, which reminds one of the Iroquois Strawberry Dance, or Dance of First Fruits, as it is sometimes called. Strawberries were dried at this time to make a drink for the Winter Ceremony.
ARRANGEMENT OF THE BIG HOUSE
Fig. 14.—Drum of dried deerskin, Minsi type. E. T. Tefft collection, American Museum of Natural History. (Length 16.7 in.)
Fig. 15.—a, Drumstick, Minsi type; b, Prayerstick. E. T. Tefft collection, American Museum of Natural History. (Length of a, 19 in.)
Like the Unami Big House, that of the Minsi had a large central post bearing carved faces; but, unlike that of the Unami, there was a second short post, near the central one, upon which was hung, for each ceremony, a raw fresh deerskin with the head and horns at the top. This feature, however, corresponds with the second form of the Annual Ceremony noted among the Lenape in Oklahoma and also recorded by Zeisberger in Pennsylvania. Near this central post the singers sat, and beat with four carved sticks upon a dry deerhide folded into a square, in lieu of a drum ([fig. 14]), differing from the Unami form, which is a rolled dry deerskin upon which are tied several slats of wood ([fig. 8]). The drumsticks are flat, resembling those of the Unami, as each bears a face carved upon one side, but differ from them in the form of the forked end, and in width. Some, it is said, represented women, the breasts being indicated as among the Unami, but this feature does not appear in the set collected by the writer at Grand River reserve ([fig. 15, a]), which the Indians said were representative of the Minsi type.
There were two poles laid along on each side from end to end of the Big House to divide the dancing place in the center from the sitting places on the side, which were covered with a special kind of leaves. Along these poles twelve little sumach sticks ([fig. 15, b]), peeled and painted, were laid for twelve people to hold in their hands, and tap on the poles in time to the music. There were also provided a turtle rattle, which was placed at the foot of the central pole; a fire-drill which Nellis Timothy thinks was worked on the “pump-drill” principle, like that of the Unami, and a lot of entirely new and unused bowls and spoons of bark. Unlike the Unami custom, both doors of the Big House were used, the people always going in at the east door and coming out at the west, and here also (like the Unami) the ashes were carried out. “The Sun and everything else goes toward the west,” say the Minsi, in explanation, “even the dead when they die.”