“Human Skeleton Dance.—Given only by the Wolf clan of the Delawares. A certain dance given as a memorial to the dead was supposed to clear a way for the spirit of the deceased to the spirit land. When a member of the Wolf clan died, the flesh was stripped from the bones and buried, and the bones were dried at some private place. At the end of 12 days the skeleton would be wrapped in white buckskin and taken to a place prepared for the dance and there held up by some one. As the singers would sing the men who held the skeleton would shake it and the bones would rattle as the dancers would proceed around it. After the dance the skeleton was buried. Traditions say that in ancient times some of the head men in the Wolf clan had a dream that they must treat their dead in that way, and the custom has been handed down to them for many centuries. The other clans say the custom does not belong to them. The custom has been long dropped. There has not been a skeleton dance since 1860.”
Peyote Rite
Fig. 19.—Peyote “Button.” (Diameter, 1.9 in.)
One of the latest of introduced ceremonies, which was still much in favor with the Oklahoma Lenape when last visited by the writer, is the Peyote Rite, a cult now widespread among the tribes of the Central West, introduced among this people by an Indian named John Wilson, who obtained it, they say, from the Caddo on Washita river about the year 1890 or 1892. During this ceremony remarkable visions are produced by eating the dried top of a small cactus, the peyote ([fig. 19]), for which the cult is named, and these visions, coupled with the moral teachings embodied in the ritual, make it very attractive to the Indian, who, on joining the cult, is often persuaded to discard entirely the ancient beliefs of his own people. The writer is acquainted with two principal forms of the rite, one involving native deities only, the other, almost entirely Christian in teaching and symbolism. It is this latter form which has been adopted by the Lenape, to whom the tipi, in which the ceremony is held, is as foreign an institution as the little cactus itself, brought in from southern Texas and Mexico.
PL. IX
THE PEYOTE RITE AMONG THE LENAPE
Native Painting by Earnest Spybuck, a Shawnee