The first Thanksgiving Dinner in America, where was it eaten? Why, of
course, we think of its being eaten in old Plymouth Town, when the
Pilgrim Fathers spread their board with fish, wild turkey, geese,
ducks, venison, barley bread, Indian maize, and other good things,
and invited the Indian King Massasoit and his braves to the feast. It
was a time of rejoicing and thanksgiving for the fine harvest God had
given the Pilgrims.
But that was not the first Thanksgiving Dinner eaten in America! For
many, many years before the Pilgrims came to this land, Thanksgiving
Dinners had been given. The Red Men, the first owners of America,
held their Thanksgiving Festivals every autumn. These were in
celebration of the ripening of the corn, and in honour of their
Manitos, as they called their gods. For, until the white men came,
the Indians never heard of the all-good “Great Spirit” of Heaven.
They held other feasts, too, among them a New Year one, a Maple Sugar
Feast, a Strawberry Festival, a Bean Dance, and a Corn-gathering
Feast.
Even to-day, some Indians keep their heathen Thanksgiving at the time
of the ripening of the corn. It is called the Green Corn Dance. Many
Indians are Christians, but numbers still worship the Manitos of the
sun, moon, stars, wind, rain, thunder, and other things in Nature.
Though some of these heathen Red Men speak reverently of the Great
Spirit, they seem scarcely to understand who He is, and confuse Him
with their Manitos, as may be seen in the hymn that introduces the
Feather Dance.
Among some tribes of the Iroquois Family, in New York State, the
Green Corn Dance is still celebrated. And this is how a visitor saw
the dance at the Cattaraugus Reservation.
As the time for the Festival approached, certain men and women of
the tribe, called the “Keepers of the Faith,” began to prepare for
the dance. Every morning at sunrise, the women went to the cornfield
and picked a few ears, and took them to the Head Man at the Council
House. When he decided that the corn was sufficiently ripe, the Feast
was called.
Summons were sent to the Indians at the Tonawanda and Allegany
Reservations, bidding all meet at sunrise on the tenth of September,
in the Council House of the Cattaraugus Reservation.
On the morning of the feast, the men, “Keepers of the Faith,” arose
at sunrise, and built a fire, on which they threw an offering of
tobacco and corn, and they prayed to the Great Spirit to bless the
tribes. They then extinguished the fire, and later the women “Keepers
of the Faith” built another in the same spot.
Then the people began to arrive, all in their best clothes. While
they were waiting for the ceremonies to begin, the young men played
ball, and the girls walked about, talking with each other. Meanwhile,
the women “Keepers of the Faith,” hastened to prepare soup and
succotash, which were soon boiling in large kettles suspended over
huge, flaming logs.
After a little while the people began to move toward the Council
House, a long, low, wooden building, with a door at the northeast
end, and another at the southwest. The people entered in two lines,
the women through one door, and the men through the other. All took
their seats on benches arranged on three sides of the room. In the
centre of the room sat the singers, and the musicians with their
turtle-shell rattles.
When all was quiet, the speaker began the ceremonies by a prayer
to the Great Spirit, while the men, with bowed, uncovered
heads,--Indians do not kneel,--listened reverently.
After the prayer was finished, the speaker, lifting his voice,
addressed the Indians.
“My friends,” he said, “we are here to worship the Great Spirit. As
by our old custom, we give the Great Spirit His dance, the Great
Feather Dance. We must have it before noon. The Great Spirit sees
to everything in the morning, afterwards he rests. He gives us
land and things to live on, so we must thank Him for His ground, and
for the things it brought forth. He gave us the thunder to wet the
land, so we must thank the thunder. We must thank Ga-ne-o-di-o[2]
that we know he is in the happy land. It is the wish of the Great
Spirit that we express our thanks in dances as well as prayer. The
cousin clans are here from Tonawanda; we are thankful to the Great
Spirit to have them here, and to greet them with the rattles and
singing. We have appointed one of them to lead the dances.”
When the speaker finished, there was a pause, then a shout outside
the Council House told that the Feather Dancers were coming. They
entered the room, a long, gracefully swaying line of fifty men, clad
in Indian costume, gay with colour and nodding plumes, and with bells
adorning their leggings. Slowly and majestically they entered, and
stood for a moment near the entrance. Then the speaker began in a
high voice, the hymn of thanksgiving to the Great Spirit, while the
dancers, in single file, commenced walking slowly around the room,
keeping step with the beating of the musicians’ rattles.
Each verse of the hymn thanked the Great Spirit for some
benefit,--for water, for the animals, for the trees, for the light,
for the fruits, for the stars, and among other good things, for the
“Supporters,” the three Manito-sisters, the guardians of the Corn,
Bean, and Squash.
After each verse, the dancers quickened their steps, and danced
rapidly around the room. When the hymn was finished, the speaker
ordered the real dance to start. Then, still in single file, the
dancers began the great Feather Dance.
Erect in body, yet gracefully swaying, they moved around and
around the Council House, keeping time with the rhythmic beat of
the rattles, that sounded now slow and now fast. Lifting each foot
alternately from the floor, every dancer brought his heel down with
such force that all the legging-bells rang in time with the music. At
times the movement grew very swift, and the many lithesome twistings
and bendings of the dancers, their shouts to one another, and the
cries of the spectators, filled all with keen excitement. During the
slower movements, some of the women arose, and joined the dance,
forming an inner circle.
Then the dancers sang a weird chant, in company with the singers,
“Ha-ho!--Ha-ho!--Ha-ho!” they sang; then all present joined in the
quick refrain, “Way-ha-ah! Way-ha-ah! Way-ha-ah!” ending in a loud,
guttural shout, as the dancers bowed their heads, “Ha-i! Ha-i!”
When the noon hour came, the great Feather Dance was over, and two
huge kettles were brought in to the Council House, one full of soup,
and the other of succotash. One of the men “Keepers of the Faith,”
said a prayer of thanksgiving, in which all joined, and the food was
poured into vessels brought by the women. It was then carried to the
homes, where the Indians enjoyed eating it by their own firesides.
The feast was over for that day, but it lasted two days more, during
which the tribes gambled, danced, ate, and beat their drums. The
visitor who saw this Green Corn Festival, wrote afterward about the
closing scene, the great Snake Dance:
“The nodding plumes, the tinkling bells, the noisy rattles, the beats
of the high-strung drums, the shuffling feet and weird cries of the
dancers, and the approving shouts of the spectators, all added to the
spell of a strangeness that seemed to invest the quaint old Council
House with the supernaturalness of a dream!
“As the sun neared its setting, the dancers stopped in a quiet order,
and the speaker of the day bade farewell to the clans ... and, after
invoking the blessing of the Great Spirit, declared the Green Corn
Festival of 1890 ended.”
[2] A prophet of the Indians.