Dance Songs and Questions of Intercultural Influence in Wabanaki Ceremonial Life
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Dance Songs and Questions of Intercultural Influence in Wabanaki Ceremonial Life ANN MORRISON SPINNEY Franklin & Marshall College INTRODUCTION Several genres of dances and dance songs recorded over the past century raise questions of cultural influence among Wabanaki communi ties, and between them and Iroquoian and western Algonquian peoples. Questions of cultural drift and population movement have been addressed at length by an array of scholars including Frank G. Speck, Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, Frank T. Siebert, Jr., Alvin H. Morrison, Harald E. L. Prins and Bruce J. Bourque; this paper seeks to add an additional perspective by looking at elements of ceremonial life. The paper focusses on the genre of Snake Dance songs, finding evidence that they are connected to ceremonies involved in alliances between First Nations of the Northeast.1 The questions that concern me here are those of song origin, transmis sion, and development among the Wabanaki communities. The genre I shall focus on, Snake Dance songs, is one for which documentation covers about a century and represents all of the five nations — Abenaki, Penob scot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac. Taken altogether, the sources, which include written descriptions by outside observers, record ings, and orally-transmitted information, present a complex and often contradictory history. It must be admitted that the available sources are partial, and we cannot even guess what evidence we may be missing. With this caveat, I present here some preliminary findings. The discussion centers on Passamaquoddy Snake Dances and their songs, which I have recently experienced at the Sipayik Ceremonial Days and other social 1 This paper is in part an homage to the late Frank Siebert, who directed a great deal of his attention to sorting out Penobscot linguistic developments. He was often vexed by questions similar to those I am tackling, as in his work on Proto-Algon quian words and their cultural significance. Siebert was prevented by illness from reviewing my work on songs, but despite being reduced to telephone contact his linguistic work was an inspiration and a guide, since language and song are inter related phenomena. His linguistic data on snakes was crucial in this investigation DANCE SONGS AND INTERCULTURAL INFLUENCE 335 events. Snake Dance songs were among the Fewkes recordings made in 1890, and have been a topic of great interest recently in Peskahtomuhkat- iyik. David A. Francis and Joseph A. Nicholas of the Waponahki Museum at Sipayik contributed a wealth of insight and information to this study; I am grateful for their help. The Snake Dance and its songs are part of the tradition of Wabanaki songs, and it will be necessary throughout this discussion to refer to other genres of social and ceremonial songs. My thesis is that the primarily social Snake Dance songs have close connections to ceremonial song genres associated with the Wampum ceremonies and political alliances in the Northeast. In advancing this argument, which will rely principally on musical evidence, I find that I am seconding some of the points made by Trudy Sable in her contextual study of the Micmac Serpent Dance (Sable 1998). OVERVIEW OF PASSAMAQUODDY SONGS There are many genres of Passamaquoddy songs, all artistically designed to suit their function. However, some melodies are used for several different occasions, such as dancing and greeting; and extempo rized texts are often put to the pre-existing melodies to make the song specific to the event. In the contemporary Passamaquoddy tradition, there exist some "general purpose" melodies for dancing. These are often made up of short phrases, or motives, which are repeated to make verses and refrains. Extemporizing texts for these songs is a crucial part of the singer's artistry. The dance songs share many structural features with other Wabanaki songs. They are typically made up of musical phrases, arranged in verses; the verses are repeated as needed to accompany the action (dancing). Singers today tend to string several songs together if the dance goes on for awhile. What gives any song its particular identity and allows singers to judge the integrity of a performance is the melody. Singers can and do change the pitch level (i.e., transpose) the melody between verses of a song as long as they keep the tune intact. The European concepts of "key" and "scale" appear meaningless when applied to the Passamaquoddy repertories. There is no scale typical of Passamaquoddy songs. Some use a collection of pitches that is pentatonic, 336 ANN MORRISON SPINNEY others use six pitches, others use seven. Some use both major and minor thirds in the same verse. According to elder Joseph A. Nicholas, the "core" of the Passama quoddy song tradition are those associated with ceremonies. The public ceremonies of Passamaquoddy life today are mostly intertribal, which is consistent with the historical record. Elections, gatherings and marriages are still celebrated with dances as mentioned in the Wampum records of the Wabanaki confederacy, first recorded in writing by Louis Nicholas in the late nineteenth century. The yearly public re-enactment of Wampum ceremony dances that takes place at Sipayik every August includes the Welcome Dance, Sakoms' Greeting Dance, Election Dance, War Club Dance, Peace Pipe ceremony and Marriage Dance. A Snake Dance is used to close the program. CONTEMPORARY DESCRIPTION OF THE SNAKE DANCE The Snake Dance performed today is a group dance. Participants join hands in a single line and, stepping to the beat of singing and/or drumming, they follow a leader who moves across or around the dancing space in a zigzag. The dance features a coiling and uncoiling of the line of dancers; sometimes this is the culmination of the dance. Sometimes the zigzagging is rough, making the dance into a game designed to throw dancers out of the line. Nicholas Smith (1955:34) described this as being like the children's game "Crack the Whip". This dance is unquestionably a social dance; it's a lot of fun. It is used at intertribal gatherings, and at the Sipayik Indian Day the public are encouraged to participate. On this occasion it is not rough, and I have seen it involve more than a hundred people of all ages. Currently, the songs sung for this Passamaquoddy Snake Dance are ad hoc. Singer Blanche Sockabason typically strings several dance song melodies together and extemporizes words (in the Passamaquoddy language) directing the dancers (see Transcription 1). Drum groups singing in the intertribal style have even used two-step songs, although some participants considered this unsuitable because their iambic triple meter does not match the rhythm of the Snake Dance step, a shuffle dance. (The two-step is a popular powwow dance for couples.) The Snake Dance as done at Sipayik today is similar to performances described by Nicholas Smith in the 1950s and 1960s. However, Smith was DANCE SONGS AND INTERCULTURAL INFLUENCE 337 Drum E - Ii -ya - ha e - Ii -ya - qa-nu- le, E- li-va - ha e - Ii - va - qa-nu - le. e -li-va ha - a. e - Ii - va qa-nu-te >>>=-> >>>> > > 5- > > "V . N . • " ; -0—0- CV ICa -ka\*ehk- mu - sic at -hus^os- ya - qilu, in n HD rrn rrn m: i ! I I i I i ! 1 > > >- > > >- > ;> > :>:>:>>- :>>-:>:> . 1. A :jF^ S^E 7 kiw tahqe-ssu - ssic. qey haywa- ni-hu qcy haywa- ni- hu (etc.) Transcription 1. Passamaquoddy Snake Dance song, sung by Blanche Sockabason, 13 August 1994 (Spinney Collection, excerpt). told that it was used to start an occasion of dancing by Penobscot singers. I have observed (and participated) in Snake Dances midway through an evening of social dancing during intertribal gatherings. Joseph A. Nicholas chose the Snake Dance to end the Sipayik Ceremonial Day when he was the master of ceremonies, because it was a nice way to connect with the audience, who were asked to participate. HISTORICAL DESCRIPTIONS Speck on the Penobscot Snake Dance In the early twentieth century Frank Speck noted that the Snake Dance, (pe)matagi'posi, was performed for weddings at Indian Island by Penob scot singers and dancers. It followed the Wedding Round Dance, a special dance whose squadron formations represent the families involved in the 338 ANN MORRISON SPINNEY wedding. The name described the movement: he gave the literal transla tion "coming creeping along the ground" (Speck 1940:257, 283). Speck provided conflicting information about this dance. He noted that there were two names for it: the one given above, which is descriptive, and "Yuneha", after its predominant syllables. When first introducing peme- ge 'wintowa 'gan dance songs, he described their effect as hilarious (Speck 1940:166), but later suggested that "anciently" the Snake Dance was done to imitate the movement of a serpent constellation (1940:284). Speck recorded six Penobscot Snake Dance songs; I shall discuss their melodies and texts in detail in the analytical portion of this paper. Only two transcriptions appear in his book; as some of the cylinders in the collection are broken, it cannot be ascertained what their source recordings are. Both of the transcribed songs appear to be fast dance songs. At several points, Speck (1940:284) described the complexity of the rhythm in this dance: "The song is entirely independent, in times of the rattling [accompaniment] and stamping [of the dancers]". The quintessential accompaniment for this dance was the shot horn rattle, halonossis. On the recordings from the Speck collection, one can hear a lot of noise over the singing. While presumably this is partly the noise of the recording machine, one Penobscot elder and several Passama quoddy singers have told me that the rhythm of this noise sounds like the way dance leaders used to beat the rattle for this dance.