Piqua Shawnee - Green Corn Ceremony

The Green Corn Ceremony (Wikipedia)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sioux Green Corn Dance c. 1860

The Green Corn Ceremony (Busk) is an annual ceremony practiced among various Native American peoples associated with the beginning of the yearly corn harvest. Busk is a term given to the ceremony by white traders, the word being a corruption of the Creek word puskita for "a fast".^[1] These ceremonies have been documented ethnographically throughout the North American Eastern Woodlands and Southeastern tribes.^[2] Historically, it involved a first fruits rite in which the community would sacrifice the first of the green corn to ensure the rest of the crop would be successful. These Green Corn festivals were practiced widely throughout southern North America by many tribes evidenced in the Mississippian people and throughout the Mississippian Ideological Interaction Sphere. Green Corn festivals are still held today by many different Southeastern Woodland tribes. The Green Corn Ceremony typically occurs in late July–August, determined locally by the ripening of the corn crops.^[1] The ceremony is marked with dancing, feasting, fasting and religious observations.

Traditions

The Green Corn Ceremony is a celebration of many types, representing new beginnings. Also referred to as the Great Peace Ceremony,^[1] it is a celebration of thanksgiving to Hsaketumese (The Breath Maker) for the first fruits of the harvest, and a New Year festival as well.
The Busk is the celebration of the New Year, so at this time all offenses are forgiven except for rape and murder, which are executable or banishable offenses. In modern tribal towns and Stomp Dance societies only the ceremonial fire, the cook fires and certain other ceremonial objects will be replaced. Everyone usually begins gathering by the weekend prior to the ceremony, working, praying, dancing and fasting off and on until the big day.
The whole festival tends to last seven-eight days, if you include the historical preparation involved (without the preparation, it lasts about four days).

Day One

The first day of the ceremony, people set up their campsites on one of the square ceremonial grounds.^[3] Following this, there is a feast of the remains of last year's crop, after which all the men of the community begin fasting (historically, the women were considered too weak to participate^[1]). That night there is a social stomp dance, unique to the Muscogee and Southeastern cultures.

Day Two

Before dawn on the second day, four brush-covered arbors are set up on the edges of the ceremonial grounds, one in each of the sacred directions.^[3] For the first dance of the day, the women of the community participate in a Ribbon or Ladies Dance, which involves fastening rattles and shells to their legs perform a purifying dance with special ribbon-clad sticks to prepare the ceremonial ground for the renewal ceremony.^[4] The ceremonial fire is set in the middle of four logs laid crosswise, so as to point to the four directions. The Mico (head priest) takes out a little of each of the new crops (not just corn, but beans, squash, wild plants, and others) rubbed with bear oil, and it is offered together with some meat as "first-fruits" and an atonement for all sins.^[1] The fire (which has been re-lit and nurtured with a special medicine by the Mico) will be kept alive until the following year's Green Corn Ceremony. In traditional times, the women would sweep out their cook-fires and the rest of their homes and collect the filth from this, as well as any old clothing and furniture to be burnt and replaced with new items for the new year.^[1][3] The women then bring the coals of the fire into their homes, to rekindle their home fires. They can then bake the new fruits of the year over this fire (also to be eaten with bear oil). Many Creeks also practice the sapi or ceremonial scratches, a type of bloodletting in the mid morning, and in many tribes the men and women might rub corn milk, ash, white clay, or analogous mixtures over themselves and bathe as a form of purification.^[4]
They also drink a medicine referred to as passv,^[3] also referred to as the "White Drink." (English traders referred to it as the "Black Drink" due to its dark liquid which froths white when shaken before drinking). This White Drink, known to strangers as Carolina Tea, is a caffeine-laden mixture of seven to fourteen different herbs, the main ingredient being assi-luputski, Creek for "small leaves" of Yaupon Holly. This medicine was intended to help receive purification, as it is a purgative when consumed in mass amounts. (Historically, only men drank enough of the liquid to throw up.) ^[1] The purgative was consumed to clean the dietary tract of last year's crop and to truly renew oneself for the new year.

Day Three

While the second day tends to focus on the women's dance, the third is focused on the men's.^[3]
After the purification of the second day, men of the community perform the Feather Dance to heal the community.
The fasting usually ends by supper-time after the word is given by the women that the food is prepared, at which time the men march in single-file formation down to a body of water, typically a flowing creek or river for a ceremonial dip in the water and private men’s meeting. They then return to the ceremonial square and perform a single Stomp Dance before retiring to their home camps for a feast. During this time, the participants in the medicine rites are not allowed to sleep, as part of their fast. At midnight a Stomp Dance ceremony is held, which includes feasting and continues on through the night. This ceremony usually ends shortly after dawn.

Day Four

The fourth day has friendship dances at dawn, games, and people later pack up and return home with their feelings of purification and forgiveness. Fasting from alcohol, sexual activity, and open water will continue for another four days.

Symbolism

Puskita, commonly referred to as the "Green Corn Ceremony" or "Busk," is the central and most festive holiday of the traditional Muscogee people. It represents not only the renewal of the annual cycle, but of the spirit and traditions of the Muscogee. This is representative of the return of summer, the ripening of the new corn, and the common Native American traditions of environmental and agricultural renewal.
Historically in the Seminole tribe, 12-year-old boys are declared men at the Green Corn Ceremony, and given new names by the chief as a mark of their maturity.

Tribal Participation

Several tribes still participate in these ceremonies each year, but tribes who have historic tradition within the ceremony include the Iroquois, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes. Each of these tribes may have their own variations of celebration, dances and traditions, but each performs a new-year's ceremony involving fasting and several other comparisons each year.

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The Trail of Tecumseh (1917) by Paul G. Tomlinson

The Trail of Tecumseh

by Tomlinson, Paul G. (Paul Greene), 1888-

Library of Congress book link 

Publication date 1917

Topics Tecumseh, Shawnee Chief, 1768-1813

Publisher New York [etc.] D. Appleton and company

Collection library_of_congress; americana

Digitizing sponsor Kahle/Austin Foundation

Contributor The Library of Congress

Language English

 

Preface:

Tecumseh has long been recognized as one of the most romantic characters in American history. A
Shawnee chieftain of boundless courage, devoted patriotism, and great tenacity of purpose, for many
years he was a source of perplexity as well as of trouble on the frontier.

Visit the Official Web Site of the Piqua Shawnee at Piquashawnee.com

Tecumseh and the Shawnee Resistance Movement, From Oxford Research Encyclopedias

Tecumseh and the Shawnee Resistance Movement  

Stephen Warren

Subject: Early National History, Native American History

Online Publication Date: Jul 2016

DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.309

Summary and Keywords

Described as a “chief among chiefs” by the British, and by his arch-rival, William Henry Harrison, as “one of those uncommon geniuses which spring up occasionally to produce revolutions and overturn the established order of things,” Tecumseh impressed all who knew him. Lauded for his oratory, military and diplomatic skills, and, ultimately, his humanity, Tecumseh presided over the greatest Indian resistance movement that had ever been assembled in the eastern half of North America. His genius lay in his ability to fully articulate religious, racial, and cultural ideals borne out of his people’s existence on fault lines between competing empires and Indian confederacies. Known as “southerners” by their Algonquian relatives, the Shawnees had a history of migrating between worlds. Tecumseh, and his brother, Tenskwatawa, converted this inheritance into a widespread social movement in the first decade and a half of the 19th-century, when more than a thousand warriors, from many different tribes, heeded their call to halt American expansion along the border of what is now Ohio and Indiana. Tecumseh articulated a vision of intertribal, pan-Indian unity based on revitalization and reform, and his ambitions very nearly rewrote early American history.

Primary Sources

For an excellent, chronologically arranged collection of sources related to both Tecumseh and the Shawnees, historians should first consult the Shawnee Papers, housed in the Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Archives at Indiana University’s Glenn Black Laboratory of Archaeology. This collection contains a wealth of primary sources, gathered together by an exceptional team of anthropologists and historians through their work on behalf of the Indian Claims Commission. As such, this collection offers a useful springboard into more difficult and harder-to-reach archival sources.
Tecumseh’s own words come to us through Anthony Shane and Stephen Ruddell, white captives of the Shawnees who were raised alongside Tecumseh. The oral historian and archivist Lyman Draper interviewed both men about Tecumseh in the 1840s, years after his death. Draper also interviewed and corresponded with a host of Tecumseh’s adversaries, and their recollections can be found in the Tecumseh Papers of the Lyman Copeland Draper Collection, which have been microfilmed by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Colonizers left behind a rich, but terribly biased, source record on Tecumseh. For example, many of Tecumseh’s speeches can be found in the papers of his foremost adversary, William Henry Harrison, published by the Indiana Historical Society. Similarly, the papers of Thomas Forsyth and Simon Kenton offer useful, but adversarial, perspectives on pan-Indianism. Historians should also consult British perspectives on Tecumseh, including the papers of John Askin, William Claus, and the McKee family. In the 19th century, neither British nor American historians bothered to interview Shawnees about Tecumseh and his legacy. A century later, the ethnohistorian Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin interviewed Shawnees about Tecumseh, and her papers are housed at the Newberry Library.

Read the complete version at:
http://americanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.001.0001/acrefore-9780199329175-e-309

Visit the Official Web Site of the Piqua Shawnee at piquashawnee.com

Powder Horn Tecumseh at the National Army Museum, London

National Army Museum - Chelsea London

Powder horn, 1812 (c).

 

Powder Horn is believed to have belonged to Tecumseh (1768-1813)

This powder horn is believed to have belonged to Tecumseh (1768-1813), a warrior chief of the Shawnee people, who were allied to the British in the American War of 1812. A powder horn was used to pour gunpowder into the barrel of a weapon.

NAM Accession Number

NAM. 1963-10-202-1

Copyright/Ownership

National Army Museum Copyright

Location

National Army Museum, Study collection

Object URL

https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1963-10-202-1


Visit the Official Web Site of the Piqua Shawnee  www.piquashawnee.com

Ceremonial Pipe, Attributed to Tecumseh

Ceremonial Pipe, Attributed to Tecumseh

From the Library of Congress

Ceremonial Pipe, Tecumseh

SOURCE COLLECTION
Filson Special Collections
REPOSITORY
Filson Historical Society
DIGITAL ID
icufaw apf0012

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/h?ammem/fawbib:@field(NUMBER+@band(icufaw+apf0012))

Life of Tecumseh and His Brother the Prophet By Benjamin Drake (1852)

Life Of Tecumseh and his Brother the Prophet By Benjamin Drake (1852)

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000003384825 

The Library of Congress is a great source for historical information and has many periodicals available for digital download and search.

The book notes that the earliest mention of the Shawnee by any writer is the beginning of the 17th Century.  Mr. Jefferson in his "Notes on Virginia" mentions Captain John Smith (April 1607) there was a fierce War raging against the allied Mohicans, residing on Long Island, and the Shawanoes on the Susquehanna, and to the westward of that River, by the Iroquois.

Shawnee Spirituality

Shawnee Spirituality

Posted on May 31, 2015 by Ojibwa

 

The Shawnee, whose name means “Southerners”, once occupied a vast region west of the Cumberland mountains of the Appalachian chain in what is now part of Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia. Like the other Algonquian-speaking tribes of the western part of the Northeast Woodlands Culture Area, the Shawnee had a traditional economy based on farming (corn, beans, and squash), hunting, and gathering wild plants.

As was common among hunting tribes, spirituality was an important part of hunting. In his book The Shawnees and the War for America, Colin Calloway writes:  “In the Shawnee world, humans and animals communicated, hunters dreamed the whereabouts of their prey and offered prayers to the spirits of the animals that gave their bodies so that the people might live.”

In order to maintain the harmony between humans and the animal people, and between humans and the plant people, it was necessary to conduct certain rituals to keep the world in balance.

Among many of the woodlands tribes sacred medicine bundles were important. The Shawnee at one time had a sacred bundle – mishaami – for each of the five divisions of the tribe. The Shawnee were a confederacy of five political units: Chillicothe (Chalahgawtha), Hathawekela (also spelled as Thawekila or Thawegila), Kispoko (Kispokotha), Mequachake (Mekoche or Maykujay), and Piqua (Pekowi). The bundles contained not only items which were sacred, but also included ritual concepts and songs.

The Shawnee were originally given their bundles by Our Grandmother at the time of creation. Since that time, items have been added to the bundles. According to James Howard, in his book Shawnee! The Ceremonialism of a Native American Tribe and its Cultural Background:  “Each of the sacred bundles is assigned to the care of a designated custodian, who is always a man, and a person of high moral character.”

The bundle was traditionally kept in a structure which was separate from the keeper’s home. James Howard also writes:  “The bundles are treated much as human beings, and it is believed that they may become cramped from resting too much in one position.”  Therefore, the position of the bundles is regularly shifted.

The Dakwanekawe or Bread Dance was an important Shawnee ceremony which was traditionally held in the spring and in the fall. The ceremony was given to the Shawnee by Our Grandmother who sometimes appeared on earth to observe the ceremony and to participate in the singing. In the spring, the role of women in the ceremony was predominant and this ceremony asked for fertility and good crops. In the fall, the men led the dancing and their role as hunters was emphasized. The spring dance asked for an abundant harvest while the fall dance expressed thanksgiving and asked for abundant game.

The Green Corn Dance was held in August and marked the first corn harvest. Charles Callender, in his chapter on the Shawnee in the Handbook of North American Indians reports:  “On this occasion persons were absolved of misconduct, and all injuries except murder were forgiven.”  The Green Corn Dance lasted from 4 to 12 days.

The Buffalo Dance was generally held in late August or early September. The dance was originally given to Tecumseh by the Buffalo, his guardian spirit. Two kettles of corn mush were prepared for the dance as this dish was favored by the buffalo. The ceremony included body painting and eight sets of dances which were performed by men and women. The final element of the dance was a mock battle for the corn mush, which was then eaten. Social dances often followed the ceremony.
The Buffalo Dance was conducted outside of the ceremonial grounds used for other ceremonies because it did not come from Our Grandmother.

Among the Shawnee, funeral rites usually lasted four days. The body was buried on its back in an extended position with the head toward the west. Prior to burial, friends and relatives would dress and paint the body. Before the grave was filled, friends and relatives would sprinkle small amounts of tobacco over the body and ask the soul not to look back or to think about those remaining behind.