Gayó:waga:yöh or Old Moccasin Dance is a lively dance for pairs of men and women moving together around the circle (video 1). This dance is of the same type as Fish Dance and Sharpen Stick Dance, in that it features pairs of men and women who dance facing each other. In the middle of each song, the members of each pair switch places with each other. Old Moccasin Dance can be sung on any normal social-dance occasion and at any point in the set. This dance can also be used as a medicine ceremony as part of the Midwinter Ceremonies.

Bill speaks of Earth Songs like Robin Dance or Corn Dance as a means for people to honor and give thanks to elements of Creation, in just the same way that Haudenosaunee people extend gratitude to these elements in the daily Ganö:nyök or Thanksgiving Address. Old Moccasin Dance, like Standing Quiver, focuses directly on the dancing of the human community, and this fits with the first traditional element of the Thanksgiving Address: ha’deyögwe’da:ge:h, all the different kinds of people. Human-centered Earth Songs provide a way to celebrate human beings and their relationships with each other, including male–female relationships.

Story

Bill’s great-grandfather Richard Johnny-John used to tell a story about Moccasin Dance when he presented it in shows, and other presenters still repeat this story. One time in the old days they were having a social at the old Coldspring Longhouse, and since it was open to the public and not far from the highway sometimes outsiders would sit in. On this occasion there was a white man that no one else knew, there with his family. He listened and took lots of notes in his notebook. Years later Bill’s great-grandfather saw this white man in the news and realized he was Arthur Murray. He was doing the Charleston, which he said he invented. Bill’s great-grandfather realized he had based it on the Seneca Moccasin Dance.

What connection could there be between the Seneca Old Moccasin Dance and the Charleston? The Charleston dance first emerged in the 1920s, and oral accounts and documentary evidence all point to an origin among African-American communities of the early twentieth century (Conyers 2013). The Charleston (video 2) became famous after it first appeared on the Broadway stage in the 1923 musical Runnin’ Wild with words and music by prominent Black composers Cecil Mack and James P. Johnson (Mack and Johnson 1923). While the song and dance probably descend from earlier Black dances (of the Buck and Wing varieties), Mack and Johnson’s song emphasizes the song’s newness: it is a new tune,/ Funny blue tune/ [...] Made in South Caroline. Johnson said he was inspired by the dance routines and ring-shout calls of Gullah Geechee dockworkers, and other accounts of the time suggest these dances were popularized by tours of Charleston’s Jenkins Orphanage Band (Butler 2020).

What about Arthur Murray, then? Could he have profited from appropriating Seneca dances? At the time the Charleston was surging in popularity, Arthur Murray (1895–1991) was busy expanding his franchise of dance studios aimed at common people, until his name had become synonymous with dance in the United States. He grew up in New York City, the child of Jewish immigrants from Austria, and started his first dance studios in North Carolina (Pace 1991). Arthur Murray certainly had nothing to do with creating the Charleston, but he did much to popularize it. As he lived many years in the Hudson River Valley, he may have passed through the Allegany Territory at some point, but it seems unlikely that he ever observed enough Seneca dancing to be able to draw on it in any significant way.

On the other hand, it is not at all far-fetched to suggest that an American pop culture trend should be inspired by Native culture, since so many have been. Indeed, the vogue of playing Indian in white communities was at its height in the 1920s (Deloria 1998). The fashion trends embraced by flappers centered on unstructured, tunic-like dresses with long fringe, and headgear that often featured headbands. Feathered headdresses could still be seen (a holdover of Edwardian fashions from the preceding decades), some of which featured close-fitting hats with one or a few upright feathers (Thomas 2022). These trends seem clearly inspired by Native American clothing as it was known then, and a Seneca observer could easily see the round-cap-with-feathers fashion as resembling a Haudenosaunee gasdo:wä’ (figure 2, 3).

Some aspects of the Charleston do parallel those of the Old Moccasin Dance: both are lively dances with repeated pulses on a single foot while the other foot is free to move, and both feature partners facing each other. You can, in fact, do the moves of Old Moccasin Dance to the music of the Charleston, and vice versa. (See the section on the movements below.) For a Seneca traditional singer of the Jazz Age, the Charleston would stand out as the American popular dance most like the Old Moccasin Dance.

Even if this particular example was not appropriated from indigenous culture, then, so many other things before and since have been that it seems reasonable to look at another hot new trend in mainstream US culture and say, hey, we made that! Arthur Murray represented dance as a popular commercial enterprise and would therefore be an obvious target in a story about profiting from appropriation. Of course, even in Bill’s story, the Charleston connection is presented as something of a guess, as is the link between the Charleston and Gayó:waga:yöh specifically.

Making this connection could express a desire to acknowledge the indigenous roots of American popular culture, to see a Seneca contribution in the mainstream spotlight. The story insists that Seneca dances are as modern as any and that Seneca people are not stuck in the past. As Haudenosaunee singer Sadie Buck declares, Today I’m modern; tomorrow I’ll be modern ’til tomorrow; yesterday I was modern for yesterday (quoted in Avery 2019, 198).

The story also reminds Seneca hearers that their culture is a treasure that outsiders will want to exploit. The teller highlights the pattern, well established by scholars from Morgan to Fenton, in which white men visit the Seneca community, take things that they learned away with them, and then profit from those things in the outside world without acknowledging the source (McCarthy 2008). Outside observers in the community are likely to steal and misrepresent what they see. Andrew hopes that his involvement in this project as a settler musicologist breaks that pattern of exploitation and instead helps to strengthen Native sovereignty and promote deeper respect and understanding in the non-Native world.

Speaking of Lewis Henry Morgan, that nineteenth-century ethnographer singled out the moccason as the greatest type of footwear ever invented, one of few aspects of Native culture that he believed were superior to European civilization (Morgan 1851, 359–360):

The moccason [...] is preëminently an Indian invention, and one of the highest antiquity. It is true to nature in its adjustment to the foot, beautiful in its materials and finish, and durable as an article of apparel. It will compare favorably with the best single article for the protection and adornment of the foot ever invented, either in ancient or modern times. With the sanction of fashion, it would supersede among us a long list of similar inventions. Other nations have fallen behind the Indian, in this one particular at least. The masses of the Romans wore the calceus ligneus, or wooden shoe; the masses of Germany and Ireland, and of many of the European nations, formerly wore the same. With the cothurnus and sandal of the ancients, and the boot of the moderns, the moccason admits of no unfavorable comparison. It deserves to be classed among the highest articles of apparel ever invented, both in usefulness, durability, and beauty.

The Minnetonka Moccasin company, whose annual revenue in 2022 was $37.5 million, would seem to agree with Morgan that the old moccasin still holds plenty of value in the modern world. Whether or not Arthur Murray stole Old Moccasin Dance, white businesses certainly have made plenty of profit from indigenous inventions.

Songs

Words

As with most other Seneca Earth Songs, the words of Old Moccasin Dance are vocables without linguistic meaning. A given song is always sung to the same words, such as We:hanayögeh for the traditional first song, but these words do not signify anything. The lyrical text in Andrew’s transcriptions is phonetic, according to Wallace Chafe’s orthography (Chafe 2015). The division between words is somewhat arbitrary: the spelling reflects the relative length of the vowels as sung, so the same vocables may be spelled differently. The traditional second song is a good example of both problems, as the words repeat the sounds weno and yane, but each time with a different length and emphasis in the song: one of several possible transcriptions is Wenoyane: weno:yane: wenoh ya:ne:.

There is Seneca language in the closing song (in both recordings by the Allegany Singers): the single word gayó:wah, moccasin. Other songs include vocable words like gayoweh that sound similar, but this may just be coincidence since variants of gayowaneh are among the most common vocables in Seneca songs. The vocables help singers remember the songs by preserving (one might even say encoding) aspects of their sound and structure, though much more research is needed in this area.

Musical Structure

The basic structure of the song features an introduction by the lead, a refrain sung by all two or more times, and a concluding yo:ho:h!, as demonstrated by the first song (music example 1). The lead singer introduces each song by singing the first phrase. Beyond that, though, these songs do not feature call-and-response; the singers continue in unison. The singers repeat each song at least once and there are no other internal repeats. Most of the songs have three or four phrases; the phrases contrast but also echo each other, with small motives repeated or varied in subsequent phrases. The rhythmic patterns in song 1 and song 2 recur throughout the other songs. See the analysis for a more detailed look at the patterns that tie together these songs.

Versions

Bill’s teacher Avery Jimerson taught him always to begin Gayó:waga:yöh with the specific songs heard first on both Allegany Singers recordings. Kyle Dowdy led with these in their 2002 recording (video 3). After that, Kyle Dowdy’s choices as lead in the earlier recording featured more songs that he had learned from singers on other territories, particularly Six Nations in Ontario. The song selection in the more recent recording (with Jacob Dowdy singing lead) are more traditional to Ohi:yo’, according to Bill.

One of the oldest known recordings of Haudenosaunee songs includes at least one song from Old Moccasin Dance as known today. In 1911 a Huron (Wyandot) man named Smith Nichols sang several songs for Canadian ethnologist Marius Barbeau. The wax-cylinder recordings are preserved today at the Canadian Museum of History, and one is recognizable as a Gayó:waga:yöh song still in living oral tradition (audio 1).

Barbeau transcribed the burden or refrain of this song (his number 119) as wenuyane henuyane, and the recording is nearly identical to song 2 in both recordings by the Allegany Singers (music example 2). The earlier singer’s words differ by only one syllable: his sixth syllable is hë rather than wë. The rhythms are identical except that Nichols sings a long note instead of a sixteenth-note run on the second yane:. His pitches are different in the second phrase, but follow the same contour.

In addition to the matching music, the description and context of this song in Barbeau’s archive suggest this was part of Old Moccasin Dance. The transcriber described Song 119 as a dance around the fire for men and women, which would fit this dance (though not excluding others). The title of the previous entry (Song 118) in the notes also points to Old Moccasin Dance, though its melody does not correspond with one of the songs recorded by the Allegany Singers. Barbeau cataloged it thus:

Kăyúwa (no meaning) is the name of that song:
hiyeyuwahine, wenuyiehine hiyuweyuwahine ... (burden) ...
Men’s + women dance, around the fire. It is probably the property of the Wyandot originally.

Gayó:wah is Seneca for moccasin, of course; the song after this is an Old Moccasin Dance song today; and the vocables for other songs in this series closely resemble Moccasin Dance songs. Further research would be needed to evaluate the claim that this song was originally Wyandot (Huron) and not Seneca.

When Joanne Shenandoah recorded her own take on Old Moccasin Dance songs in 1993, her vocal style and sensibility were markedly Western-influenced, but her melodic and rhythmic readings of the traditional songs demonstrate remarkable continuity back to those earliest recordings in 1911 (video 4).

Movements

Old Moccasin Dance starts with a circle of only men dancing counterclockwise as usual. Women line up and step into the circle in between the men, in the pattern female-male-male-female (so the first woman steps in front of the first man and the second woman steps behind the second man). In the middle of each song, the two members of each pair will switch places. Thus the head of the line at the start will be two couples arranged FM–MF; when they rotate it will become MF–FM; when they rotate again in the next song they will be back to FM–MF.

Each song starts with an introduction by the lead singer, in relatively free rhythm, with the rattle shaking continuously; during the intro the dancers just walk forward at a free pace. Next the rest of the singers join in to sing the melody and the rattle and drum begin to play a regular beat, typically emphasizing the smaller rhythmic subdivision (eighth notes in the transcription; table 1). During this section, which we will call the first refrain, the dancers begin to dance with a slow step, right–right, left–left, one step per beat (quarter note). When the singers repeat the melody, the rattle and drum shift to a half-time feel, emphasizing the main beat (quarter notes); this is the second refrain.

Table 1. Dance steps in Gayó:waga:yöh

Place in Song	Position	Rhythm and Step
First refrain	Dancers facing forward in line
Second refrain	Male-female pairs, first facing partner (steps reversed)
End of final song	Pairs facing each other

Now the second dancer in each pair moves ahead of their partner and turns around to face them. Men moving forward should go on the outside of the circle while women should go on the inside. The dancers shift to a faster step that includes a step and shuffle on the right foot, a quick change to the other and back, and ends with a longer step on the left (table 1). The rear-facing dancer does this step in reverse. When the song ends with yo:ho:h, the front dancer turns again to face forward and the dance repeats for the next song. The traditional last song features a special rhythm and a step to match: the dancers stop and hold their step for a quarter note on the words yo:h ga:yowa:h, while the rattle and drum also stop.

The fast dance step is a three-beat pattern, while the other steps are in two-beat groups. These groupings do not cause any metrical problem for the dancers, though, because individual dancers do not all begin the fast step at exactly the same moment, and the songs do not have regular metrical groupings.

The pattern of when to dance, when to rotate positions, and the basic steps are all prescribed, but within that this type of dance allows people freedom to move in their own ways. There is freedom and opportunity for creativity in moving the upper body and arms, and dancers can also do more complex variations on the basic step.

Other than the traditional gender pairings, there are no restrictions on who can dance with whom in Old Moccasin Dance, and no one assigns any meaning to the pairings. The exact pairings of men and women results somewhat randomly from the way women line up and insert themselves into the circle of dancers, though Bill says some women have been known to time their entry just right to end up with someone in particular. Even then, however, this is not any kind of lovers’ dance, but an energetic, even athletic, dance of the whole community.