This project focuses on one particular type of Seneca music, but before describing the Earth Songs it is important to point out that Seneca people make and enjoy all the kinds of music that other North Americans do. On the reservations, hip hop, classic rock, and country music are especially popular. (Bill Crouse is a Lynyrd Skynrd fan.) Many Seneca people think about music and use it in the same ways as their non-indigenous neighbors.
At the same time, other Senecas hold those widespread Western concepts of music in tension with those they have inherited from their own tradition (Diamond 2008). Those views are also shaped by interactions with other Native nations, particularly through intertribal powwows (Browner 2002).
Onöndowa’ga:’ Concepts of Music
The Seneca language does not have a single general word equivalent to music. Singing and dancing are usually linked so closely that there are not clear ways to distinguish them linguistically; if someone is singing, someone else is probably dancing. Traditional Seneca singers tend to think of different types of singing according to their purposes and occasions rather than lumping them together into an abstract category. There are general words for singing, dancing, and fiddle-playing, and many more precise terms for specific traditional songs. Those more particular terms all point to specific reasons, times, and methods of singing and dancing.
Seneca singers assume that the whole created world, including humans, animals, and
other spiritual beings, is listening whenever they sing.
Bill Crouse would say that you do not sing a song; you send
it.
Songs are spoken of as being made,
not composed.
Bill Crouse distinguishes two main types of traditional Seneca song and dance: ceremonial and social. There are two main types of ceremonial singing, in turn: singing in seasonal ceremonies and singing for healing ceremonies. Seneca ceremonies are only open to members of the Haudenosaunee nations, and some healing ceremonies are restricted even within that community only to people in need of a particular ceremony (see below). Social songs, the subject of this project, are open to anyone to hear and enjoy, though their performance is generally limited to Seneca people.
Ceremonial Singing
Though ceremonial singing is closed to non-Haudenosaunee people and Seneca faithkeepers limit what can be shared, it is important to know how Earth Songs fit into the basic pattern of ceremonial life. The annual cycle of seasonal ceremonies celebrates and maintains human beings’ connection to the rest of Creation (table 1). These rituals are linked to seasons such as the Midwinter Festival or Strawberry Festival. In the healing ceremonies, members of different medicine societies bring specific kinds of physical and spiritual healing to people in need.
| Season | Ceremony |
|---|---|
| Winter | Midwinter Ceremonies |
| Okhi:we’ (Remembrance of those who have died) | |
| Spring | Thunder Dance |
| False Faces (House-to-house cleansing) | |
| Seed Dance | |
| Summer | Strawberry Festival |
| Green Corn Ceremonies | |
| Fall | Harvest Dance |
| False Faces (House-to-house cleansing) | |
| Thunder Dance | |
| Gaiwi:yo:h (Code of Handsome Lake) |
The ceremonial center is the longhouse. Today a typical longhouse is an ordinary-looking one-story frame building, not the birchbark-covered structure seen in historic illustrations (figure 1).
The Handsome Lake Longhouse Religion
Most traditional Senecas today follow the Gáíwi:yo:h,
the Good Message
of Sganyodaiyo’ (Handsome Lake).
Sganyodaiyo’ was a Seneca reformer who, around the year 1800, experienced visions
of four heavenly messengers.
These Sky Dwellers
(Hadiöya’ge:onö’) revealed to Handsome Lake that Senecas had lost track of the Peacemaker’s Great
Law.
They needed to ban dangerous vices such as drinking alcohol, gambling, domestic violence,
and abortion, and adopt practices like farming that would help them survive in their
new situation after colonization.
They also needed to purify their ceremonial system to avoid superstitions and anything
connected to witchcraft.
The teachings of Sganyodaiyo’ are preserved in oral tradition, which is recited annually
in the fall.
Originally Sganyodaiyo’ taught that Senecas should dispense with all their old ceremonies except for four:
- Great Feather Dance
- Drum Dance
- Adö:wë’ (a personal chant)
- Dish Game
Sganyodaiyo’ later allowed the community to restore some older ceremonies in modified form; and after his death the Senecas revived almost all of the traditional ceremonies. Today the four Gáíwi:yo:h ceremonies are integrated into the Midwinter and Green Corn Ceremonies.
Instruments
Most traditional Seneca music, ceremonial or social, is vocal. The voices are accompanied by water drum, rattles, or sometimes other kinds of drums like frame drums. The turtle-shell rattle is used in ceremonial song only. The turtle-shell rattle is a sacred instrument and images of it should not be shared.
Ga’nöhgo:öh (Water Drum)
A water drum is made from a small cylinder of wood, about six inches in diameter, and closed on one end. The open end is covered with a deerskin top which must be tightened to tune the drum using a technique Bill demonstrated in a video (video 1). There is a small hole in one side, and a straw is inserted into the hole. Through the straw, the drum is filled with water, and the drum is turned to wet the skin. The amount of water changes the pitch of the drum. As the skin dries during a song the pitch will rise, until the player turns the drum over and wets the hide again.
Onö’gä:’ Gasdöwë’sä’ (Horn Rattle)
A horn rattle is made by filling a section of cow horn with beads—today, steel BBs are commonly used.
Protocol: Privileged vs. Public Knowledge
It is important to know that the whole category of ceremonial singing is closed to people outside the Seneca community. These ceremonies are the most sacred traditions of the Seneca nation, and the faithkeepers no longer allow non-Seneca people to observe or record them. Faithkeepers are people entrusted with safeguarding these ceremonies and using them for the good of the people. (Bill Crouse is one of the head faithkeepers of the Seneca Nation.) Ceremony is privileged knowledge, not open to all even within the Seneca community (Diamond 2008, 103).
When the ceremonies were more open, several generations of white anthropologists in the twentieth century abused the trust that Seneca community members placed in them; they gained access to these longhouse ceremonies and then made recordings and transcriptions. They went on to publish books and articles with their own interpretations of what they meant, often far removed from the correct traditional teachings. They filed their recordings away in university and institution archives and did not give Seneca people access to them. Some even claimed to know more than Seneca practitioners did about their own traditions. With an arrogant posture sometimes linked to racist attitudes, these researchers assuming authority and ownership over traditional knowledge that was not theirs to use (McCarthy 2008; Smith 2012; Deloria, Jr. 1969)
Not only were their interpretations incorrect and inappropriate, from a Seneca perspective what they were doing was dangerous. To Seneca participants, ceremonial rituals and their songs give people access to extraordinary power. One might like to say supernatural, spiritual, or religious power, but those terms are inaccurate for a way of life that sees humans as an integral part of the natural world, recognizes spirit in all living things, and does not distinguish a religious sphere from the rest of the world (Mohawk 2010; Fixico 2003; Tinker 2008). When that power is directed in the right way it can do great good, but if abused or misused it can also cause harm.
Healing rituals, for example, are meant only for people in need of a particular kind of medicine. Even within the Seneca community, the only people who will ever hear the Bear Dance are people who need the kind of healing that the Bear Dance Society provides. Once they hear it and are healed, they belong to that society for life. An ordinary person cannot, and should not, want to hear the songs of the Bear Dance, any more than they can just walk into a Walgreens and demand OxyContin without a prescription.
This project does not deal with ceremonial song, beyond what has been shared in this chapter. Seneca people who want to learn more about longhouse ceremonies are encouraged to contact Bill Crouse or other faithkeepers. Non-Seneca people should know that the information they can find about Seneca ceremonies in books by white anthropologists is not reliable or accurate. Relying on that incorrect and inappropriately-shared information will only make it harder to connect with real Seneca people.
In contrast, this project focuses on a kind of song that Seneca people are comfortable sharing, social-dance songs. In fact, Seneca singers like Bill Crouse often use these songs specifically for the purpose of sharing Seneca culture and values with outsiders, such as in school and community-center presentations.
Who Can Sing Seneca Songs?
That said, we should note one more caution: Seneca people in general do not welcome non-indigenous people to sing their songs, of any type. All are welcome to hear and learn about social-dance songs through this project, but all are not welcome to take the songs and use them in a setting that does not include any Seneca people. Song sharing must be done in the context of relationship according to Seneca protocols. The transcriptions in musical notation are provided for learning and study only. They are not to be used for performance by non-Seneca people, including school or university choirs.
These songs and dances are part of the cultural heritage and patrimony of the Seneca nation. The United Nations has affirmed indigenous peoples’ inherent rights to preserve, safeguard, and set bounds for sharing of their own intellectual property, traditional knowledge, and cultural expressions (United Nations 2007).