Earth Songs of the Seneca Nation

What Kinds of Songs Do Seneca People Sing?

Bill Crouse, Sr., and Andrew A. Cashner

Oak trees line the walking path on the east bank of the Genesee River in Rochester's Genesee Valley Park; the trail probably follows an ancient Seneca path (photograph by Andrew Cashner, May 2022)

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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.

Table 1. The Annual Ceremonial Cycle
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).

Figure 1. Coldspring Longhouse on the Allegany Territory of the Seneca Nation near Steamburg, NY (November 2023)

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:

  1. Great Feather Dance
  2. Drum Dance
  3. Adö:wë’ (a personal chant)
  4. 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.

Social Songs and Dances

Social songs are sung for social dances. These dances can be held in connection with a ceremonial festival (such as in the evenings during the Gáíwi:yo:h ceremony in the fall), in a social event known as a Sing, or in other public events such as presentations of Seneca culture at schools and community centers (Krouse 2001). Social songs are also used in modified forms for Smoke Dance competitions, often as part of a powwow.

Participants in a dance follow a traditional dance step and movement pattern specific to that dance. One group sings and plays instruments, while the rest of the people are invited to dance. There must be at least one singer, but preferably there is a lead singer and an accompanying group of singers. One or two people are also needed to play the necessary instruments; often a few people play or sing at the same time.

Terms: Songs vs. Dances

The name of a dance refers to the whole dance event that uses that physical dance pattern. It also refers to the collection of songs that the singer sends. For one Old Moccasin Dance, there might be fifteen songs. The songs all share the same basic tempo (speed), beat, and other characteristics, which enables the dance to continue from song to song. Each song is typically around a minute long. All of the songs used for a particular dance are traditional and learned orally, and it would be bad form to use the songs for one dance with another. The precise selection and order of the songs for one dance, however, is the lead singer’s choice. Sometimes oral tradition requires that the same song always be used at the beginning or end of a certain dance, while the inner ones are flexible. A social dance always begins with Ga’da:šo:t (Standing Quiver Dance) and includes Ë:sgä:nye:’ (New Women’s Shuffle Dance).

The songs are all selected from a vast library preserved in the singers’ memories through oral tradition. Only in the New Women’s Shuffle Dance can singers contribute new songs, as long as they fit the style and structure of the dance. Ë:sgä:nye:’ can include completely new songs, songs created by other singers of recent generations, and older songs whose makers no one can remember anymore.

The Sing and Smoke Dance

A Sing is an event focused on social-dance songs, typically held twice a year (spring and fall). Members of groups known as Singing Societies gather together with other members of the community and compete.

Earth Songs are also sung for Smoke Dance, which is a competitive dance demonstration done at intertribal powwows or special Smoke Dance events. Singers sing traditional Earth Songs sped up with a faster beat to enable dancers to do athletic show dances similar to those cultivated by Plains Indian nations in the powwows.

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.

Video 1. Bill Crouse demonstrates how to tune a Seneca water drum

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).

References