“The Delaware meeting helps everybody in the world, for they pray for good crops and everything good, even wild fruits. About ten years ago the people thought they would give up holding these meetings, and the following year they had high winds and big rains, and everyone was frightened. Then grasshoppers came in swarms, but they came in the fall a little too late to get all the crops. So the people held a council and talked about the Big House again. They finally decided to resume it, before any more bad luck came; so they began the ceremonies again in the fall. “Then it seemed as if all the trouble stopped. Of late there has been talk of again giving up the meeting, but if we do give it up we are likely to have a tornado or maybe dry weather to ruin the crops. “Once the Delawares owned a great deal of land, but that is nearly all gone now, and the people seem to have no power to do anything. When God looks down from Heaven, he sees but very few Delaware people, and the reason for this is that they cannot follow the Meeting House ceremonies now. When I was a little boy, I heard my people say that this thing would happen just as it is happening now. You see, the young people raised during the last thirty years do not believe in the old ways. We are having good times yet, but we don’t know when we shall catch it. If anything happens to us, and once really begins, we can not stop it—it will be too late. Even if they take up the meeting again—they can not do right, even when the ceremonies are going on. “They can not accomplish anything in the Big House; they can not raise it up, because there are a lot of young folks who do not even try to do what the speaker tells them, for they do not believe in it. “The people could get along fine, if they followed the rules of the meeting—not only the Delawares, but the other people round about. For when the Delaware prays, he prays for things that will benefit everybody; he prays for the children as well as for himself; he prays for future time. But if anything comes to destroy the world, it will be too late to think of starting the Big House then.” _Penn’s Account._—William Penn seems to have been the first to attempt a description of Lenape rites, for he wrote in 1683, in the same letter we have quoted before: “Their Worship consists of two parts, sacrifice and Cantico. Their sacrifice is their first fruits.... The other part of their worship is by Cantico, performed by round dances, sometimes words, sometimes songs, then shouts, two being in the middle that begin, and by singing and drumming on a board direct the chorus.... They are said to lay their altar on twelve stones.”