“It appears that the Delawares of Six Nations Reserve formerly held what was known as a ‘General Thanksgiving’ ceremony called in Lenape _Gitctlaʹkan_, twice a year, once in the spring and again in the fall. At these times it was customary to meet in the Cayuga long-house, borrowed for the occasion. At a certain point in the proceedings (I shall not attempt a consecutive description from hearsay testimony) a man stood up and recited, in a rythmical sing-song tone, his dream—the vision of power seen by him in his youth. Na‛nkŭmaʹoxa remembered how one old man was accustomed to tell about a duck, half black and half white, which had appeared to him. Between the verses of the dream four musicians kneeling at the drum (_pw‛awaheʹgŭn_) began a plaintive song, beating time with the carved sticks (_pw‛awaheʹgŭnŭk_). As they sang, the reciter swayed his body to and fro, while a group of dancers gathered on the floor behind him danced with a sidewise step. Before the ceremony, poles were laid lengthwise along both sides of the council house, and against these, at intervals, three on a side, the painted sticks, called _mkäähiʹgŭn_, were laid. If anyone in the crowd felt ‘especially happy’ he was privileged to strike with one of these sticks upon one of the poles in time to the music. The carved heads on the drumsticks meant that human beings were giving thanks; the lengthwise painting of the sticks, half black and half red, implied that men and women were together in thanksgiving, the black representing the warriors, the red the women. The fork at the striking end of the sticks was to give a sharper sound. The dyes for producing the colors were made by boiling bark, the black being soft maple (_sexiʹkiminsi_), and the red, red alder bark (_witoʹ‛pi_).