The "green-corn dance" common to many Indian tribes, is essentially the same ceremony of thanksgiving, or, more correctly, rejoicing with payment, for the first-fruits of the earth. Adair says that at the festival of the first-fruits the Southern Indians drank plentifully of the cusseena and other bitter liquids, to cleanse their bodies, after which they bathed in deep water, then went sanctified to the feast. Their annual expiation of sin was sometimes at the beginning of the first new moon in which their corn became full-eared, and sometimes at the recurrent season of harvest. They cleansed their "temple" and every house in the village of everything supposed to pollute, carrying out even the ashes from the hearths. They never ate nor handled any part of a new harvest till some part of it had been offered up; then they had a long fast "till the rising of the second sun." On the third day of the fast the holy fire was brought out from the "temple," and it was produced, not from any old fire, but by the rubbing of sticks. It was then distributed to the people.
Lafiteau says that the first animal the young hunter kills he burns with fire as a sacrifice. Another festival was a kind of holocaust, where nothing of the victim was left, but it was all consumed, even to the bones, which were burned. There were also feasts of first-fruits.
The Dakotas allowed no particle of the food at any of their religious feasts to be left uneaten. All bones were collected and thrown into the water, that no dog might get them or woman trample over them. It was a rule among many of the tribes that no bones of the beast eaten should be broken. There is no doubt that this was connected with zoölatry, and was intended to prevent anger on the part of the ancestral or typical animal, the result of which would be the disappearance of the game. There were many other ceremonies of the same intent. When the Mandans had finished eating, they often presented a bowlful of the food to a buffalo-head, saying, "Eat this," evidently believing that, by using the head well, the living herds of buffalo would still come and supply them with meat.
It is probable that what many authors have called the "day of atonement" or "expiation" was really a general wiping out of offenses—a settlement of accounts between individuals and particularly between clans, after which there should be no reprisal. This is illustrated by a peculiar ceremony among the Iroquois, strongly resembling the scapegoat of the Israelites. A white dog, before being burned at the annual feast, was loaded with the confessions or repentings of the people, represented by strings of wampum. The statute of limitations then began to operate.
In the Jahvistic version, the passover, an old festival held in the
