"evil birds" are called Ta-lak-i-clak-o. The
last rite paid to the Seminole dead is at the end of four moons. At that
time the relatives go to the To-hop-ki and cut from around it the
overgrowing grass. A widow lives with disheveled hair for the first
twelve moons of her widowhood.

Green Corn Dance.

The one institution at present in which the religious beliefs of the
Seminole find special expression is what is called the "Green Corn
Dance." It is the occasion for an annual purification and rejoicing.
I could get no satisfactory description of the festival. No white man,
so I was told, has seen it, and the only Indian I met who could in any
manner speak English, made but an imperfect attempt to describe it. In
fact, he seemed unwilling to talk about it. He told me, however, that as
the season for holding the festival approaches the medicine men assemble
and, through their ceremonies, decide when it shall take place, and, if
I caught his meaning, determine also how long the dance shall continue.
Others, on the contrary, told me that the dance is always continued for
four days.

Fifteen days previous to the festival heralds are sent from the lodge
of the medicine men to give notice to all the camps of the day when the
dance will commence. Small sticks are thereupon hung up in each camp,
representing the number of days between that date and the day of the
beginning of the dance. With the passing of each day one of these sticks
is thrown away. The day the last one is cast aside the families go to
the appointed place. At the dancing ground they find the selected space
arranged as in the accompanying diagram (Fig. 77).

The evening of the first day the ceremony of taking the "Black Drink,"
Pa-sa-is-kit-a, is endured. This drink was described to me as having
both a nauseating smell and taste. It is probably a mixture similar to
that used by the Creek in the last century at a like ceremony. It acts
as both an emetic and a cathartic, and it is believed among the Indians
that unless one drinks of it he will be sick at some time in the year,
and besides that he cannot safely eat of the green corn of the feast.
During the drinking the dance begins and proceeds; in it the medicine
men join.

At that time the Medicine Song is sung. My Indian would not repeat
this song for me. He declared that any one who sings the Medicine Song,
except at the Green Corn Dance or as a medicine man, will certainly meet
with some harm. That nigh