Couwenhoven, who was lying with his sloop opposite the Dans Kamer, wrote, under date of August 14th, that "the Indians thereabout on the river side" made "a great uproar every night, firing guns and Kintecaying, so that the woods rang again." There can be no doubt from the records that the plateau was an established place for holding the many dances of the Indians. The word Kinte is a form of Gentge (Zeisb.), meaning "dance." Its root is Kanti, a verbal, meaning "To sing." Gentgeen, "To dance" (Zeisb.), Gcnf Keh'n (Heck.), comes down in the local Dutch records Kinticka, Kinte-Kaye, Kintecaiv, Kintekaying (dancing), and has found a resting place in the English word Canticoy, "A social dance." Dancing was eminently a feature among the Indians. They had their war dances, their festival dances, their social dances, etc. As a rule, their social dances were pleasant affairs. Rev. Heckewelder wrote that he would prefer being present at a social Kintecoy for a full hour, than a few minutes only at sudh dances as he had witnessed in country taverns among white people. "Feast days," wrote Van der Donck in 1656, "are concluded by old and middle aged men with smoking; by the young with a Kintecaw,

HUDSON S RIVER OX THE WEST. 1 39

singing and dancing." Every Indian captive doomed to death, Asked and was granted the privilege of singing and dancing his Kinteka}c, or death song. War dances were riotous ; the scenes of actual battle were enacted. The religious dances and rites were so wonderful that even the missionaries shrank from them, and the English government forbade their being held within one hundred miles of European settlements. The holding of a war dance was equivalent to opening a recruiting station, men only attending and if participating in the dance expressed thereby their readiness to €nter upon the war.