cantico

plural canticos · plural canticoes · alternative canticoy · alternative kantikoy

1. A sacred ceremony of the Algonquin tribe that involved dancing in a circle, at which colonists were not welcome.

   With these reassuring words Wisamek again leaped for joy, gyrating like a young brave at a cantico.

   2010, Henry Wharton Shoemaker, Robert H. Nelson, Max Stackhouse, Penn's Grandest Cavern, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   We lodged in the woods that night, and heard the shouting of the Indians at a cantico, which they were said to hold that evening in a town hard by.

   1888, The National Magazine: (Cleveland) a Monthly Journal of American History

   The other is their canticoes as they call them which is performed by round dances, sometimes words, then songs, then shouts being in the middle that begin and direct the chorus this they perform with equal fervency but great appearance of joy.

   1888, William Joseph Buck, William Penn in America

2. A dance festival in which colonial Americans and natives both participated.

   They enjoyed the fairs and the Indian canticoes but the novelty passed.

   2007, Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Philadelphia - A History of the City and its People, →ISBN, page 64

   3 more examples

   The cash-book tells us of the expense of himself and family going to fairs, and Indian canticoes, probably gotten up to amuse the Proprietary.

   1876, William Watts Hart Davis, The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania

   The record says that handsome dinners were provided, and the health of King George, the proprietaries, the governor, etc., were drank in high good humor, and at a certain time, at one of these sociable canticoes, the subject of the walk was introduced, and the several deeds and writings shown and explained by way of appeal to the high authority of the Six Nations, against the conduct of their cousins the Delawares, etc.

   1877, William Wallace Beach, The Indian Miscellany, page 90

   Physically strong, tall, well made, with fine dark eyes and a face in which the traces of his handsome youth had not yet been obliterated by portliness and advancing years, still so nimble and athletic that he would jump and run in the sports of his Indian friends, and still so cheerful that he would join them in their dancing “canticoes,” a lover of fast horses, a sprightly and often facetious talker, and fond of good company—he was one of the most gracious and attractive members of the sect whose cause he had long championed with heroic zeal.

   1899, Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, a Popular Journal of General Literature

3. broadlyAn uproar; activity that is full of high spirits and violent action.

   It was almost like father and son meeting to adjust a little misunderstanding arising from the latter's canticoes.

   1873, James J. Brooks, Whiskey Drips

   2 more examples

   But even the halt, the blind et al. would cut up canticoes and Smash gas fixtures unless they were properly chaperoned.

   1919, Work with Boys - Volumes 19-20 -, page 56

   The whale thought that blow between wind and water was foul, for he cut such infernal canticoes that we could not get on to him.

   1951, Chester Scott Howland, Thar She Blows!, page 16