These tribes have a rich repertoire of thanksgiving songs and dances addressed to the Three Life‐Giving Sisters, corn, beans and squash, and to other trees, plants, animals and forces of nature on which their lives depend. There are songs for duck dances, fish dances, bean dances, corn dances, eagle dances and deer dances. Captain Aupaumut mentions the injunctions that Mohican elders made to their people, urging them to be thankful for all that they received and generous to everyone, especially strangers. There probably were songs to go with these teachings, as there are with the similar Handsome Lake Code of the Iroquois.

Besides the percussion sticks, the Mohicans probably had several kinds of drums and a variety of rattles made of bark, gourds and turtle shells. There may have been flageolets like those of the Chippewa and Iroquois, used for courtship by young men. The music of Indians in all of North America is primarily vocal, and their many different percussion instruments are used only to accompany singing. Group singing does not employ harmonies or chords but is in unison, usually with the women singing an octave higher than the men. The songs are in a strong, out‐of‐doors voice and may contain introductory and concluding calls, animal or bird imitations, sharp emphases, grace notes, yodels, quavers and other ornaments.

There are songs of greeting and farewell, songs for comedy, lullabies, love and mourning. The “classical” music is such extended song ceremonies as the Chippewa Midewiwin, or the Iroquois Little Water Ritual, where hundreds of lines of poetry set to music contain the religion and philosophy of the people and relate their mythic explanations of the forces of creation.

A distinctive feature of all North American Indian singing is the extensive use of “vocables,” untranslatable syllables like our own “fa‐la‐la.” Some song texts, often accompanying dances, are entirely vocabalic: abstract or mystical expressions of appreciation, joy or reverence. Some are so sacred they have never been revealed to outsiders. They may have been given to the singer by supernatural powers in a vision and are deeply personal, or they may be restricted to secret religious societies responsible for carrying on rituals that channel the forces of nature for the good of the community.