fluctuated from ice to snow to rain, or from stream, to creek, to river. The quiet sounds of winds moving through the dense hardwood stands had their counterpoint in the vigorous blowing of salt breezes on the riparian plains of the Susquehanna. The branches of trees that remained silent and still in the heat of summer crackled in the brittle cold of winter. These natural sounds were augmented by birds, insects, and animals who responded in their calls and communications to patterns of light and dark, fluctuating seasons and climates. The dense heat of a summer day could suddenly transform into a cacophony of birds, insects, and frogs after an afternoon thundershower. Spring evenings resounded with the dense soundscapes of insects and amphibians that resonated over wetlands and along the margins of ponds.13 Common horseflies, mosquitos, grasshoppers, yellow jackets, wasps, and locusts clicked and scraped in densely layered soundscapes in the upper canopies of forests and along the grassy edges of meadows. The calls and songs of forest and meadow birds—pigeons, turkeys, turtle doves, woodpeckers, bald eagles, owls, wrens, bluebirds, hummingbirds, and thrushes—resounded through the skies.14
Within this densely layered landscape and soundscape of plants, animals, insects, and birds, Native American settlements clustered around Pennsylvania’s distinct geological regions and river systems. A majority of travel and commerce centered on the three major watersheds of the Delaware, Susquehanna, and the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers. An intricate network of trails and pathways linked different settlements in the river valleys, although only a few pathways, such as the Great Shamokin Path and Kittanning Path, traversed the high mountains of the Appalachian Front.15
For Native Americans, these borderlands of the forest were filled with the sounds and voices of stones, dirt, animals, plants, wind and air, water and fire, trees, insects. The patterns of these geophonic and biophonic soundscapes articulated distinct sonic languages that characterized particular geographic areas.16 Careful attention to and meaningful interpretation of aural cues from animals, insects, and birds, as well as wind, water, and storms were important in a typically dense, forested environment where distance could not be adequately judged or easily remembered by sight.17 The paths between well-established and populous towns such as Shamokin, Kittanning, and Onondaga were carefully charted through trail markings, painted trees, and mental maps that preserved the spatial relationships of the structured world of villages and agricultural land, to lighter forest thickets and dark “swamps,” places where the trees grew so close and so high that they blocked the sun.
Human journeys into the forest were often accompanied by a complex system of songs and offerings that could be sung to appease or beguile the spirits who resided there. These symbolic methods of naming, remembering, and sounding the landscape were especially important in navigating the miles of forest lands that lay between villages and towns. These forested spaces were crowded with spirits, who sometimes helped or hindered the people who encountered them. In the darkness of the liminal under-canopy, accidents could easily happen: broken legs, starvation, mental illness, and stripping of the powers of sight and hearing. People listened carefully for the dynamics and counterpoint of the natural environment, observing climate, season, weather, and time of day through the soundscapes of frogs, trumpeter swans, or wild geese. Shades of darkness were measured by the calls of nocturnal birds: spring and summer nights resonated with the songs of the whip-poor-will and the noisy calls of owls. But in the liminal spaces of the forest, these sounds could also disrupt human activities. Upon their return to villages and human spaces, travelers were immersed in complex rituals designed to counter the ill effects of the woods. For eastern Woodlands cultures, “Edge of the Woods” ceremonies were critical pathways to healing that cleared the eyes and unstopped the ears of those who had ventured “thro’ dangerous places, where evil Spirits reign.”18 The particular ability of owls to imitate the human voice could create misunderstandings or cause messages to go astray.19 According to a Delaware legend, screech owls were particular bearers of misfortune: “Enta wa chululhuwe pèchi lihëlak hìtkunk tali kochëmink ènta awèn wikit luweyok hùnt, ‘O, mata wëlëtu.’ Alëmi wishas’hatuwàk, wëlusemëneyo në sikhay òk patamaok. Elaihòsihtit hùnt lòmwe Lënapeyunkahke lòmëwe.” (When a screech owl comes to your home and lands outside in a tree where a person lives they say, “Oh, that is not good!” They began to be afraid and they burned some salt and they prayed. That is the way the old Delawares did long ago.)20
The perching of a nighthawk on the roof of a house was also to be avoided at all costs. Its “singing with a mournful note” portended impending disaster to those who heard it. The cooing of turtle doves was even worse—a harbinger of death.21 The bald eagle could cause thunder if angered in spirit.22 But rather than bringing ill luck, some animals were simply noisy nuisances. Meadows and agricultural plantations were frequently inundated with flocks of wild pigeons so loud that they prevented people from hearing each other. These birds could appear suddenly in large groups and descend like a cloud, forming “a ceiling between earth and sky.”23
But in the woods, where sight was often limited to the next stand of trees, recognition of animal and bird sounds was crucial to survival.24 Birds and animals possessed a keenness of hearing that rendered them particularly dangerous. Packs of wolves roamed the woods at night, listening and smelling for prey. Those humans and animals who traveled or slept out at night took care to be silent. The howling of wolves was an omnipresent sound of the nocturnal forest—their ostinatos called out the hunt or served as directional locators for the pack in the darkness.25 Animals also listened and responded to human sounds. An early Moravian Church history, George Loskiel’s History of the Mission of the United Brethren, relates the story of a young Native man named Joshua. One summer’s day, as Joshua was traveling in the woods near his community, he surprised a mother bear and cub near their den. With a roar, the mother rushed at him. The terrified Joshua screamed so loudly that the bear was unnerved and “suffered him to escape.”26
Sounded communications between humans and animals were especially critical for those who entered the woods to hunt. Hunters needed to possess inward spiritual knowledge to sing songs and make sounds that would summon prey or appease the spirits of animals killed for food. Often, hunting songs came through dreams produced after fasting or ingesting spiritual medicines called besons. Hunting besons were typically prepared by older men, who may have been too weak to join in the hunt, and consisted of roots, herbs, and seeds. Some were emetic and produced vomiting; but ingested in small doses they could ensure success in hunting. Besons also had the power to yield potent dreams.27 In beson-induced dreams, hunters could learn of the locations of animals or the best methods to appease the wrath of evil spirits. Dreamers especially hoped to encounter the dead and to hear them speak. With the right prayers and sacrifices, an ancestor might guide the hunter to game.28 Young boys were encouraged to solicit dreams of communication by envisioning animals or animal spirits.29 According to Loskiel’s History, dreams of predatory birds and vultures could signal either the success or failure of an upcoming hunt, depending on the nature of the dream. Hunters could also offer a preparatory sacrifice of a deer, divided into many small pieces, so that they could observe the pattern created by carrion birds as they ate the pieces of meat. These patterns possessed symbolic meaning that alerted hunters to the nearby presence of game, or an impending injury or disaster that may occur if they chose to hunt at that particular time. Nocturnal birds such as owls could also serve as an aid to hunters. Those who heard their calls in the woods at night could offer a sacrifice of tobacco to the campfire and expect to receive a blessing in the next day’s hunt.
Hunters also learned to communicate through sound with animals and their spirits by “calling the game”—vocally imitating animal noises, or using natural objects to produce sounds attractive to particular animals. These calls appealed to an animal’s sense
