The Green Corn Ceremony (Cherokee: ᎠᎦᏪᎳ ᏎᎷᎤᏥ) is an English term that refers to a general religious and social theme celebrated by a number of American Indian peoples of the Eastern Woodlands and the Southeastern tribes. The Green Corn festivals are also known to have been practiced by the Mississippian culture people as part of their Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.
Green Corn festivals are still practiced today by many different native peoples of the Southeastern Woodland Culture. The Green Corn Ceremony typically coincides in the late summer and is tied to the ripening of the corn crops. The ceremony is marked with dancing, feasting, fasting and religious observations.
Famous quotes containing the words green, corn and/or ceremony:
“In the cowslips peeps I lie,
Hidden from the buzzing fly,
While green grass beneath me lies,
Pearled wi’ dew like fishes’ eyes,
Here I lye, a clock-a-clay,
Waiting for the time o’ day.”
—John Clare (1793–1864)
“A higher class, in the estimation and love of this city- building, market-going race of mankind, are the poets, who, from the intellectual kingdom, feed the thought and imagination with ideas and pictures which raise men out of the world of corn and money, and console them for the short-comings of the day, and the meanness of labor and traffic.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“No ceremony that to great ones ‘longs,
Not the king’s crown, nor the deputed sword,
The marshal’s truncheon, nor the judge’s robe,
Become them with one half so good a grace
As mercy does.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)