canticoes

Noun

cantico (plural canticos or canticoes)

1. A sacred ceremony of the Algonquin tribe that involved dancing in a circle, at which colonists were not welcome.
   • 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
2. A dance festival in which colonial Americans and natives both participated.
   • 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
3. (broadly) An 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