Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/91

Rh the nearest neighborhood of the Savolax people. At least they used in the parishes of Hollola and Nastola to make "karsikkos" for them who saw the town for the first time. In the parish of Titti there was a custom in near connection with the worship of the dead. On their way to town they made "karsikko" not only for him who travelled here for the first time, but for the old people too, whom they thought to make such a journey for the last time.

Prom the preceding we have found three different kinds of worship of the dead, represented by a sacrifice-grove, a special sacrifice-tree, and a memorial without any religious signification. The oldest form must have existed already at the time when the Savolax people emigrated from Vermland to Delaware. That they had not forgotten their Finnish magic in their long journey, is shown by a notice from the year 1653, when two Delaware-Finns, a man and a woman, were sentenced for sorcery.

Ladies and gentlemen! These first Finns in America have long ago changed their nationality. Towards the end of the 17th century they had fused with the Swedish colonists. Together with these they had in the 18th century accepted first the Dutch, and afterwards the English language. Their descendants are at present entirely Americans, whose Finnish extraction an historian would have difficulty in finding. Perhaps there are some of these honored folk-lorists, assembled at the Congress in Chicago, the ancestors of whom at the banks of the Delaware, have in the aforesaid manner honored their forefathers from the remote Finland. It may be!