This is a sort of athletic exercise amongst them, for the purpose of testing each other's strength.

On such an occasion they are all unarmed and naked.
At nights, dances or plays are performed by the different tribes in turn, the figures and scenes of which are extensively varied, but all are accompanied by songs, and a rude kind of music produced by beating two sticks together, or by the action of the hand upon a cloak of skins rolled tightly together, so as to imitate the sound of a drum.

In some of the dances only are the women allowed to take a part; but they have dances of their own, in which the men do not join.

At all times they are the chief musicians, vocal and instrumental.

Sometimes, however, they have an old man to lead the band and pitch the tunes; and at others they are assisted by the old and young men indiscriminately.
The natives have not any war-dance, properly so called, though sometimes they are decorated in all the pomp and circumstance of war.