AURORA - There was a crispness to the air. Dry leaves were scattered on the ground and everyone sat in the sun to stay warm. There was no mistaking it: fall harvest had arrived.

The thousand peach trees planted in Aurora by the Cayuga Indians hundreds of years ago are long destroyed by European settlers, but the village celebrated the harvest regardless with the Peachtown Native American Festival, as a means of unifying local culture and its American Indian roots.

This celebration of fall and harvest preceded the official beginning of autumn, Tuesday. But it was appropriate - no calendar date marked when local tribes would begin to harvest their fields. They just felt it.

And so with demonstrations of traditional flute playing, storytelling and dancing on the front lawn of Wells College, they welcomed fall together.

“It's such a traditional way of coming together,” said Wells president Lisa Marsh Ryerson. “The bounty - how great to be here in this richness with neighbors.”

American Indian vendors sold jewelry, leather satchels and other handmade items. Alfred Jacques stood behind a display of hickory lacrosse sticks he had made, spending up to a year cutting, bending, drying, sanding and finishing each.

“I do it all by eye,” said Jacques, a member of the Onondaga Turtle clan. “You can look at 1,000 plastic sticks - they're all the same. Each one I make is different.”

Jacques' sticks are the shape and style evolved from the original ones created by Iroquois.

“The game they play all over the world comes from a stick like this,” said Jacques, holding up hooked wooden pole with a lattice of string connecting the curve to the base.

“But we still play our game,” he said. “Our sticks, no rules.”

Rules. Sept. 22 is the first day of autumn. Nov. 26 is the designated day of Thanksgiving.

“Every day you wake up, you give thanks,” said Sherri Watertown-Hopper, who is part of the Onondaga Beaver clan. Watertown-Hopper's dance group, Haudenosaunee Singers and Dancers, led social dances dedicated to women's connection to Mother Earth, to wildlife and to community. “It's all giving thanks to our natural surroundings,” she said.

Social dances differ from ceremonial dances, which can not be performed on a whim, and serve the purpose of the tribe's formal welcoming to strangers and newcomers. Onlookers seated atop a circle of hay bales were encouraged to join even the more complicated dances - imperfection was acceptable.

Just as each social danced performed is unique to its dancers, so is each of Dan Hill's flutes completely different from one another.

A woven basket contained Hill's flutes, carved from cherry wood, apple wood, red cedar and walnut. Each wood gives a different sound, Hill said, but even flutes made of the same tree will sound different.

“The songs come from the wood,” said Hill. He said he does not write songs - the flute decides what it will play. And each plays a different song.

Hill's fingers fluttered over the openings on a thick red cedar flute that produced an alto-pitched bird call. Holding a narrower cherry wood flute, Hill described to a small audience how its music reminds him of winter wind blowing through windows.

And then - putting the polished branch flute with a bend in the middle to his lips - he played a song that sounded just like that.

Staff writer Sarah Gantz can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 237 or sarah.gantz@lee.net