A fire pit smoldered in Memorial Park as the thump-thump heartbeat of drums and the wail of wordless chants carried off toward the distant green hills with the smells of sage and cedar smoke.

Dancers in leather, beads, feathers and bright colors circled the fire in slow loops, some plodding quietly, others jumping and tap dancing like puppets with unhinged joints. Often they reached out with their arms and uplifted eyes, as though trying to embrace the wind or the sky.

Debbie Barriault and Donna Knowles, photographers and domestic partners from Mechanic Falls, were among the celebrants at the weekend-long intertribal powwow at Scarborough’s 350th anniversary celebration.

Sitting in lawn chairs and dressed in native-inspired garb of long, flowing dresses, beads, and ornaments made from leather and bone, they watched the other dancers circle the fire as the sun faded Sunday afternoon.

Both Barriault and Knowles carry Micmac blood in their veins. Knowles learned of her Micmac forbearer when a cancer scare necessitated some genealogical research. Barriault began to immerse herself in Micmac culture to honor her late father, who was of Micmac descent.

At the powwow, Barrriault used her self-chosen “spirit name,” Black Wolf Crying. Knowles used the spirit name given to her by her grandfather at birth, Grey Wolf Serenade.

Attending a powwow, for both women, is an opportunity to get in touch with their more spiritual sides, to honor their ancestors and the earth, and to keep alive the dances, stories, traditions and values that were all but obliterated by European settlers. Because the native tribes kept no written records, these gatherings are critical to keeping native cultures alive: at each powwow old stories find new ears and old songs find younger voices to sing them.

“(Older people) are willing to teach traditions so that the tradition is not lost,” Barriault said. “… Everyone has something that they teach.”

While their forebears probably wore clothing made out of deer hide and stuck to ornaments that could be developed from the stones, shells and bird plumage of the east coast, most of the celebrants Sunday wore clothing that evoked images of Native Americans, but probably wasn’t around when the settlers arrived. Cotton cloth, synthetic tassels, L.L. Bean moccasins and turquoise and silver jewelry were common, as were feathers dyed colors known to neither man nor bird. Many of the celebrants arrived in large campers or Ford pickups. Bug spray and gas grills were used liberally.

Unlike the Civil War re-enactors across the field, the Scarborough powwow participants weren’t attempting historical accuracy. The clothing and ornaments, known as “regalia,” expresses who the wearer is as an individual, paying homage to native ancestors and reflecting 21st-century lives at the same time.

Powwows are held somewhere in New England nearly every summer weekend, and for many people Scarborough’s was a reunion with old friends. Celebrants pitched tents and parked campers, and swapped stories and share food in informal, camp-wide potluck suppers. Like Scarborough’s, most are inter-tribal, meaning that people from all tribes are welcome.

While New England tribes such as the Micmac and Abenaki dominated, tribes from across what is now the United States were represented. Celebrants at Scarborough’s powwow came from as far away as South Dakota, New Mexico, California and Alaska.

Scarborough’s powwow fire-keeper was Three Bears, a heavyset man in a cotton T-shirt and shorts with the word “Abenaki,” tattooed on his left forearm. In daily life, the Greenville resident goes by George Lavigne and described his profession as being “number 1 at number 2” – emptying septic tanks. His knowledge of his native heritage comes from a grandmother, whose tales other adults in the family disapproved of.

As keeper of the fire, he was one of the most important men at the powwow.

“Let’s put it this way – if the fire goes out, the music stops, the tents come down, and everyone goes home,” he said.

He signaled the beginning of the weekend’s celebration by coaxing a tiny flame from still-smoldering embers from a previous powwow. Day and night, he and several assistants fed maple, oak and cedar to the fire the dancers circle. Sunday night, he ceremonially stifled the flames, saving a few embers to light the fire at a future powwow, so that each powwow carries the spirit of all the powwows before it.

What do those haunting, yelping, wild and eerie chants and dances mean? Drummer Gary Lone Wolf of Litchfield, who is part Lakota, explained. Some of the songs are in Native American languages, their words understood by only one tribe but their meaning understood by many. Others consist of sounds that can’t be translated into any language.

“A song may have a meaning, but the actual words don’t,” he said.

Some of the songs – about nature, earth, love, well-wishing, or just fun – are passed down from singer to singer. Others are made up. It’s traditional to ask permission of the author of a song, if he’s alive, before singing it.

Like songs, drum circles form and express themselves in a free-flowing fashion.

“A lot of the time, a drum will be gifted by someone,” he said.

Fathers train their sons. Older drummers leave drums to younger protagas. Lone Wolf plays a drum that some friends of his were planning to sell. They asked him to try it out one night; before the night was over, they had “gifted” it to him, he said.

Lone Wolf said he finds it difficult to express what he experiences when attending a powwow.

“It’s spiritual, communicating to everything alive,” he said. “You have the freedom to listen to what’s in your own heart. You get to follow your own path.”

Master of ceremonies Al Grayhawk of Sherman Mills, an Abenaki and a retired policeman spent the first 13 years of his life on a Canadian reservation, before his parents moved to Rhode Island for work. While their native heritage was no secret in his family, Grayhawk said that many people discover theirs accidentally, while doing geneaology research or compiling a family medical history. Then they come to a powwow to learn more.

Knowles and Barriault suspect that there are probably a lot of Mainers, particularly those of French descent, who have American Indian forebearers and don’t know it. Census and historical records tended to overlook American Indian women living with white men, they and other say, and families didn’t always celebrate such unions.

Powwows, however, can be a chance to learn the history that the family lore and the textbooks left out.

“We’re connected to the earth and to each other,” Knowles said. “There’s a lot of love here.”