Watch Sen. Scott Brown’s staffers chant ‘Indian war whoops’

Those hoping that the unusually diplomatic Senate race in Massachusetts would remain a rare, shining example of election season civility are going to be crushed.

A video posted to YouTube reveals Sen. Scott Brown's campaign staff at a rally in Boston, hollering, according to Boston's WCVB-TV, "Indian war whoops" and making "tomahawk chops" at nearby supporters of Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren.

The gestures are likely in reference to the controversy over Warren's claims to Cherokee heritage, which Brown has begun to make an issue in his ad campaign and referenced at the top of the first debate last week. Brown alleges that Warren has fabricated claims of Native American heritage in order to receive preferential hiring, a charge for which he has offered no evidence and one that Warren's campaign denies.

The crowd then broke into a seemingly less pertinent chant of "Yankees suck."

Among the impassioned Brown supporters and Red Sox fans were Brown's deputy chief of staff Greg Casey, constituent service counsel Jack Richard, state director Jerry McDermott, special assistant Jennifer Franks and GOP operative Brad Garrett, according to Boston's NewsCenter 5.

"It is certainly something that I don't condone," Brown told the station, responding to mention of the video. "The real offense is that [Warren] said she was white and then checked the box saying she is Native American, and then she changed her profile in the law directory once she made her tenure."

View the video below, posted by the Democratic-leaning Blue Mass Group: