Indian Story and Song, from North America

								


Produced by David Newman, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. Music
transcribed by Linda Cantoni, Espe (Nada Prodanovic), and
the PG Finale Team.

[Transcriber's Note: This e-book contains passages in Native American
dialects; hyphenation and accents have been preserved as they appear
in the original. Italics are represented by underscores. Obvious
printer errors in English passages have been corrected, in particular
the inconsistent use of "rythm" for "rhythm."]

INDIAN
STORY AND SONG
FROM NORTH AMERICA

By
ALICE C. FLETCHER
Holder of the Thaw Fellowship
Peabody Museum Harvard University

Boston
Small Maynard & Company
Publishers
Copyright, 1900,
By Alice C. Fletcher
Entered at Stationers' Hall

To
MY INDIAN FRIENDS
FROM WHOM I HAVE GATHERED
STORY AND SONG

PREFACE.

At the Congress of Musicians held in connection with the
Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha in July, 1898, several essays
upon the songs of the North American Indians were read, in
illustration of which a number of Omaha Indians, for the first time,
sang their native melodies to an audience largely composed of trained
musicians.
This unique presentation not only demonstrated the scientific value
of these aboriginal songs in the study of the development of music,
but suggested their availability as themes, novel and characteristic,
for the American composer. It was felt that this availability would be
greater if the story, or the ceremony which gave rise to the song,
could be known, so that, in developing the theme, all the movements
might be consonant with the circumstances that had inspired the
motive. In response to the expressed desire of many musicians, I have
here given a number of songs in their matrix of story.
Material like that brought together in these pages has hitherto
appeared only in scientific publications, where it has attracted the
lively interest of specialists both in Europe and America. It is now
offered in a more popular form, that the general public may share
with the student the light shed by these untutored melodies upon the
history of music; for these songs take us back to a stage of
development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared among
the ancients, and reveal to us something of the foundations upon which
rests the art of music as we know it to-day.
Many of the stories and songs in this little book are now for the
first time published. All have been gathered directly from the people,
in their homes, or as I have listened to the earnest voice of the
native priest explaining the ancient ceremonials of his fathers. The
stories are close translations, losing only a certain picturesqueness
and vigour in their foreign guise; but the melodies are exactly as
sung by the Indians.
_Indian myths embodying cosmic ideas have passages told in song,
tribal legends have their milestones of song, folk-tales at dramatic