Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, Three Instruments of a Cultural Genocide

Posted on September 22, 2024 by Jacques LeMay

The 1915 “Tentative Course of Study for United States Indian Schools” opens with the line “Indian schools must train the Indian youth of both sexes to take upon themselves the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.” (1915, BIA) This benign sentence tells us little of the real rationale for indian schools and how they were ran across the country.

Kill the Indian, Save the Man

In 1892 at the National Conference of Charities and Correction in Denver, Colorado, Richard Pratt gave a speech titled “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites.” This massively influential speech lays out his idea for native assimilation. Pratt is vehemently against the reservation system and the forcing of native people out of their land. Unfortunately, this is not out of respect for their right to self determination but instead the forceful assimilation of native people into white, capitalist culture.

“A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one… In a sense. I agree with the sentiment ,but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man.”¹

But Beethoven, Really?

Yes, Really. Western musical education was a critical strategy in the cultural genocide that was the goal of these schools. The course of study states that the goal of music education is to “preserve the child voice” and to “cultivate enjoyment and appreciation of good music.²” These are the words used to launder the dirty reality of these schools. Children were abducted from their homes and put in these schools to learn solfege and listen to Beethoven. If Pratt had his way they would never learn the music of their cultural heritage, let alone be allowed to perform it.

There were sixteen American Indian boarding schools in Minnesota alone. The first of which opened in 1871 and many were ran through the 1970s. That is nearly a century of similar music education being taught in these boarding schools and in the classes of Saint Olaf College. That education which so many of us have a love/hate relationship with was used to tear down native culture across the country and close to home.

Rattling America – Indigenous Peoples’ Instruments of Connection

Image

Music is something that connects humanity. Across the entire world, people sing and dance together. In American history, the first people to make music across their homelands were here hundreds of years ago, and their story and history has been erased by colinization and greed of U.S. expansion. The indigenous tribes that occupied (and still occupy to some degree) these lands that we call America danced and celebrated in song and dance for thousands of years before a genocide caused their traditions to be forcibly lost and forgotten. Of the records that remain of the indigenous peoples’ music we see similarities across a large range of people who had separate communities in isolation from one another, and yet related in many aspects. The one aspect that I want to focus on is an instrument that has history in all corners of the North American Continent–the rattle.

Staff, S. F. A. (2015, November 9). Gourd Rattle, Connector of Native American Tradition. Borderlore. https://borderlore.org/gourd-rattle-connector-of-native-american-tradition/

This instrument is percussive in nature, used to accompany singing and dancing. Rattles are made out of a variety of materials. The materials used should include animal, plant and mineral components to be symbolic of the three kingdoms.¹ The top of rattle, or container, can be made from a variety of natural materials, including: gourds, calabashes, turtle shells, cocoons, wood, bark, sections of animal horn, hide pouches, coconut shells, and woven fibres. ² The handle compoentent is often made of wood, bone, or stone. The pieces inside may be seeds, clay pieces, small pebbles, or animal bones/teeth.

In part with these symbolic components used to create each instrument, the overall meaning behind the rattle as an instrument varies. Some tribes from the Eastern Woodlands region believe that rattles make the sound of creation, while some tribes from the tropical south believe they are for communication between living and spirit beings.² For the Northwestern region, people believe that rattles represent voices from the spirit world.² While the history and meaning behind rattles can vary from tribe to tribe, they are consistently used in ceremonies and rituals to bring peace, harmony, and healing.³

Image taken by Jaclyn Duellman on Sept. 21st, 2024

This image is of a rattle I saw at the Mahkato Wacipi. I asked the man who was playing this rattle for the moccasin game if I could take this picture. I also asked him what his rattle was made of and he told me, “I don’t know, I got it so long ago.” When I asked him to take a picture he handed me the rattle, after I took the picture and handed him his instrument back he firmly told me to shake the rattle. I shook it, and smiled at the man. He accepted my thanks for letting me see his instrument, and went back to the game. Upon further research into the history of Gourd Rattles, it is considered rude to not play a rattle, and communicates that the rattle is not nice enough or worthy of being played.⁴ In comparison with the rattle I was able to photograph, below is a sketch from 1851 of an American Indian man holding a gourd rattle.

[Sketchbook by F. B. Mayer, 5 of 6] – Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America. (2024). Amdigital.co.uk. https://www.indigenoushistoriesandcultures.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Detail/sketchbook-by-f.-b.-mayer-5-of-6/7029037?item=7029060

1 Rose, Michael. 2024. “Native American Rattles Are a Symbol of Independence.” Indians.org. 2024. https://www.indians.org/articles/native-american-rattles.html#google_vignette.

2 “Native American Music – Musical Instruments in the Americas | Britannica.” 2019. In Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Native-American-music/Musical-instruments-in-the-Americas.

3 Justo. 2023. “Native American Rattles: Handmade, Traditional, History and Meaning – Native Tribe Info.” Native Tribe Info. March 22, 2023. https://nativetribe.info/native-american-rattles-handmade-traditional-history-and-meaning/#google_vignette.

4 Staff, S. F. A. (2015, November 9). Gourd Rattle, Connector of Native American Tradition. Borderlore. https://borderlore.org/gourd-rattle-connector-of-native-american-tradition/

Emile Petitot and his accounts of Native music

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Nathan Moon

During his decades of missionary work in the Northwest Territories of Canada, Father Emile Petitot wrote much on his experiences with the native peoples. One document, published seven years following his forced return to France as a result of poor health and occasional bouts of insanity, was a collection of songs Petitot had heard the natives singing for various dances, games, and war ceremonies. With transcribed melodies and his best attempts of words, Petitot recorded 46 different songs that are now permanently a part of history.

As pictured above, the manuscript shows a rough approximation of what Petitot heard. While we now understand that the concepts of 12 tone temperament and a standard key signature are really only well suited for traditionally “western” music styles, Petitot’s transcription still gets enough information about the music itself to get the ideas across. Notably, much of the context behind the history and purpose of the songs is lacking, but the European attitude towards the Native Americans at the time as people who had fallen from God’s grace and needed saving likely influenced him to simply ignore the context and keep trying to convert all that he could.

While his most notable accomplishments were not music related, being a missionary and cartographer before a musicologist, his recording and publication of Native music to a European audience was another important step in the understanding of Native culture, albiet from a controversial source. From temporary excommunication, getting forcibly admitted to an asylum, attempted murder of a colleague, and his general lack of respect toward the Dele and Inuit peoples, Petitot is the farthest one could be from a model musicologist. However, his work continued to set the stage for future ethnologists and musicologists to research the music of Native Americans, giving greater context to the work of Frances Densmore and others in the 20th century.

Works Cited

Moir, John S. “Petitot, Émile (Émile-Fortuné) (Émile-Fortuné-Stanislas-Joseph).” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 1998, www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?BioId=41771.

Petitot, Emile. Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest [manuscript] : recueillis, classés et notés par Emile Petitot, prêtre missionnaire au Mackenzie, de 1862-1882, 1889. 1862-1882], 1862.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School & Music – Sadie Metoxen

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Emily Hagel

Sadie Metoxen, Oneida, 1918.

Growing up, I remember very little about the education I received regarding Indigenous peoples of the United States. I may have completed a project on an Indigenous tribe or been lectured about tribal territories, but I don’t recall ever studying specific Indigenous figures outside of war. This raises a critical question about the modern American education system: how are Indigenous children and cultures presented? Many students struggle to name significant aspects of Indigenous culture outside of narratives centered around bloodshed and conflict, reflecting a troubling trend of erasure and whitewashing of Indigenous history and culture in American schools.

One stark example of this erasure is the boarding school system, which operated under the motto “Kill the Indian, save the man.” Established in the mid-1800s, these institutions aimed to strip away Indigenous identities and impose Western-Christian values on native youth. The Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania operated from 1879-1918, which served as a model for several non-reservation boarding schools throughout the United States. But what do we know about its students?

In 1912, Sadie Christine Metoxen, a member of the Oneida Nation, entered the Carlisle Indian School at 17 years old. She spent 5 years at Carlisle, becoming a member of the senior class of 1918 – the last graduating class to go through Carlisle. During her senior year, Metoxen contributed heavily to the 1918 Carlisle Indian Industrial School yearbook, including an opening letter and diary entries that depicted life at Carlisle. Throughout the diary entries, Metoxen mentions the term “music” in several contexts, on nearly every page. Entries include: “(9)8. First period in music. Seniors in a singing mood, especially “Gertie”, “(9)12. First class song handed in; composer, Abbie Somers”, “(11)7. Chapel: good singing”, and “(12)10. “Music, music everywhere”, Miss Dunnagan declared”. Metoxen captures not just the mechanics of music education, but also the emotional landscapes of her peers. Her mention of a “singing mood” reflects a collective spirit, hinting at the camaraderie that developed among students as they navigated the complexities of their circumstances. Through her reflections, Metoxen illustrated the resilience of Indigenous culture amidst the challenge of assimilation.

Cover of Carlisle Indian Industrial School yearbook, 1918.

In reading Metoxen’s accounts, I noted similarities to Tick’s Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion due to its primary source accounts of interactions between white European settlers and Indigenous peoples. However, Tick’s sources often feel disingenuous, misrepresenting Indigenous peoples through an inferior lens. While both resources provide insights into the past, they highlight a significant divide in how Indigenous experiences are portrayed. While Metoxen’s writings offer a personal and authentic glimpse into the lives of Indigenous students, Tick’s sources fail to capture the richness and complexity of Indigenous cultures, reducing them to stereotypes. This contrast underscores the urgent need for a more nuanced and accurate representation of Indigenous histories in education, one that honors their voices and experiences rather than marginalizing them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Carlisle Indian School. Carlisle (1918). Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1918. Print, Archives, The Newberry Library.

Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion, edited by Judith Tick, and Paul Beaudoin, Oxford University Press, Incorporated, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=415567.

Émile Pentitot’s Athabaskan Dictation

Posted on September 19, 2024 by Abby Carter

Father Émile Pentitot was a French missionary who spent years of the late 19th century in the Canadian Northwest with the goal of spreading religion, collecting data on native tribes, and mapping and recording ethnic and geographic data.¹ Petitot published many of his findings, with his most famous being the “Dictionnaire de la langue dènè-dindjié,” which was a book of definitions and translations of the major Athabaskan languages.¹ His research shown below is a collection of Native American music, titled “Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest,” collected between the years 1862-1882.

This source is quite unique to Petitot’s works, seeing as he is primarily a geographer and linguist, which raises the question: why did he collect this source? He had no motivation from the government as Francis Densmore would almost 10 years later and he wasn’t a musicologist. While Petitot was primarily a missionary, he also had a personal mission of collecting as many geographical and ethnographic observations about the region as possible.³ This includes music, especially that of community gatherings. Petitot also saw language as the key to religious conversion,³ which also applies to music. Petitot could have seen music as another opportunity to relate the music of the church to tribal song, and create a sense of familiarity between them. Lastly, Petitot was himself an appreciator of the arts,¹ and could be intrigued by collecting the music that he observed alongside his drawings of Athabaskan settlements and clothing.

Is this source an representation of the Athabaskan cultures? It is unlikely. As observed with Densmore and other white researchers aiming to document Native American music, this music is not meant to be written in Western notation, or the notation that is often seen throughout America and Europe today. There is a loss of nuance in rhythm, pitch, vocal tone, and energy. For example, in the source above, Petitot uses a standard five line staff and treble clef to notate these songs. He uses meters such as 3/4 and 6/8 and musical terms such as “da càpo” and “risoluto” to describe the music.⁴ None of these terms are ones which the Athabaskan tribes would understand or used to describe their music themselves. Further, the music was most likely not consensually taken from the culture which it originated. This is further evident by the fact that Petitot was a missionary,¹ whose whole job is to convert others to their religion. He also made many incorrect assumptions about the tribes that he visited due to long-standing mental confusion, including a belief that there was a world-wide conspiracy to murder him in order to prevent continued research.³ He was also not a good person in general, being excommunicated from his mission group in 1866 due to a sexual relationship with a boy servant.²

Overall, while this source is an intriguing look into historical research and collection of Athabaskan culture, it is most likely not the most accurate representation of their culture, and is most likely intrusive and assumptive of their practices.

¹ Savoie, Donat. 1982. EMILE PETITOT (1838-1916). Arctic, vol. 35, no. 3,, pp. 446–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40509367. (Accessed 19 Sept. 2024).

² John S. Moir. “PETITOT, ÉMILE (Émile-Fortuné) (Émile-Fortuné-Stanislas-Joseph),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 14, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/petitot_emile_14E.html. (Accessed September 19, 2024).

³ Honigmann, John J. “EMILE FORTUNÉ STANISLAS JOSEPH PETITOT ENCYCLOPEDIA ARCTICA 15: BIOGRAPHIES.” Dartmouth College Library, collections.dartmouth.edu/arctica-beta/html/EA15-56.html. (Accessed 19 Sept. 2024).

⁴ Petitot, Father, Emile. “CHANTS INDIENS DU CANADA NORD-OUEST [MANUSCRIPT]: RECUEILLIS, CLASSÉS ET NOTÉS PAR EMILE PETITOT, PRÊTRE MISSIONNAIRE AU MACKENZIE, DE 1862-1882, 1889.” Mareuil-lès-Meaux (Seine-et-Marne), France. (Accessed 19 Sept. 2024).

Problems with Indigenous American Studies

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Nathaniel Johnson

In recent years, there has been an effort among educators, music educators in particular, to diversify the pedagogical canon of repertoire, particularly with works by indigenous composers or with indigenous subjects. However current efforts to study indigenous music fall into some of the same issues as early colonizers.

Hennepin, Lewis. “Map of a Large Country Newly Discovered in the Northern America.” American History Indians and Culture, Amdigital.Co.Uk.

The map above, by cartographer Lewis Hennepin, depicts the area to become the US around the 1690s. Wide swaths of inhabited areas are marked empty, or are missing groups living in those areas. Wide swaths of land are generically referred to as Iroquois or Illinois, in a somewhat reductionist view of indigenous tribes – understood by current historians to have been significantly more complex¹.

In studies of indigenous music, mythical ideas of racial essences that are deeply embedded within the folk culture of U.S. society have to be recognized so that romanticized stereotypes may be challenged². The effort by some musicologists to “essentialize” indigenous music makes the same reductionist mistake as colonial explorers and disregards the complexity and details of indigenous cultures.

Even the Library of congress refers to indigenous music as a monolith, assembling instructions for how best to prepare to study native American musical traditions often lumps cultural traditions with little attention to differentiation or individual tribal identities. Thankfully the Library of Congress is careful to note that it is important to best appreciate music within its context³.

This contextualization is critical especially as there is the modern push to play and study more indigenous music. Prest notes the large influx of pieces attempting to celebrate indigenous culture that end up being largely reductionist and nearly downright insensitive⁴. He also notes that often western musicologists approach indigenous music with a self-serving attitude, approaching music wondering what they could gain from it. He also notes that attempts to integrate music tend to try and be inclusive while subverting the history of genocide committed against indigenous people. So as pedagogues look to make the noble push to diversify their repertoire, they must make sure to do so with careful attention to detail, that often starts with talking to and listening to indigenous scholars.

1 Malinowski, Sharon. “IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY.” Iroquois Confederacy – CPN Cultural Heritage Center, www.potawatomiheritage.com/encyclopedia/iroquois-confederacy/#:~:text=The%20Iroquois%20Confederacy%20or%20the,North%20Carolina%2C%20joined%20the%20Confederacy. Accessed 26 Oct. 2023.

2 Eisenbeil, Bruce. “Native American Perspectives in Music – Post #1 (2 of 2).” Bruce Eisenbeil, www.eisenbeil.com/native-american-perspectives-in-music-post-1-2-of-2-2/. Accessed 26 Oct. 2023.

3 Appold, Juliette. “Appreciating Native American Music: NLS Music Notes.” The Library of Congress, The Library of Congress, 4 Nov. 2021, blogs.loc.gov/nls-music-notes/2021/11/appreciating-native-american-music/#:~:text=Its%20most%20traditional%20instruments%20are,to%20draw%20on%20traditional%20contents.

4 Prest, A., Goble, J. S., & Vazquez-Cordoba, H. (2023). On Embedding Indigenous Musics in Schools: Examining the Applicability of Possible Models to One School District’s Approach. Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, 41(2), 60-69. https://doi.org/10.1177/87551233221085739

Violent Notation, Eh?

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Thomas McCarthy

If you look at transcriptions of Native American music created by musicologists in the early 20th century, a common pattern emerges. Densmore’s writings are filled with transcriptions that feature several different odd time signatures back to back, hanging 32nd notes, and other abominations, all in an attempt to most accurately depict native music. Forcing Native American music to conform to western notation is an act of violent colonialism. Though not apparent, this is an act that attempts to create forced assimilation of native culture to Anglo-Saxon American culture.

While this was going on, America’s neighbors to the north were doing something similar, but in a completely different way. Emile Petitot, a French priest, was transcribing the songs of nations in the northwest of Canada. Petitot’s approach was vastly different from that of Densmore. As you’ll see below, in the seven transcriptions Petitot did, he makes no attempt at describing the music using the usual spaghetti monsters seen in Densmore’s work.¹ Instead, his transcriptions are made of note values and time signatures regularly seen in western music: Common time, cut time, quarter and eighth notes with the occasional use of triplets.

Petitot, Father, Emile. 1862-1889. Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest [manuscript]: recueillis, classés et notés par Emile Petitot, prêtre missionnaire au Mackenzie, de 1862-1882, 1889. [Manuscript]. At: Place: The Newberry Library. VAULT box Ayer MS 715. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_MS_715 [Accessed October 26, 2023].

It’s hard to assess these transcriptions without having a recording of the songs being transcribed, but I would assume that this notation does not accurately portray the music it describes. Subjecting native music to this western notation is still violent colonialism. However, an argument could be made that this is much better, or much worse than how Densmore transcribed. These transcriptions could be much better than Densmore’s, because they include less detail, making them less prescriptive. It’s possible these transcriptions exist to get the “general idea” of the music, and by being less prescriptive, they force the music to conform to the notation less than Densmore’s transcriptions do.

On the other hand, it’s very easy to see how this transcription is much worse. At least Densmore poured time and effort to try to accurately depict the music as it was; this transcription erases every part of the music that doesn’t conform to western music standards. I could see these transcriptions being lazy attempts without any care for the music being represented. I tend to believe that these transcriptions are even worse. Densmore’s transcriptions are “violent notation,” but at least she actually tried.

1 Petitot, Father, Emile. 1862-1889. Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest [manuscript]: recueillis, classés et notés par Emile Petitot, prêtre missionnaire au Mackenzie, de 1862-1882, 1889. [Manuscript]. At: Place: The Newberry Library. VAULT box Ayer MS 715. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_MS_715 [Accessed October 26, 2023].

Music Education and Forced Assimilation at United States Indian Boarding Schools

Posted on October 26, 2023 by Mariana Rogan

The first off-reservation boarding school in the U.S. for Indigenous students, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was founded in 1879 by Henry Richard Pratt in Pennsylvania. The founding of the school was overseen by President Rutherford Hayes, under the Indian Civilization Act (ICA), that incentivized the so-called “civilized” education of Indigenous children. Carlisle’s strict, military-style modes of discipline and focus on vocational training that funneled students directly into underpaid manual and domestic labor jobs became a blueprint for several such boarding schools across the country.¹

Since the recent archeological discoveries of mass graves at the former sites of these schools across the US and Canada, the legacy of these institutions designed to “kill the Indian, save the man,” in Pratt’s words, is being examined again with a mind towards restorative justice, acknowledging how these modes of “education” and assimilation were not just physically violent, but also mentally and spiritually violent.²

One would not necessarily expect music to play a central part in the violent assimilationist education of these boarding schools, but a 1915 book giving detailed instructions, down to how much time in the school day should be spent on a subject, for boarding school curriculum suggests otherwise. The book features a chapter outlining the music curriculum, which is extremely telling of the strict assimilationist thinking that was the guiding force for these boarding schools.

The first paragraph seems innocent enough, touting the broader educational benefits of music training, but it quickly takes a turn. The author(s) of this guide state that the first step in a proper musical education is “to permit the pupils to hear only good music.”³ What exactly they mean by “good,” is quickly outlined by a long list of operas such as Aida and William Tell, as well as works from the Western classical canon by composers such as Mozart and Haydn. They also add that “Patriotic songs, as ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’… should, of course, receive special attention.” ⁴

Repertoire suggestions in 1915 book.

Following these narrow and purposefully Euro-centric repertoire guidelines, the author(s) go on to list aesthetic guidelines for the training of the pupils’ voices. The very first rule stated is “Always insist on a good, smooth, sweet, light, pure tone.”⁵ Soon after that, it’s also stressed that the pupils “Pronounce all words clearly, so that a listener can understand them.”⁶ These two guidelines emphasize the enforcement of Euro-centric standards for musical training, as well as complete assimilation to the English language and abandonment of Indigenous aesthetics and language.

With strict guidelines to teach and enforce the European classical canon as the musical ideal, Indigenous children, often as young as four years old, were completely cut off from not only their home and family, but also the musical culture they would have otherwise been surrounded by and raised in. The violence lies not only in hundreds of deaths of children that were torn from their homes, but the systematic way in which they had their culture and traditions torn from them, and the Indigenous music and languages that were lost in the process.

1 Ferris, Jeanne. 2021. “‘LET THOSE Children’s Names BE KNOWN’: THE PARADOX OF INDIAN BOARDING SCHOOLS.” News from Native California 35 (2): 26–32. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=154090702&site=ehost-live.

2 Ibid.

3 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915. Tentative course of study for United States Indian schools. Prepared under the direction of commissioner of Indian affairs. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_386_U5_1915 [Accessed October 26, 2023].

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

Music in Native American Boarding Schools

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Rachel Christensen

Tentative course of study for United States Indian schools. Prepared under the direction of commissioner of Indian affairs.¹

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States was attempting to assimilate Native American students in the white American culture. This was done in part by placing Native American children in boarding schools, and by 1925, “over 357 boarding schools were being
operated in thirty states.”² The United States government the education of Native American children was the key solution to assimilation. Since that is what the government believed, they also believed that “Only by complete isolation of the Indian child from his savage antecedents can he be satisfactorily educated.”³ A major part of the curriculum when assimilating Native American’s into white culture was music.

The document above is a few pages from a course study made for Native American boarding schools specifically focusing on the music aspect of their education. This document really emphasizes the importance of music in a young person’s education as music “develops all the powers and functions of the human mind.”⁴ This document lists some requirements in educating the students with music. The first requirement listed is that the students are only allowed to listen to “only hear good music, aiming consistently in this way to develop musical appreciation.”⁵ It proceeds to list selections that someone deemed “good” for the Native American students such as the march from the opera “Aida” and William Tell” but “rag time” music is not good since it is mostly enjoyed by the “average person”.⁶ This document states that these students should learn about music by Haydn and Mozart for special occasions, and special attention should be pay to patriotic songs such as “the Star-Spangled Banner.”⁷ It is stated that the purpose of this course study is to lead the children to “an interest in singing” and to “preserve” their voice, “secure the ability to read music at sight” and to perform it correctly and pleasantly, and “to cultivate enjoyment and appreciation of good music.”⁸

In many cultures, music is rooted into their tradition, especially oral tradition. In Native American culture, music is not simply a form of entertainment, it is an essential part of everyday life and ceremony. Where Western tradition focuses primarily on music in terms of entertainment at a distance, Native Americans view music as an active and personal experience, not simply something that is for personal entertainment.⁹

Bibliography

Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915. Tentative course of study for United States Indian schools. Prepared under the direction of commissioner of Indian affairs, page 110-111. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_386_U5_1915

The role of music in assimilation of students at … – gettysburg college. Accessed October 25, 2023. https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1217&context=ghj.

Footnotes

1 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915. Tentative course of study for United States Indian schools. Prepared under the direction of commissioner of Indian affairs, page 110-111. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_386_U5_1915

2 The role of music in assimilation of students at … – gettysburg college, accessed October 25, 2023, https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1217&context=ghj.

3 The role of music in assimilation of students at … – gettysburg college, accessed October 25, 2023, https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1217&context=ghj.

4 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915.

5 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915.

6 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915.

7 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915.

8 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915.

9 Bureau of Indian Affairs. 1915.

Music as a Means of Oppression

Posted on October 25, 2023 by Zachary Buerger

Music is often touted as a vehicle for social justice; a means of liberation, but it can just as easily be utilized as a means of control and oppression. Modern popular music has often aimed to push against the status quo, from Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” to Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”, but from an educational standpoint, there is power in deciding what music is studied and what is omitted.

This power is primely exhibited in the curriculum of the Carlisle Indian School. Opened in 1879, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was the first boarding school for Native American children to be both funded and ran by the U.S. government¹. Its doors were open for nearly 40 years and saw over 1,000 students enter and graduate. The term “boarding school” is almost comical to use, as the main objective of the school was the forced cultural erasure and assimilation of Native students.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 1915. Catalogue and synopsis of courses, United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle: Carlisle Indian Press. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_389_C2_C2_1915 [Accessed October 25, 2023].

Seen above is an excerpt from the course catalogue of the Carlisle school. The language parades the importance of music in regards to the development of students, upon further reading, it is abundantly clear what kind of music they are referring to: American music. To the administration, and by extension the American government, Native music was seen as illegitimate. Students instead were to sing in choir, play in the band, or play in the orchestra. American music, in this scenario, was used as a means of cultural cleansing; of oppression.

The National Archives. US, Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940. 1967. Courtesy of Native American Archives. https://www.fold3.com/image/216096302/1924?terms=schools,boarding,united,america,states,school

This form of indoctrination highlights how the powers that be are able to exert control by deciding what is music and what isn’t, or what is high art art and what isn’t. As Cloonan and Johnson argue in “Killing Me Softly with His Song”, “Every time we applaud the deployment of music as a way of articulating physical, cognitive and cultural territory, we are also applauding the potential or actual displacement or even destruction of other identities”².

1Carlisle Indian School Project. n.d. “Carlisle Indian School Project | Richard Henry Pratt Carlisle Indian School.” Carlisle Indian School Project. https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/past/.

2Cloonan, Martin, and Bruce Johnson. “Killing Me Softly with His Song: an Initial Investigation into the Use of Popular Music as a Tool of Oppression.” Popular Music 21, no. 1 (2002): 27–39. doi:10.1017/S0261143002002027.

Works Cited

Carlisle Indian School Project. n.d. “Carlisle Indian School Project | Richard Henry Pratt Carlisle Indian School.” Carlisle Indian School Project. https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/past/.

The National Archives. US, Indian Census Rolls, 1885-1940. 1967. Courtesy of Native American Archives. https://www.fold3.com/image/216096302/1924?terms=schools,boarding,united,america,states,school

Cloonan, Martin, and Bruce Johnson. “Killing Me Softly with His Song: an Initial Investigation into the Use of Popular Music as a Tool of Oppression.” Popular Music 21, no. 1 (2002): 27–39. doi:10.1017/S0261143002002027.

Carlisle Indian School Project

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Carter Allen-Weyenberg

While looking for a source to spark my interest in writing this blog post, I found this manuscript seen below.[1] This manuscript was transcribed by Father Emile Petitot, a Roman Catholic Preist.[2] This sparked my thinking of common themes discussed among blog posts in the past. The idea of White Saviorism and the need to record practices from cultures other than your own. Petitot encountered various indigenous tribes in the land we now consider Canada. During these years of contact, he served as a missionary priest to the indigenous tribes. After these encounters, Petitot was convinced that liquor and guns were threatening indigenous culture and began to fervently record their cultural practices. That is how the ‘Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest’ was created, the document you see below.

Cover of Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest by Father Emile Petitot

There are a couple of different things wrong with this document. Most notably, we see once again the attempt to transcribe indigenous musical practices with Western notation. The discipline of Ethnomusicology has seen Francis Densmore[3], W.E.B DuBois[4], and many other musicologists attempt this. A common thread among all these examples is that the attempt is never quite enough to capture the quintessence of indigenous musical traditions. They introduce such complex rhythms, and attempt to give different tempo markings for different parts, and the shoe never quite fits.

(Click on it to see a better image) A syllabus for students going through the Carlisle Indian School

In the document above, you can see an attempt to Americanize indigenous children with this academic plan. This was called the Carlisle Indian School Project, and it was the first government-run boarding school in 1879.[5] Over 180 indigenous children died while attending this conversion school. Notice that in the fall semester of the first year, there is a class based on hygiene. This to me shows that the creators of this curriculum believed the people of indigenous cultures are dirty and need to be taught how to clean themselves. Not very kind and welcoming to my understanding. Below you will see a page outlining the musical education that these kids will receive. They speak of music being a good tool for happiness and religious worship, Christian worship. These kids will also go through the school’s orchestra or band program while having their identities stripped from them.

(Click on it to see it better) Rationale for music education in Carlisle Indian Industrial School

The theme of White Saviorism is not subtle throughout all the sources provided above. We can see it in the work done by Father Emile, and through the Carlisle Indian School Project. It went so far as many students who ‘attended’ the school believed that the only way to save ingenious culture was to shed all practices and dive deep into white culture. Common phrases were “Kill the Indian, Save the man.”[6]

[1] Petitot, Father, Emile. 1862-1889. Chants indiens du Canada Nord-Ouest [manuscript]: recueillis, classés et notés par Emile Petitot, prêtre missionnaire au Mackenzie, de 1862-1882, 1889. [Manuscript]. At: Place: The Newberry Library. VAULT box Ayer MS 715. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_MS_715 [Accessed October 24, 2023].

[2] Moir, John S. 2003. “Biography – PETITOT, ÉMILE – Volume XIV (1911-1920) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography.” Www.biographi.ca. 2003. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/petitot_emile_14E.html.

‌

[3] Densmore, Frances. 1929. Pawnee Music. Da Capo Press.

‌

[4] DuBois, W.E.B. 1903. “‘The Sorrow Songs,’ from the Souls of Black Folk.” Teaching American History. 1903. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-sorrow-songs/.

‌

[5] Carlisle Indian School Project. n.d. “Carlisle Indian School Project | Richard Henry Pratt Carlisle Indian School.” Carlisle Indian School Project. https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/past/.

‌

[6] Ibid

Works Cited

Carlisle Indian School Project. n.d. “Carlisle Indian School Project | Richard Henry Pratt Carlisle Indian School.” Carlisle Indian School Project. https://carlisleindianschoolproject.com/past/.

Carlisle Indian Industrial School. 1915. Catalogue and synopsis of courses, United States Indian School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Carlisle: Carlisle Indian Press. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_389_C2_C2_1915 [Accessed October 24, 2023].

Densmore, Frances. 1929. Pawnee Music. Da Capo Press.

DuBois, W.E.B. 1903. “‘The Sorrow Songs,’ from the Souls of Black Folk.” Teaching American History. 1903. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/the-sorrow-songs/.

Moir, John S. 2003. “Biography – PETITOT, ÉMILE – Volume XIV (1911-1920) – Dictionary of Canadian Biography.” Www.biographi.ca. 2003. http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/petitot_emile_14E.html.

‌

Musical Assimilation in Native American Schools

Posted on October 19, 2023 by Katya Jarmulowicz

When finding a text to research and write about in this post, the Tentative Course of Study for United States Indian Schools immediately caught my attention. This text, drafted by the Office of Indian Affairs, states that the Course of Study provided in the text is to be adopted by schools of the Indian school service.¹Children were required to attend these schools as a part of a treaty deal between a tribe and the United States government; both male and female children between the ages of six and sixteen were to endure the process of cultural assimilation and be instructed in the English language.²

Article VI; Treaty with the Navajo Tribe at Fort Sumner³

Within the text, an entire section is dedicated to the importance of, “training the senses,” and develop[ing] all the powers and functions of the human mind.”⁴Music is named as the only subject that can synchronize the senses in a way that is “enjoyable to the individual and helpful to the community,” but this is quickly followed by a list of particular criteria that must be followed in the classroom when music is being taught.⁵Unsurprisingly, these specifications uphold a legacy of cultural superiority. For example, in order to help students develop a sense of musical appreciation, they are only allowed to hear music deemed as good, which according to the text, seems to be limited to American patriotic songs and classical music composed by well-known European composers, such as Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.⁶Additionally, the text presents individual aspects of music that can be used to further assimilate students into Western culture, like preferring a “good, smooth, sweet, light, pure tone,” over “raggedness” and “huskiness.”⁷

These schools masqueraded as institutions that concerned themselves with the education and futures of Native American children. However, when considering how these schools use subjects like music to perpetuate cultural supremacy, the deeply problematic intention of these school to assimilate Native American children becomes blatantly obvious.

1 Tentative course of study for United States Indian Schools. Govt. Print. Off., 1915. https://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_386_U5_1915/61?searchId=8c6fcef2-55e4-4583-b1cf-9be3f19eeaff

2 “Page 10 – Navaho Tribe at Fort Sumner – Article VI – June 1st 1868.” Fold3. Accessed October 19, 2023. https://www.fold3.com/image/6589725/372?terms=school%2Cschools.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

Why music?

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Noah Schilbe

Every decade or so, a different approach to analyzing music comes around, each trying to explain what it is about the idea that develops independently and uniquely across every culture. We’re asked regularly to consider “What is music?” or “Why is music?” as performers, in order to better understand our own art form and convey… whatever we’re trying to in our musical attempt.

Pleasure is something that the author S. ruminates on. As they wrote their letter to the editor of The Monthly Magazine, and the American Review with nothing more substantial for a signature, their identity is entirely up for question. This is not uncommon; the magazine was compiled from letters to the editors, commentary, and bits of philosophic thoughts about all sorts of topics ranging from orations of American Independence to church sermons to shavings (it is quite an interesting read). Specifically, S. focuses on the pleasure of music and where it originates from: the notes themselves or the ideas they incite? S. goes out of their way to talk about how “simple sounds are agreeable or disagreeable according as the vibrations they produce in the ear arrive at, or are above or below the pleasure point of action”¹, which can be summarized by the following example:

For those still confused, S. is essentially theorizing that some sounds are just naturally terrible, that there exists an invisible bar that denotes the bare minimum of human tolerance, and that no sounds below it can exist with any form of musicality. They are, in essence, pointing out these sounds for the only purpose of ignoring them, as nails on a chalkboard (or anything similar) perhaps should never be included in a musical composition.

Therefore, the primary part of S’s argument focuses on ideas that music incites. They theorized that music acts as the starting domino in a long chain, setting off a cascade of ideas. When listening to a piece of music that perhaps invokes ideas of mountain rivers and chirping birds, it is actually the listener that is giving the song those meanings, even if it had been composed with the intent to inspire such ideas. S. notes this is extremely obvious with national music, citing a “Swiss Air that is forbid even to be played to their troops in foreign service, as it always produces the most unrestrainable desire to return [home].” Yet of course, if one has no particular love for the Swiss, they would most likely clap and move right along.

This notion comes to a head with the music of Native Americans. S. discusses this in brief, referring as an example to the Creek nation, which is now known as the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma, where an observed song contained only three notes. To the unenlightened observer, such ‘music’ would have been laughable, however to those who have somber thoughts of war and strife associated with the slow, despondent melody, there is deeper understanding and shared meaning.

Extrapolating this to class readings and conversations, we return to the idea that ‘everyone lacks context’. When Frances Densmore, an anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, recorded the traditional songs of Native American tribes during the early 1900s and carefully noted their meanings, there was lost context and understanding. In compilations of early colonist opinions regarding native music, there was lost context and understanding (made even worse by the lack of a shared language). Even recorded songs that can be heard in full inspire new domino-chains of thought that perhaps are not what the original composer or culture intended.

This, perhaps, is not a bad thing, as music can be shared between cultures and grow and change with each new person who ascribes meaning to it. But it lends certain doubt to that traditional sentiment: “Music is a universal language”.

Citations:

1. S. 1800. Letter 2 — no title. The Monthly Magazine, and American Review (1799-1800). 02, pg. 85. https://www.proquest.com/magazines/letter-2-no-title/docview/88855456/se-2 (accessed September 21, 2023).

The entire collection (volumes 1-3) can be found publicly available at HathiTrust at the following URL: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009018879.

Natalie Curtis – Intention vs. Impact

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Rachel Dumont

Natalie Curtis Burlin (1875 – 1921) was an American ethnomusicologist and musician whose work centered around preserving and archiving African-American and Native American music, art, and culture. In her 1913 article “The Perpetuating of Indian Art”, she appeals to the American governmental systems that are trying to erase Native culture altogether by assimilation into Western culture. While Curtis’ intentions were likely to help the Native American peoples, her argument against assimilation focuses largely on how Indian culture benefits white people. In the opening sentence of her article, she states:

“Those who have worked among the American Indians, and have learned to respect the thought, the art, and many of the religious ideas of this most interesting people, must feel a sense of almost personal gratitude to the present Secretary of the Interior for having appointed a Supervisor of Music in the department of Indian Education, whose duties shall be to ‘record native Indian music, and arrange it for use in the Indian schools.’”¹

While Curtis continuously raves about the beauty and importance of Native Culture throughout the article, her argument always boils down to this: since Native culture is so beautiful, we can’t let it vanish completely because we can learn from them to help better ourselves and our Western culture.

This is a common theme among supposedly well-meaning American ethnomusicologists at this time and throughout history. Ethnomusicologists like Alice Fletcher and Natalie Curtis tended to use language that is insensitive and dehumanizing towards the cultures they were studying. Fletcher was of the belief that “education was of primary importance for Native Americans, as it would ease assimilation into ‘civilized’ culture.”² Curtis referred to Native Americans as “underdeveloped”, “primitive”, and “noble dogs”.

Not to say that Curtis didn’t accomplish good things in her work – she used her personal relationship with Theodore Roosevelt to aid in the removal of a longtime ban on Native American music, ³and she strongly advocated against the erasure and white-washing of Native culture. Whatever the intentions, it’s important to analyze and acknowledge ethnomusicologists of the past so we can recognize where they failed and do better in the future. What we can learn from Curtis and others is that It’s important to ask yourself, whose betterment is the work intended for?

1 Curtis, N. (1913, Nov 22). THE PERPETUATING OF INDIAN ART. Outlook (1893-1924), 623. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/magazines/perpetuating-indian-art/docview/136640521/se-2

2 Haynes, Caitlin T, and Katherine Crowe. “Alice Cunningham Fletcher and Francis LaFlesche in the Transcription Center.” Smithsonian, 2023, transcription.si.edu/articles/alice-cunningham-fletcher-and-francis-la-flesche-transcription-center.

3 Curtis, N. (1919, Mar 05). MR. ROOSEVELT AND INDIAN MUSIC: A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE. Outlook (1893-1924), 399. Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/magazines/mr-roosevelt-indian-music/docview/137007546/se-2

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Natalie Curtis Burlin”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 Apr. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Natalie-Curtis-Burlin. Accessed 20 September 2023.

Native American influence on American Music

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Lucas Jindra

Charles Wakefield Cadman was an American pianist and composer who was a so-called musical “Indian Expert.” He incorporated Native American music into many of his compositions, and gave talks based on his compositions and experiences living with Native Americans all over the US. I stumbled upon an article about him in the The Chicago Defender while looking for white and Native American musicians drawing influence from each other, primarily in the Midwest. This article, dated from 1925, talks about a new kind of American music, as one that is as “characteristic of America as the music of Spain is characteristic of that nation” (The Chicago Defender).¹ The article lists Charles Wakefield Cadman as supporting and expressing this view and goes on to both identify Cadman as a man ahead of his time and describes him as an influential figure in ethnology and composing.

This article relates directly to Francis Densmore’s work and Beverly Diamond’s opinions about how to study Native American music. While what we can tell from this article is limited, the text specifically describes Cadman as “spend[ing] many years living among the Indian tribes of the West.” While ‘living among’ could have many different meanings, he likely was much more attached to Native American music and their cultural context than Francis Densmore was.² In addition, Cadman seems to follow Beverly Diamond’s opinion more closely by living among and most likely learning about the cultures and traditions of the Native Americans.³ Instead of studying this music as an outsider, Cadman attempts (though we don’t know how successfully) to become an insider and therefore get to know the music much better than Densmore’s categorical analysis and recordings. It is possible that Densmore’s intentions were a bit different than Cadman’s in that she wanted to record these songs if they were to die out. In contrast, Cadman’s goal might have been more to get to know Native American so well to use it for his own good.

Through Cadman’s work, this article not only attempts to describe current American music based on his insights, but also tries to predict the future of American music. Not only was Cadman an ethnologist, but also a composer. According to the article, his compositions were the first of its class and the future of American music. It is best compared with other articles that outline others’ work in ethnography and ethnomusicology, and so it has direct ties to Francis Densmore’s and Beverly Diamond’s work. While it is hard to confirm, this article makes it appear as though Charles Wakefield Cadman was a man ahead of his time who pioneered views and practices that came decades later.

1 “Folk Songs Called Root of New Music.” The Chicago Defender, 25 April 1925.

2. Densmore, Francis. “Pawnee Music.” New York, 1972.

3. Diamond, Beverly. “Music and Modernity among the First Peoples of North America.Wesleyan University Press, Middletown Connecticut.

“Othering” Native American Music

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Rachel Christensen

Fletcher’s fieldwork collection from observing Sioux and Omaha Native Americans.¹

Alice C. Fletcher is thought to be the first scientist of ethnology to live among the Native Americans in the 1880s.² In this excerpt of an article written by Fletcher, she details her time observing a ceremony done by the Native Americans she was living with. She continues by explaining every detail of what she sees and how she feels throughout the duration of this event.

Fletcher page 1 Fletcher page 2

One of Fletcher’s first feelings upon entering this tent and seeing the ceremony is one of fear. She was “startled by a sudden mighty beating of the drum, with such deafening yells and shouts that [she] feared [her] ears would burst.”³ She describes the women sitting around the drum as being the only people wearing color. She details the bangles they wear around their wrists as “glints of brightness” which “only added to the weirdness of the place.”⁴ Fletcher’s vocabulary usage in her descriptions throughout this article excerpt insinuates a sense of “othering” between her and the ceremony. The impression she gives the reader is one of fear, where the reader might want to be wary of Native Americans and their music.

Fletcher moves on to discuss the music she hears. She states that she was “distressed and perplexed, [her] head was ringing, and [she] was fast becoming mentally distraught.”⁵ The visuals of the ceremony, the dancing and singing, lead her to call upon “every picture of savages [she] had ever seen,” as well as “every account of Indian atrocit[y] [she] had ever heard,” and it “gave her a horrible interpretation to the scene.”⁶ So much so that she would have escaped if she could. Eventually, she states that she comes to her senses and realizes that she was witnessing this very ceremony by her own choice, and she needs to put her personal emotions aside.

Fletcher admits it took her a long time for her ears to adjust to what she was hearing. She even acknowledges that the Native Americans struggled to listen to their music when played on a piano.⁷ They were not accustomed to the piano the same way Fletcher was not accustomed to their singing. It wasn’t until she fell ill and the Native Americans sang to her that she finally began to understand the beauty of their music.

It is really easy to discuss other culture’s music in a way that makes it seem so far away from us. It is so easy to “other” their music as seen here in the way Fletcher writes about how she felt while experiencing their ceremony. Fletcher’s feelings demonstrate exactly why there is misunderstanding and misrepresentation of Native American music. People begin with a preconceived idea and understanding that it makes it difficult to learn about and appreciate local and global music for what it is.

Bibliography

“Alice Cunningham Fletcher.” History of American Women, April 2, 2017. https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2015/05/alice-cunningham-fletcher.html.

Fletcher, Alice C. “INDIAN SONGS.: PERSONAL STUDIES OF INDIAN LIFE.” Century Illustrated Magazine (1881-1906) XLVII, no. 3 (01, 1894): 421, 1-2, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/indian-songs/docview/125523852/se-2.

“Life among the Indians.” Nebraska Press, January 27, 2017. https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803241152/.

1https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9780803241152/

2“Alice Cunningham Fletcher,” History of American Women, April 2, 2017, https://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2015/05/alice-cunningham-fletcher.html.

3Alice C. Fletcher, “INDIAN SONGS.: PERSONAL STUDIES OF INDIAN LIFE,” 1.

4Fletcher, 2.

5Ibid.

6Ibid.

7Ibid.

Misrepresentation of Indian Music

Image

[Portrait of Mr. John Comfort Fillmore]. Photographs. Place: National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution.¹

In his article, John Comfort Fillmore presents his analysis of a set of songs collected by Alice C. Fletcher. Aside from the conclusions that Fillmore draws from his harmonic analysis, he provides us with much more information that alerts us to his biases toward Native American Music. He recalls Fletcher’s request of him to analyze the songs to determine “the scale on which [they] were built,”²but the existence of this article alone proves that this simple request made by another scholar quickly ballooned into something much more presumptuous and declarative than it deserved to be.

Fillmore presents the scales of these songs in Western notation on the ignorant basis that, “the Indians have no musical notation, no theories of music whatsoever.”³His deprecating comments continue when describing how he felt obligated to harmonize the versions of these songs since, “the harmonic sense of these peoples is underdeveloped.”⁴Fillmore’s imposition of Western notation and harmony onto these songs is an excellent example of “colonial imposition,”⁵ which is a term used by Beverly Diamond in Music and modernity among First Peoples of North America to describe inadequate documentation of Native American music through the use of Western notation.

Fillmore’s intentions and biases are made clear at the end of the article, where his initial intentions of using the music of Native Americans to “test the naturalness of our own musical perceptions”⁶lead to his far-fetched conclusion that Native American music contains a “noble religious feeling [akin to] the central idea of Christianity.”⁷Contrary to popular ideas of the time, he does advocate for Native American music as being “worthy of comparison to some of the best [music] we possess ourselves,”⁸but only after his unwelcome imposition of Western notation to create versions of Native American music that “the Indians couldn’t have produced unaided.”⁹

Though much of ethnomusicology has changed over the course of its existence, some things remain the same, both positive and negative. Browner notes that the employment of fieldwork as the main method of ethnomusicological research has remained the same throughout history.¹⁰Similarly, although the field has advanced greatly over time, the misrepresentation demonstrated through Fillmore’s article and research methods remains something to be aware of within ethnomusicology today.

Bibliography

1 https://library.artstor.org/asset/NMNH_125725565.

2 John Comfort Fillmore. “A STUDY OF INDIAN MUSIC.1.” Century Illustrated Magazine (1881-1906), 02, 1894, 616, https://www.proquest.com/magazines/study-indian-music-1/docview/125524446/se-2.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 Diamond, Beverly. Music and modernity among First Peoples of North America. Edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson. Wesleyan University Press, 2019.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid.

10 Music of the First Nations : Tradition and Innovation in Native North America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2009. Accessed September 18, 2023. ProQuest Ebook Central.

The Cannon: Educational Fundamentals, or Cultural Genocide?

Posted on September 21, 2022 by Sophia Kushner

The original building housing the Cherokee National Female Seminary, which burned down in 1987.

In 1951, the Cherokee Nation – having recently been forcibly moved to Oklahoma and re-formed their government in Tahlequah – opened the doors of the Cherokee National Female Seminary.¹ The school was run by the tribal government and was extremely well regarded, generally considered better than the public school systems of several nearby states.² On the Kaw (or Kanza) land³ that would one day become Northeastern State University, young Native women had what essentially amounts to a liberal arts education, including the study of music.

Music curriculum at the Cherokee National Female Seminary (Ayer 1906, 24)

The school’s music curriculum, depicted here, was collected by Edward Ayer, a Field Museum of Natural History benefactor who evidently had some interest in salvage anthropology and Native cultures, and donated to Chicago’s Newberry Library in 1911.⁴ The text itself states that this donation was for the benefit of the Native peoples whom the school served – that is, in support of preserving their histories. Thankfully, Native communities seem to have been involved in assembling these texts, according to the collection itself, but I’m a touch skeptical of our white sponsor’s benevolence. What seems most likely to me is that this, like Frances Densmore’s work, is a product of good intentions, but would be taken less than positively if produced today. This is supported by the casual white-saviorism of the historical statement that opens the book; a statement which describes a European education as the “seed of civilization” and thereby strongly suggests that the curricula were a product of “civilizing” influence. Really the curriculum is quite similar to what a young piano student might begin with today, assuming their teacher were willing to center their education on the European canon; several technique and method books are employed, and the progression from grades I-VI moves from simple Clementi sonatinas to Chopin etudes and ballades.

Therein lies the interest of this artifact. As beloved as this school may have been to some attendees and some members of its community (according to the testimony at the beginning of the Ayer collection, that is), there seems little doubt that the Cherokee National Female Seminary was complicit in the whitewashing of Cherokee students following the Trail of Tears. If the curriculum is indisputably Eurocentric, implicitly devaluing the Native musical traditions which would have surrounded these students growing up, and taught exclusively by white teachers, how could it be anything else? It was a victory for the community, in a way, but one that was only necessitated by the awful realties of the white man’s westward expansion. The existence and community status of schools such as this adds another shade of nuance to the consideration of education as a tool for cultural erasure during this time period.

What I can say, however, is that this artifact makes a strong case for the rejection of the cannon that’s happening in music education today. If the cannon is part of what we now consider to be a heinous cultural genocide, how could we possibly justify not expanding our musical borders and changing our approaches to pedagogy from the very first days of a student’s musical life? Exclusion of a student’s cultural traditions from their music curricula, while it isn’t on the level of the violence inflicted on too many children at too many white-run boarding schools over the past several centuries, is an act of cultural violence. Music education must be rooted in a student’s internal musical self, in the music of the student’s community, to avoid the racist, classist valuation of music that’s persisted for centuries in the western world. Some pedagogical methods, like Kodaly, incorporate elements of this belief, and are gaining significance in the pedagogical world. But we have a long way to go yet toward the goal of making music education more equitable, just, and culturally inclusive.

Footnotes

1 U.S. Department of the Interior. (2019). Cherokee Female Seminary, OK (U.S. National Park Service). National Parks Service. Retrieved September 21, 2022, from https://www.nps.gov/places/cherokee-female-seminary-ok.htm

2 Brad Agnew, “Cherokee Male and Female Seminaries,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=CH018.

3 I attempt to name the original tribe here out of respect for the land’s origins and to acknowledge (first steps) the settler-colonial history of the US. But a quick Google search will reveal that even the Kaw people may have immigrated to this area from the east coast in the 1600’s, and it’s difficult to trace the history any farther back than that. I include this footnote as a form of full disclosure and to encourage any interested reader to do some more digging into the topic.

4 Ayer, Edward E. 1906. An illustrated souvenir catalog of the Cherokee National Female Seminary, Tahlequah, Indian Territory, 1850-1906, Printed Book; Tribe Record. N.p.: Indian Print Shop. http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_F389_T128_c522_1906.

Musical Performance or Spectacle? Documenting Native Music and Ritual

Posted on September 20, 2022 by Atle Wammer

I came across a journal kept by George Catlin, an explorer and painter traveling the American West in the 1830s, in which he documents a yearly Mandan ceremony commemorating a great flood, in the American Indian Histories and Cultures database. While Catlin describes the ceremony as a dance and documents the role of singing and drumming in the ritual, he spends far more time describing the elaborate costumes of the dancers and the story they are telling than he does describing the music itself.

This is typical of a wider attitude which prevailed among ethnomusicologists, historians, and the public until fairly recently that Native American musical traditions were little more than primitive chants and drum beats and were certainly not artifacts of high culture like the European musical canon.¹ This attitude meant that Native music was often not taken seriously by early observers like Sir Francis Drake and John Smith, whose descriptions of “a most miserable and doleful manner of shreeking [sic]” and “such a terrible noise as would rather affright” the listener echo those of Catlin.² Even the work of later authors like Frances Densmore and Alice Fletcher, who pioneered serious ethnomusicological investigation of Native traditions, often relied on theories of social evolution to justify the idea that Native Americans and their music could not possibly be as advanced as European culture and music.⁴

Catlin’s focus on the story being told seems more appropriate to a play or pantomime rather than a musical performance. He does not analyze the music itself beyond a few short comments, but describes at length the elaborate costumes of the dancers and the many animals and natural phenomena they represent, noting that “many curious and grotesque amusements and ceremonies” took place over the four days of the ceremony.³ Besides devoting several pages of text to describing the ceremony, Catlin also preserved it in several paintings. Catlin mentions that large water-filled sacks were used as drums, along with rattles, to accompany a song which is repeated many times throughout the ritual, and notes that it was impossible to obtain a translation of this song, as it was a closely guarded secret even within the tribe. However, beyond these observations he makes no attempt to analyze the lyrics, composition, or instrumentation of the song, focusing instead on the visual spectacle of the bull-dance, which he describes as being “of an exceedingly grotesque and amusing character”.³

As an explorer who was clearly dedicated to documenting the rituals he saw both on the page and the canvas, it is fair to assume that Catlin was truly interested in preserving the details of the ceremony he was witnessing. Of course, Catlin was far from a trained ethnomusicologist, as the field didn’t even exist for fifty years after he was writing, and therefore did not have the same goals or values and was probably not musically trained. However, this amateur status actually reveals that Catlin’s attitude that the ceremony was simply too far outside of his experience to count as music and was not worth preserving or even really discussing was a common reaction to Native music. While these cultural attitudes clearly had nothing to do with formal training or education, they were still taken as scientific truth for decades.

References:

1 Music of the First Nations : Tradition and Innovation in Native North America. 2009. Baltimore: University of Illinois Press. Accessed September 21, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, 6.

2 Tick, Judith, and Beaudoin, Paul, eds. 2008. Music in USA Documentary Companion C : A Documentary Companion. Cary: Oxford University Press, Incorporated. Accessed September 21, 2022. ProQuest Ebook Central, 5-8.

3 Catlin, George (1796-1872). 1895-1905. An account of an annual religious ceremony practised by the Mandan tribe of North American Indians. Manuscript. The Newberry Library. VAULT Ayer MS 150. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures. (Accessed September 20, 2022), 12-13.

4 Browner, Tara. “All about Theory, Method, and Pow-Wows.” Essay. In Heartbeat of the People: Music and Dance of the Northern Pow-Wow, 1–17. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2004.

The Role Music Played in Assimilation at Carlisle Indian School

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Blake Ormond

United States Indian Industrial School. 1895-1900. United States Indian industrial school, Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_E97_6_C2_C45 [Accessed November 02, 2021].

Boarding schools were a tactic used by the American Government to assimilate Native American children from the 17th through the 20th century. Boarding schools isolated indigenous children from their families and communities and stripped them of their cultures by cutting their hair, requiring uniforms, ignoring students given names and forbidding use of their native languages. One large influence on the assimilation of native children that is often not discussed is the music taught and performed at these schools.

In 1879, Carlisle Indian Industrial School was the first government run boarding school for Native Americans to open. Carlisle was known nationally for their extracurriculars such as their band and football team. Like the academic classroom settings, these extracurriculars were centered around promoting American ideals¹. For example, students put on a performance of, “The Captain of Plymouth,” an opera that celebrates the white settlers’ arrival to America.

Program for performance of “Captain of the Plymouth” at Carlisle Indian School in 1909

Students played and celebrated their white colonizers in this play and had to perform songs such as, “Hail Captain of Plymouth” and “Indian Lullaby”.

Students at Carlisle were required to take music classes and were taught exclusively Western Classical music. Music was used to enhance the Christian teachings forced on the students as the orchestra and band played for evening Sunday services. Even in the course description of their music offerings, Carlisle makes it clear that there is only one way to make music. The white way.

“There is, too, a vocal department, which includes the class work and singing exercises, where all are taught the rudiments of music”

The phrasing, “the rudiments of music” implies that there is only one way to make music, and the way students made music at home was incorrect. Furthering the assimilation practices, the course catalogue encourages western music to be made at “student social gatherings.”

Indigenous people are still impacted from the trauma these boarding schools and white colonizers inflicted upon them. Better understanding the harmful effects western classical music had on Native Americans can steer us in the right direction towards healing.

1Winston, Abigail C. (2019) “The Role of Music in Assimilation of Students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School,” The Gettysburg Historical Journal: Vol. 18 , Article 9

Faces and Voices behind the Name

Posted on October 2, 2021 by Olivia Carlson

In class we spent a day discussing the origins of “black music” through the lens of white hypothesis. We spent time looking at the maps of slave songs through the states, a collection of southern folk music, as well as a map of the tours that the Fisk Jubilee Singers took in the late 1800s.

I had learned briefly about the Fisk Jubilee Singers back in my freshman musicology class and their story was one of the snippets of information that stuck with me after that class. I’m not entire sure why their story stuck with me. Perhaps it was the relatability to me of using music to afford college or perhaps the biblical reference to the book Leviticus with the history of the “year of Jubilee.” Whatever it might be I new I wanted to find out more.

As I researched the Jubilee singers I came to realize that all I had in mind of these strong-willed singers were a mixed gender group of people of color. For all of the time spent in class learning about them I had never stopped to imagine their faces. On top of that their voices never received the chance to be heard by the person learning about how they used their voices. I believe that an important aspect of researching is to create the setting of the topic. While backstory is a great place to begin, do you really know who you are researching. The image I chose was a print of what is believed to be the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Their names are not encompassed by that title but also Isaac Dickerson, Ben Holmes, Greene Evans, Thomas Rutling, Ella Sheppard, Maggie Porter, Minnie Tate, Jennie Jackson, and Eliza Walker. Upon further research into their music I had come to realize I hadn’t listen to them either.

https://www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-128141/?

The link directly above brings you to a recording done by the Fisk Jubilee Singers in 1909. While this isn’t the original group of singers and while there isn’t a recording of those original singers, the Fisk University Jubilee Singers continue to sing today and uphold the legacy of the Jubilee Singers.

These two different sources allow a researcher to get to know their topic. When you look at the face of a human being and hear their voices, it becomes a personal research. It forces researchers to acknowledge their research topics as real people regardless of how long ago. In our class’s ties to discussion on race and identity today it is a reminder of the importance of recognizing people of color as real human beings no matter how long ago they walked this earth. How can we easily conjure up images of George Washington and Ben Franklin but fail to have an image of Crazy Horse (beyond outfits), the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Frederick Douglas, or Robert Smalls?

Citations:

American Missionary Association, photographer by Black, James Wallace. Jubilee singers, Fisk University, Nashville, Tenn. / negative by Black. [Place not identified: Publisher not identified, ?] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2015650289/>.

Work, John Wesley, et al. Swing Low, Sweet Chariot. 1909. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/jukebox-128141/>.

American Music: Brought to You by the Bohemians

Posted on October 23, 2019 by Lauren Brazeau

I found a book in Halvorson Music library called Dvorak in America: 1892-1895, which is a great resource for anyone wanting to learn more about the New World Symphony or other works of Dvorak’s that were influenced by the pursuit of creating “American” music.

An image of Dvorak over a Native American rowing a boat. Tibbetts, John C. Dvořák In America: 1892-1895. Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993.

I was surprised to find what I assume to be a promotional image depicting Dvorak overlooking a Native American rowing a boat down a river of music notes in this book. In class we focused on McDowell’s attempts to tap into the music of Native Americans to find sources of inspiration for his American music and Dvorak’s attempts to do the same through spirituals. While Dvorak did search for inspiration for the New World Symphony in African American spirituals, “accompanying the premiere, Dvorak penned an essay in the New York Herald… now suggesting as well Native American melodies for that same purpose…. Dvorak’s suggestion of Native American music were largely overshadowed at the time by his assertion of African-American musics. But not long after Dvorak’s pronouncement, a so-called “Indianist” movement had emerged, placing Native American subjects at the fore of US musical nationalism.” [1]

Transcriptions of three Iroquois songs given to Dvorak by Henry Krehbiel. Tibbetts, John C. Dvořák In America: 1892-1895. Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993.

I found it incredibly interesting to see Dvorak’s interactions with many of the notable names from our course. There’s a section on how Henry Krehbiel (questionably) transcribed some Iroquois melodies for Dvorak to take inspiration from in his New World Symphony and was clearly disappointed that he didn’t use them. When reviewing the work as a whole and finding an insufficient amount of ‘Indian spirit’, he decided that the work was not American enough and that “Dr. Dvorak can no more divest himself of his nationality than the leopard change his spots.” [2]

Since our class discussions are ordered based on musical genre rather than chronological order, it was really interesting and informative to see the interactions between all of the people and ideas involved and how they overlap. For those who want to learn more about the New World Symphony, Dvorak’s varying inspirations for music making and his interactions with other notable musicians and critics, Dvorak in America: 1892-1895 is a great resource and an interesting read.

_____

Daniel Blim, “MacDowell’s Vanishing Indians,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Vancouver, BC, November 4, 2016.

Works Cited:

Daniel Blim, “MacDowell’s Vanishing Indians,” paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society, Vancouver, BC, November 4, 2016.

Tibbetts, John C. Dvořák In America: 1892-1895. Portland: Amadeus Press, 1993.

The role of the Medicine Man in Native American Music

Posted on September 17, 2019 by katrinandrusick

A Native American Medicine Man standing beside a sick woman, c. 1870. Photographed by O.C. Smith (American, active 1860s – 1870s).

In almost every Native American tribe, there is a medicine man or healer, as seen in the picture above. These men, and occasionally women, had to go “beyond human power” to use their herbs and chants to heal ailing tribesmen. A medicine man gained his power to heal through dreams, visions, and even during the song, as discovered in class while looking through many primary sources. During visions and encounters with the Great Spirit, healers were told how to heal ailments and advised on which herbs, roots and plants to use, and which to avoid. To aide their power, healers often lived in quiet seclusion to be in tune with nature its power sometimes giving them the name “forest folk”.¹

A traditional medicine mask used to scare off evil spirits and disease in tribe members. https://indianspictures.blogspot.com/search/label/Navajo%20indians

Ely S. Parker, born in 1828, was from the Iroquois tribe and in newspapers, recounts the practices of the medicine man through public and private ceremonies. Native American medicine men treated the sick and ailing in public ceremonies followed by a private meeting. The public ceremony was attended by tribesman of high power and influence and took place over several days. During those public and private healing sessions, the medicine man may have told narratives, chanted, and sing. A “sacred song” is chanted only by one medicine man. If anyone else chants the “sacred song,” it is expected that evil events will follow.² To further aide him, he may have used tobacco pouches and the herb of choice sent to him by the Great Spirit. There are times when the the medicine man is not able to heal the sick, but this is viewed as the will of the “Great Spirit” who is asked to “guide the red man and choose for his best, always.”

Most songs were accompanied by a regular drumbeat, dubbed as the heartbeat of the Earth, to help calm and relax the sick. Additionally, the drumbeat expanded the mind of the medicine man to the awareness of self and spirit. Other instruments like the rattle, shook away disease, and bells borrowed from Christianity invoked God’s healing power.³It is told that “he who holds the medicine has time to die.” That is, they can choose their successor because their death is never sudden and “has time to die.” This background of the medicine men’s rituals which were alien and exotic to foreigners such as John Smith helps shed a light on what outside visitors encountered.

1 Hofmann, Charles. American Indians Sing New York: John Day Co., 1967. 46

div id=”sdfootnote1″>

2 Ely Samuel Parker scrapbooks: Vol 11, 1828-1894, © The Newberry Library, 96 http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_Modern_MS_Parker_VL11/55?searchId=c2aa61ad-bbdf-48e6-a160-bba150f8d14e#VisualMaterials

3 Cohen, Ken. 1998. Native american medicine. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine 3, (6) (11): 45-57, https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/docview/204813987?accountid=351 (accessed September 16, 2019).

The Choctaw Hymn Book and Native American Hybrid Music

Posted on September 17, 2019 by Lauren Brazeau

While we weren’t able to take much time on it, I was intrigued by the article we looked at in class on Native American hybrid music. In my research, I happened upon the names of a few hymn books, but the one that interested me the most was the Chahta Vba Isht Taloa Holisso of the Choctaw. I was also able to find corresponding letters from the missionaries who had shared their hymns with them, which I found interesting.

Chahta Vba Isht Taloa Holisso : Choctaw Hymn Book. Richmond, Va, 1872. Print.

The hybridization of Native American music and Christian hymnody adds complexity to the oftentimes oversimplified narrative of the erasure of Native American culture. While the Choctaw welcomed the missionaries and adopted the tradition of hybridized music, other groups reluctantly converted, and “…people [who] had initially pretended to convert in order to survive, went on to ask, ‘At some point, did we forget we were pretending?’”[1] Such practices oftentimes came about through generations of forced acculturation; however, for some groups, they were accepted into the culture, expanded upon with original works and have been ingrained within their practices to the point of becoming a part of their musical tradition.

“MISSIONARY PARAGRAPHS.: AGENCY TO THE MEDITERRANUEAN. BOOKS IN THE CHEROKEE LANGUAGE. HYMNS IN THE CHOCTAW LANGUAGE. BOOKS IN THE SENECA LANGUAGE.” Christian Watchman (1819-1848), Nov 13, 1829

“MISCELLANEOUS.:CHAHTA VBA ISHT TALOA. CHOCTAW HYMN BOOK, 18MO, PP. 84. BOSTON: CROCKER & BREWSTER. ALPHABET.” American Annals of Education (1830-1839) 1, no. 11 (11, 1831): 537

While we’ve been talking in class about the “Vanishing Indian” trope in the context of 19th century classical music, I believe the same ideas of misplaced nostalgia and oversimplification are prevalent today and relevant to the delegitimization of modern Native American culture. As hinted at in some of the letters above, Choctaw were thought to be more receptive to conversion due to the available access of their language in printed form. This aspect might have aided in their conversion; however, it also aided in the preservation of their language and the transmission of what is now seen by them as their own traditional music. The collection and performance of these hymns, original and translated, have helped the Choctaw maintain its ethnic identity through frequent meetings and the continued use of native language [2]. While these hybrid forms were born out of the gruesome history of Native American genocide and cultural erasure, to invalidate this living tradition due to its western sound is, in my opinion, just as problematic as the commodification of a curated characterization of what this music ‘should’ sound like.

_____

“Musical Interactions.” Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 3 – The United States and Canada. Ed. Ellen Koskoff. Routledge (Publisher), 2000. 510-20. Music Online: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Database. Web.
STEVENSON, G. W. (1977). The Hymnody Of The Choctaw Indians Of Oklahoma (Order No. 7802869). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (302857576).

Works Cited:

Chahta Vba Isht Taloa Holisso : Choctaw Hymn Book. Richmond, Va, 1872. Print.

“MISSIONARY PARAGRAPHS.: AGENCY TO THE MEDITERRANUEAN. BOOKS IN THE CHEROKEE LANGUAGE. HYMNS IN THE CHOCTAW LANGUAGE. BOOKS IN THE SENECA LANGUAGE.” Christian Watchman (1819-1848), Nov 13, 1829, 1, https://search.proquest.com/docview/127208190?accountid=351

“MISCELLANEOUS.: CHAHTA VBA ISHT TALOA. CHOCTAW HYMN BOOK, 18MO, PP. 84. BOSTON: CROCKER & BREWSTER. ALPHABET.” American Annals of Education (1830-1839) 1, no. 11 (11, 1831): 537. https://search.proquest.com/docview/89620393?accountid=351.

“Musical Interactions.” Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 3 – The United States and Canada. Ed. Ellen Koskoff. Routledge (Publisher), 2000. 510-20. Music Online: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Database. Web.

STEVENSON, G. W. (1977). The Hymnody Of The Choctaw Indians Of Oklahoma (Order No. 7802869). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (302857576).

Skulls: a 19th-Century Justification for Racism in Music

Posted on September 16, 2019 by Abigail Hansen

Anyone could read this short passage and recognize that the author is approaching music with a problematic, racist mindset, but I had no idea the undercurrent of “science” propelling these opinions until I dug a little deeper…

The pseudoscience of phrenology was running rampant in mid-19th century society. Racist beliefs and actions were justified through this “science.”[1] Phrenologists argued that a person’s character, intelligence, and opinions could be deduced from the shape and size of their skull.[2] This was fodder for 19th-century minds to be opposed to whole races and ethnicities, solely based off the external shape of their skulls. Samuel George Morton wrote Crania americana; or, A comparative view of the skulls of various aboriginal nations of North and South America[3] in 1839. Crania americana allowed racism to reign in 19th-century thinking under the guise of science, as the book was published in great quantities and spread across the continent and across the ocean to Europe.[4] Through drawings like the ones below, Morton provided “reasoning” for the acceptability of racism against Native Americans. Phrenology directly influenced how people viewed Native American music and musicians.

Looking back at the first excerpt,[5] it is easy to witness how this undercurrent of phenological thought influenced the cultural norms of the 19th century about racism towards Native Americans. This passage comes from the American Phrenological Journal, a publication by scholars of this pseudoscience. Much to my chagrin, this journal would have held great authority over its original audience, an audience well-accustomed to phrenological thought. American Phrenological Journal deems the music of the “wild Indian” to be lesser, because they believed that a Native American’s brain did not physically have the same capacity for music making as a European did. Before even hearing the music, phrenologists had deduced the music to be less advanced than “Christian” music, purely because of the shape of the musicians’ skulls. Along with making assumptions about the music before listening to it, the author makes conclusions about the whole people group based off of the music. They say that “it is a fact” that people can be judged by their music, and that this serves as confirmation that white European-descendants are “superior,” as organs and pianos are a testament to.

[1] SciShow. “Victorian Pseudosciences: Brain Personality Maps.” YouTube. YouTube, December 1, 2016. Accessed September 14, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBv1wKinQXw.

[2] Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. “Phrenology.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Accessed September 16, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/topic/phrenology.

[3] Morton, Samuel George. Crania Americana, or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America to Which Is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species. Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839.

[4] “Skulls in Print: Scientific Racism in the Transatlantic World.” University of Cambridge, March 19, 2014. Accessed September 13, 2019. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/skulls-in-print-scientific-racism-in-the-transatlantic-world.

[5] “MUSIC, AS A PHYSICAL AND MORAL AGENT.: MYSTERIES OF MUSIC. 1. MUSIC AS A PHYSICAL AGENT. 2. MUSIC AS A MORAL AGENT. 3. MUSIC AS A COMPLEX AGENT. MUSIC AS A CIVILIZER.” American Phrenological Journal 43, no. 4 (April 1866). https://search.proquest.com/docview/137924894?accountid=351.

Native American Music and a New Approach to Anthropology

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Annika Van Farowe

In 1917, amid his career as the curator of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, psychologist and anthropologist Clark Wissler published a book entitled The American Indian. An attempt to fulfill the museum’s mandate for public education and to make the findings of anthropologists accessible, the book provides a general overview of anthropological discoveries pertaining to the “American Indian”.¹ It includes information about various peoples, tribes, and cultures by covering a wide breath of subjects from food to social groupings to languages and origin stories. For a modern reader, the book contains all sorts of fascinating little tidbits, but what caught my eye was a curious little paragraph that opens “Chapter IX Fine Arts”:

No doubt many readers will object to the title we have given this chapter on the ground that no aboriginal production can rise to the level of an actual “fine art,” but we feel that the name is justified because the productions here considered occupy the same place in aboriginal life as do the fine arts in Europe. They may be comprehended under the familiar heads of sculpture, painting, literature, and music.²

Clark Wissler, (1870-1947)

Perhaps without really meaning to, in this paragraph Wissler encapsulates the tensions of evolving anthropological notions of the time. In the last part of the “Fine Arts” chapter, as Wissler discusses music, he seems to try to subvert the traditional belief of European superiority, but his prose in other ways seems to support such views.

Wissler was part of a dramatic shift in the field of anthropology from an evolutionary explanation of social development to a culturally-focused one. One of the key elements of this shift was the idea that social development of individuals could only be correctly understood when viewed from the context of their own culture.³ Wissler demonstrates this concept when he writes about song translations, explaining that important meanings and emotional significance are often lost because there are not perfect translations from Native American languages to English. Another example is the mention of “aboriginal singing” technique, which is different from European singing, and therefore is difficult to accurately notate using the “traditional” system.⁴

The title page and accompanying picture from The American Indian.

However, Wissler’s book and remarks remain bound by the ideas of the European culture’s superiority. This is evident in the constant superimpositions of European ideals of music onto Native American music-making. Wissler describes the “great effort” that has been made to discover the ideal scales which “native singers strive for”, and then states the importance of such a “discovery”. Additionally, Wissler points to what he explains as the lack of consistent rhythm between singer, drummer, and dancers in Native American Music. And, although he describes the difficulties in transcribing Native American music, he still purports that such a task is necessary.⁵ These topics all constitute an assumption that what is important to European musical understanding is what is also important to understanding other musical expressions.

Even though Wissler demonstrates rather forward-thinking for his time in some of the ways he discusses music, many of his ideas still carry the older Euro-centric biases. Perhaps intellectual progress is not so quick after all.

¹ “Wissler, Clark (1870-1947).” In Biographical Dictionary of Anthropologists, by William Stewart. McFarland, 2009. https://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/mcfanthro/wissler_clark_1870_1947/0?institutionId=4959. Accessed February 19, 2018.

² Wissler, Clark. The American Indian. New York: McMurtrie, Douglas C, 1917. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_10_W8_1917. Accessed February 19, 2018. Page 134.

³ Liss, Julia E. “Anthropology and Cultural Relativism.” In Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, edited by Mary Kupiec Cayton, and Peter W. Williams. Gale, 2001. https://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/galeacih/anthropology_and_cultural_relativism/0?institutionId=4959. Accessed February 19, 2018.

Gleach, Frederic W., and Regna Darnell. “Wissler, Clark.” In Biographical Dictionary of Social and Cultural Anthropology, edited by Vered Amit. Routledge, 2004. https://ezproxy.stolaf.edu/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/routsca/wissler_clark/0?institutionId=4959 Accessed February 19, 2018.

⁴ Wissler, Clark. The American Indian. Page 143,146.

⁵ Ibid. Page 146-148.

Ute Bear Dances and Notched Sticks

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Rosie Nanz

Initially, I hoped to research the topic of symbolism in relation to Native American instruments, but that line of researching did not take me far, so I instead settled on looking at the scholarship on their instruments in general. In Clark Wissler’s informational text, The American Indian, there is a section on Native American music which turns to musical instruments, claiming that the two most common instruments are drums and rattles. His survey meanders across the Americas, discussing the cultural varieties of such instruments, emphasizing the dominance of calabash (gourd) rattles, the importance of which, he claims, is only approached by the notched stick¹. The footnote attached to this observation, citing anthropologist Robert Lowie, led to where my research ultimately landed.

Lowie has a fair number of entries in another collection of anthropological papers on Native American societies edited by Wissler, one of which examines the “Dances and

Ute Musicians. From left to right: Brookus Sibello 1890, Dick Sibello 1882, Henry Myore, and two young boys. Using notched rasps and rubbing sticks, for music.

Societies of the Plains Shoshone,” within which he describes the Bear Dance, a prominent Ute ceremony. Although he has never seen a Bear Dance himself, Lowie draws upon several first hand accounts of the ceremony to explain the basic function and structure of Bear Dances: a social event lasting four days at the end of winter/beginning of spring in a circular enclosure of branches, where men and women form two lines designated by sex and the women approach whichever men they want to dance with, and the dancing commences². Watch this video of a Southern Ute Indian tribe Bear Dance, recorded in 1988, to get a better idea. The music produced in the Bear Dance is what brought me to the ceremony, as the principle instrument used in the ceremony, besides singing, is the notched stick (or rattle) mentioned in The American Indian.

Ute Indians perform the Bear Dance on at the Bear Dance Festival. The Bear Dance welcomes the Spring of the year. (1920)

The notched stick, pictured at right, has two parts. The first is a stick about a foot or

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924012929372;view=1up;seq=868

Notched sticks and rasps used in Ute Bear Dances (Lowie)

more in length and “throughout its entire length it is whittled flat, and transverse notches or grooves are cut across this flattened portion.”³ The second part is a “rasp”, usually either a bone or rod. The notched stick is held against the ground or similar surface in one hand, while the other holds the rod and “is moved rapidly up and down the grooved portion so as to make a rattling sound.”⁴ Multiple sets of these are played alongside vocals, setting the dance into motion.

But why is it called the Bear Dance? According to Verner Reed, who in 1893 was invited to a Bear Dance by a Southern Ute tribe in Colorado (one of the first hand accounts Lowie cites), the Ute people “believe their primal ancestors were bears; after these came the race of Indians, who, on dying, were changed to bears” and the Bear Dances are meant to reinforce their friendship. The ceremony is held around the time bears awaken from hibernation and the dance is supposed to “cast the film of blindness from their eyes” when the bears wake.⁵

1 Wissler, Clark (1917). The American Indian. (New York: McMurtrie, Douglas C.), 147, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_10_W8_1917 (Accessed February 19, 2018).

2 Lowie, Robert H. (1912-16). “Dances and Societies of the Plains Shoshone,” in Societies of the Plains Indians, ed. Clark Wissler (New York: The Trustees), 823-27, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001632127 (Accessed February 19, 2018).

3 Hawley, E. H. (1898). “Distribution of the Notched Rattle.” American Anthropologist, A11: 344–346. doi:10.1525/aa.1898.11.11.02a00010, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1898.11.11.02a00010/epdf (Accessed February 19, 2018).

4 Hawley, E.H. —

5 Reed, Verner (1896). “The Ute Bear Dance.” American Anthropologist, A9: 237–244. doi:10.1525/aa.1896.9.7.02a00020, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1896.9.7.02a00020/epdf (Accessed February 19, 2018).

The Sioux Sun Dance and the Right to Reinterpretation

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Lily Tupper

In August of 1970, an anonymous Sioux author wrote an article in the American Indian Leadership Council’s journal, The Indian, wondering about the claim that the modern Sioux have of over the Sun Dance.¹ The ceremony, a celebration of the connection between the Sioux and the sun, was once an integral piece of Sioux culture. The eight-day event included ceremonies and dances that “reinforced ideals and customs of the Sioux society,” and a final day of physical pain as men danced while suspended from poles and looking directly into the sun. Although the Sun Dance was seen by the Sioux as the cornerstone of their culture and relationship with the sun, white Americans saw it as undesirable paganism. According to the author, once the Sun Dance was erased from Sioux culture, the other markers of Sioux life began to fade as well.

Sioux Sun Dance

The Sioux Sun Dance has been reinterpreted by white American society in many ways, from a 1980 article in the Michigan Farmer that described the “curious custom” almost exclusively as a violent act,² to an orchestral interpretation composed by Leo Friedman, recorded by the Edison Symphony Orchestra in 1903.³ Friedman, whose other compositions ranged from the well known “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” to the lesser known “Coon Coon Coon,” used horns and jingling bells to play a simple melody, while a heavy percussion kept beat beneath. The end of the piece is marked by vocalizations clearly meant to be “war cries.” These musical choices exemplify the barbarism and other-worldliness with which Friedman wanted to represent the Sioux ceremony, and show no indication that it is about the religious significance of the sun. Friedman’s piece is instead an invention of Sioux music and culture.

If Friedman’s music was not a respectful interpretation of a Sioux Sun Dance, then it would be assumed that it would be up to the modern Sioux to revive or reinterpret the ceremony and its music. The author of the article in The Indian, however, wondered if the Sioux were still entitled to performing the Sun Dance ceremony. They asked “are we worthy to perform the Sun Dance– our forefathers failed to retain a religion they revered, and can we in all sincerity and honesty adopt the Sun Dance into our present society as a religion.” They worried about whether a reinterpretation of the Sun Dance by the Sioux would be “a religion or a tourist package.” The author’s feelings of a right of the Sun Dance are complicated in the context of the appropriation and misrepresent

ation of the Sioux ceremony by Friedman and others, and “the purge” of Native culture by white Americans, and a reinterpretation of the Sun Dance will have to take these new factors into account.

1“Sun Dance, Sacred?” The Indian (American Indian Leadership Council) 2, no. 3 (August 1970). Accessed 17 Feb. 2018. American Indian Histories and Cultures. http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Images/Ayer_The_Indian_1970_08Aug_06/0

1“The Sioux Sun Dance: One of the Most Curious Customs of a Warlike Indian Tribe.” The Michigan Farmer, April 5, 1890. Accessed 19 Feb. 2018. Proquest. https://search.proquest.com/docview/136546221?rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo

1 Edison Symphony Orchestra. 1903. “The Sun Dance,” by Leo Friedman. Edison Gold Moulded Record: 8548. Accessed 17 Feb. 2018. UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive. http://www.library.ucsb.edu/OBJID/Cylinder4228

Native American Dance and Music: A Dueling Struggling for Appropriate Representation

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Amelia Kimmes Kneser

Music is a multifaceted art form that intersects with many other forms of expression and has both a creative and cultural importance to many Native American communities. One prolific intersection, especially in Native American cultures, that exists is that of music and dance. In some of the earliest entries from European explorers, their experience with native tribes comes hand in hand with music and dance.¹ One of the issues we have talked about in class is the appropriation and misuse of Native American cultural practices. This is not an issue that exists solely in the realms of music and other object-like representations. Within many European cohorts “American” dance was seen as something exotic, a form of entertainment that was both culturally intangible to them yet consistently available for general consumption.² Unlike with Native American songs the technology to record the movement of dance was not widely used until the 1950’s. This meant that the visual representations of dance, outside of live performances, was concentrated in the lens of photographers.

Emma B. Freeman was a popular American photographer during the late 1910’s.

Emma B. Freeman was one such photographer. Freeman’s work concentrated on stylized portraits of indigenous people, culture, and fashion. She was a relatively controversial artist in that she was not always consistent in her portrayal of specific tribes and groups of people.³ She would accidentally mix, match, and generalize certain aspects of the tribes she was studying. Music and dance were both subjects she played with at times, documenting ceremonial dancers lined up before a dance. She also introduced musical instruments into the portraits of unmoving patrons.

Dancers from the Hoopa tribe.

Members of the Klamath tribe preparing for the white deer skin dance.

Emma B. Freemen’s style idealized the Native experience and tokenized their appearance through objectification. This stands as an example of the balance between appropriation and preservation and shows just how complicated the intersection between art and representation can be.

1Music in the USA : A Documentary Companion, edited by Judith Tick, and Paul Beaudoin, Oxford University Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf-ebooks/detail.action?docID=415567.

2Haines, John. 2012. “The Earliest European Responses to Dancing in the Americas.” U.S. Catholic Historian 30, no. 4: 1-20. America: History and Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost.

3 Clark, Gus. 1991. “Emma B. Freeman: photographer romanticized, stylized Native Americans.” Humboldt Historian 39, no. 5: 5-10. America: History and Life with Full Text, EBSCOhost.

Chicago World Fair: Celebrating American Indian Culture or Erasing It?

Image

The World’s Columbian Exhibition, better known as the Chicago World Fair, in 1893 is often lauded as a premier exhibit of innovation and culture. However, the fair presented a stark contrast between what exhibition organizers deemed the civilized white culture and the uncivilized “Other”.

The Carlisle students served as an example to the American public of the “civilized” American Indian. (“Snatches from Comments of Various Prominent Papers on the Visit of the Carlisle School to the World’s Fair in October” in Ely Samuel Parker Scrapbooks, Vol 12, edited by Ely Samuel Parker. Accessed February 15, 2018.)

Ely Samuel Parker, collector of articles in the scrapbook (War Department, Office of the Chief Signal Caller. Col. Ely S. Parker, 1860-1865, National Archives at College Park)

Ely Samuel Parker, a Seneca-born American Indian and Commissioner of Indian Affairs under President Grant,¹ included in his scrapbook collection quotes on the Carlisle School’s visit and performance at the World Fair. The Carlisle School, located in Pennsylvania, was a boarding school dedicated to erasing any semblance of Native American culture: language, clothing, hairstyle, and behavior, by taking young Native Americans away from their homes and families on the reservation. As the school’s founder, General Richard Pratt, famously said, the school sought to “kill the Indian, save the man”.¹

The arrival of the students, as noted in Parker’s newspaper clippings, served as a stark contrast to the Native Americans in the Midway Plaisance. While in class, we discussed how the World’s Fair gave Native Americans in the Midway Plaisance more of an opportunity to present their culture, music, and dance from their own perspective, the Carlisle students demonstrate how the dominant American culture tried to stamp out Native American culture and treat it as “Other”. The newspaper clippings in Parker’s scrapbook serve as an example of how Americans believed that Native Americans could be civilized. They celebrate what they believed to be accomplished civilization. The article notes that the Carlisle School band of 32 instruments and choir, dressed in uniform, closed their performance with the playing of the American National Anthem at the time, “America” or “My Country Tis of Thee”.Leaving behind the drums and shakers as heard in the Native American music in class, the students picked up trumpets and trombones.Newspapers celebrated what they deemed a triumphant display of American Indian civilization. A passage from the Dubois, Pennsylvania Courier noted, “That it will be of use in showing us…that they are not outside the pale of civilizing influence, is also certain”.¹

Members of the Carlisle School band in their uniforms. The school’s band served to erase Native American musical traditions and force the American/European musical tradition as a way of assimilating young Native Americans into the dominant American society (Choate, John N. “Carlisle School Band Members 1879”, 1879. National Anthropological Archive. Smithsonian Institution, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.).

Although some musicians tried to preserve or appropriate Native American music in the late 20^th century, the Carlisle School’s performance at the World Fair demonstrates the dominant culture’s determination to stamp out what they considered the “savagery” of Native American culture, including music.

“A Biography of Ely S. Parker.” Galena-Jo Daviess County Historical Society. AccessedFebruary 19, 2018. http://www.galenahistory.org/researching/bio-sketches-of-famous-galenians/biography-of-ely-s-parker/.

King, C. Richard, “Indian Education” in Encyclopedia of American Studies, edited by Simon J. Bronner, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2017, eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/view?aid=325

“Snatches from Comments of Various Prominent Papers on the Visit of the Carlisle School to the World’s Fair in October” in Ely Samuel Parker Scrapbooks, Vol 12, edited by Ely Samuel Parker. Accessed February 15, 2018,

Trustworthiness of a Handwritten Recording

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Bryanna Bauer

Looking through the papers of Eleazer Williams (1758-1858), I found sheet music written in the Iroquois language. The document was found amongst many other items within a scrapbook (1758-1846), and it most likely came from Williams’ time in New York and Green Bay, Wisconsin, as a missionary to the Oneida Indians.¹ When it comes to determining the trustworthiness of this source, one might look to the plausible objectives of Eleazer Williams at the time.

“Notes on the Iroquois language”

Because the lyrics were written in the Iroquois language, it is possible he wrote down the music purely for his own benefit, rather than with the intentions of educating the white masses. Williams would have had to learn the language as a means to communicate with the American Indians and convert them, as was his mission. This personal endeavour of learning the language is evident by the “Notes on the Iroquois language” within the Papers, 1758-1858. Nevertheless, the objective of missionary work differs from the objectives of explorers and anthropologists/ethnographers, some of whose writings and recordings we have read and heard.

Book by Eleazer Williams

Anthropologists typically lived amongst a people to learn and understand their customs. Their recordings were intended for European readers/listeners, and they were unknowingly biased. It is likely Williams saw the Oneida Indians as ‘Other’ and inferior to himself, as did the European explorers of his time; however, he wrote sermons and translated religious texts into the language of the Oneida. This is evident by his book Prayers for families and for particular persons: selected from the Book of common prayer translated into the language of the Six Nations of Indians (1788-1858), which translates a selection from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer into Oneida.² Because of this text, it can be assumed that Williams wrote for foreign ears, and any notes on the foreign language were probably written for his own study. Researchers should take the intended audience into account when determining the trustworthiness of this document, despite any biases that may appear in his papers.

Fagnani, Giuseppe. Eleazer Williams. 1853. Oil on canvas. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Furthermore, what makes Eleazer Williams especially unique in comparison to our previous readings are the facts that he “was of mixed Indian-white parentage”, and “he envisaged an Indian empire west of Lake Michigan under his rule”.³ After hearing the first fact, one could argue his intentions of recording this music on paper could have been to better understand and relate to the culture. However, knowing his true motives were to take control over the people, he is seen in a much more negative light. Granted, wanting to rule over the Oneida Indians doesn’t necessarily mean the music Williams wrote down was inaccurate/inauthentic. Considering the sheet music was found amongst other language materials, it could have been one of his sources for learning the Iroquois language. The scrapbook within which it was archived could have been a collection of Eleazer Williams’ personal mementos. Therefore, it is possible the music he recorded on paper is a trustworthy example of Oneida Indian music.

1 Williams, Eleazar. Papers, 1758-1858. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American Indian Histories and Cultures, http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_MS_999.

2 Williams, Eleazer. Prayers for Families and for Particular Persons Selected from the Book of Common Prayer. Albany: Printed by G.J. Loomis and Co, 1816. Available through: Wisconsin Historical Society, Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/d957d82e178a2376606b7cea19cb06a1?back_uri=https%3A%2F%2Fdp.la%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DWilliams%252C%2BEleazer%26subject%255B%255D%3DNative%2BAmericans%26utf8%3D%25E2%259C%2593&next=2&previous=0.

3 “Williams, Eleazer 1788-1858.” Wisconsin Historical Society. August 3, 2012. www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Article/CS1694.

(Mis)representation: The Westernization of Native American Music

Posted on February 19, 2018 by Teiana Nakano

It is difficult to determine exactly when influence from another culture turns into misrepresentation. Edward MacDowell, a white American composer wrote the piece Woodland Sketches, Op. 51: No. 5: From an Indian Lodge which was published in 1896. The piece begins with a fortissimo, perfect 5th interval, an interval which was often used to categorize “exotic” music. This is just one way in which MacDowell exhibits an inaccurate representation of Native American music. MacDowell’s composition undoubtedly brings up issues, both in his inaccurate, westernized representation of it, but also in his use of Native American culture without permission.

Chickasaw Composer, Jerod Tate

This conjures up the questions, is it always wrong to misrepresent a certain culture’s music by westernizing it? What if the composer is someone of that culture? Could that even be considered “misrepresentation”? Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate is a self identified citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and works to make Native American music relevant within the classical music world. One of his pieces, “Oshta”, written for the solo violin is loosely based upon Choctaw hymn 53.

Choctaw Hymn 53 came into existence as a consequence of Christian missionary work done in Native American land. Work to evangelize Native Americans was done essentially since the first Europeans came to the Americas. Religion was one way in which Europeans felt superiority, which often lead to a desire to teach Native Americans about Christianity in order to help them escape their “savagery”. Missionary work and evangelization is what lead to the creation of things such as the Choctaw Hymn Book, a bigger collection of hymns with Choctaw Hymn 53 comes from. Composed by Native American citizens, these hymns were considered a type of “hybrid music”; a combination between western hymns and a Native American style of music.

Choctaw Hymn #53 (2/2)

Choctaw Hymn #53 (1/2)

As seen in the images of Hymn #53, the words are all in Choctaw. Listening to this recording of the hymn, characteristics including the occasionally present dissonant harmonies distinguish it from traditional Christian hymnal music. The group singing is a characteristic which is also comparable to many other Native American music.

Listening to both Tate’s piece as well as the hymn it was inspired by, it is clear that they are vastly different, not only in their instrumentation, but in their melody and structure as well. Interestingly enough, Tate’s piece exhibits a perfect 5th double stop about 15 seconds in, making it possibly more similar to MacDowells’s intro than to the intro of the original hymn. Tate was clearly influenced by Native American music, much like MacDowell, but took it and made it his own.

To answer the questions I posed earlier, I would argue that no, a person like Jerod Tate cannot misrepresent his own culture, even if he is creating a sort of fusion between it and western culture. To argue with this, one might say that an implication of this fusion music is that it is a way of giving into assimilation by actively westernizing Native American culture. In reality, one cannot grow up in the United States without being exposed to western culture. I argue that even within one’s own identity, it is impossible to completely separate the western side from one’s ethnic and cultural heritage. Composers like Jerod Tate musically represent that dual identity within their work, thus making the Native American-Western fusion a presentation of pride of their culture and identity rather than a misrepresentation.

Sources:

Choctaw Hymn 53: Chahta vba isht taloa holisso. Choctaw Hymn Book, Richmond, Presbyterian committee of publication, 1872.
MacDowell, Edward. Woodland Sketches, Op. 51: No. 5: From an Indian Lodge. Barbagallo, James. Naxos 8.559010, 1994. CD.
Mill, Rodney, Frank Oteri, and Susan Feder. “Orchestral music.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Accessed February 18, 2018. http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-1002224888?rskey=tPlwS5&result=2
Stock, Harry. “A history of congregational missions among the North American Indians”. The Newberry Library, 1917. http://www.aihc.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Ayer_MS_835
Tate, Jerod. “About: Artist’s Biography.” Jerod Tate. Accessed February 18, 2018 http://jerodtate.com/about/
Vba isht Taloa #53, Choctaw Hymn Book. Chahta Anumpa Aiikhvana: School of Choctaw Language.

Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three years’ personal experience among the Red Men of the great west – Chapter XXVII

Posted on September 26, 2017 by Isaiah Pressman

In Our Wild Indians¹, Richard Irving Dodge talks about his experiences “living among the Red Men of the great west.” Published in 1882, Dodge focuses on his time in Texas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Kansas. Chapter XXVII focuses specifically on Indian music, musicians, instruments, and songs, so it is naturally of particular interest. One of the first things one notices upon reading through the (surprisingly brief, given the breadth of its topic) chapter, is how many ways Dodge succumbs to all the mistakes modern musicologists try to avoid. Dodge’s writing is the epitome of “not woke” and could probably be used as a textbook example of what not to do as a musicologist: he conveys clearly (and seemingly unintentionally) his belief in Western cultural superiority throughout.

All that being said, Dodge’s writing is not without its uses, and is one of the more engagingly-written accounts, to me at least, of interactions between Natives and Westerners. Dodge’s writing is highly descriptive and presents and interesting first person perspective on music that otherwise might be hard to come by. Furthermore, he deserves credit for acknowledging that when having his friend transcribe the music, he was forced to “reduce this music to score.” Though this is followed immediately by “The general similarity is so great that I give only a few illustrations,” I’ll give Dodge the benefit of the doubt in believing that he recognized that such music existed in a form that was not well-suited to be transcribed into Western notation. It really is a pity that the overall tone of the chapter can be captured so concisely by a quote from his transcriber, Mr. Aschmann, who says:

“The rhythm of Indian music is, as a whole, very poor. Almost every song keeps within the limits of one octave, without change or effort for harmonious melody. It is very seldom, however, that they bring in notes from different keys, or make other innovations sufficient to make the music discordant or unpleasant to listen to.”

According to Mr Aschmann, it would seem that the only thing more seldom than modal mixture in Native music is the absence of Western condescension when describing it.

1 Dodge, Richard Irving. 1882. Our Wild Indians: Thirty-three years’ personal experience among the Red Men of the great west. Hartford: A. D. Worthington and Company. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American West, http://www.americanwest.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Graff_1114 [Accessed September 26, 2017].

Understanding and Respect: The Nez Percés

Posted on September 26, 2017 by rinckw1

One of the most discussed topics regarding the traditions and beliefs of other cultures and other people outside of western traditions is that of how one can attempt to understand and learn of them, without stepping into the realm of appropriation. This discussion, reflected in our class discussions on the differences between cultural sharing and cultural appropriation, is one that must be discussed, else there are consequences. As someone whose heritage lies in the Nez-Percés tribes of old in Idaho, I often question how much I can delve into the traditions without stepping on the toes of those who came before me. As someone raised in a white household, being brought up on French traditions, I do not know enough of the traditions of my ancestors, yet I have always been raised with the utmost respect for them. This respect is what leads me to crave knowledge in learning more regarding my heritage, yet it’s important to understand that I will never truly understand the traditions and beliefs of the Nez-Percés, as one cannot truly understand without being born and raised in the culture.

Cultural Misunderstandings

There are many types of cultural misunderstandings, two of which that I will discuss in this post being that of malicious cultural misunderstanding compared to ignorant cultural misunderstanding. In regards to the Nez-Percés, the first type of misunderstanding was what they encountered initially with white folk. One document I looked into was a recount written by a white man named Lawrence Kip, who was with the Escort from the 4th Infantry, regarding the 1855 Indian Council.¹ What I focused on primarily in the recount was his descriptions of the Nez-Percés tribe before and throughout the council. In his first encounter with the Nez-Percés, he refers to it as his “first specimen” of the Nez-Percés.² This initial vocabulary, in referring to the approaching tribe as the first “specimen” he encountered already places them below the white man. Without any experience with the tribe, he has already assumed them to be inferior beings to himself, and this will continue throughout his experience with the tribe, as it did in the minds of many other white men.

In continuing his description of the natives he encountered, the western world’s infatuation with the exotic was also portrayed. He described them in a majestic light, claiming that they assumed the grace of centaurs, being one with their steeds. They were “gaudily painted,” had “fantastic embellishments flaunted in the sunshine,” and had “fantastic figures” covering their bodies. In the end, he wrapped up his initial description as “wild and fantastic.”³ To him, they were wild savages, yet they were fascinating, fantastic, and something utterly exotic from what he’d experienced before.

The Nez-Percés were known to be one of the kindest tribes to the white men, yet while visiting one of the Nez-Percés chiefs, Kip lumped them and their enemies, the Blackfoot tribe, together as savages.⁴ The lack of distinction between two tribes, one seemingly more violent to the white men than the other, shows the lack of care and thought that the white folk gave the tribes, no matter how kind.

It has been greatly discussed that the musical accomplishments of native americans stray from those in western culture, although that does not in any way diminish their music. Pitches and rhythms that are not in the western music cannot be dismissed as lesser, or incorrect, but must rather be adopted, as they are all music. Kip described their musical instruments as of the “rudest kind,” their singing as “harsh,” and overall “utterly discordant.”⁵ Even one who was not adept in music couldn’t find a way to appreciate what he heard, and instead described it in the words that we don’t dare use to describe music. While something may be discordant, it is still appreciated in western culture, unless, it seems, it is a part of another culture altogether, in which case it is dismissed as something that is not music, and something we cannot appreciate in the same manner.

Kip’s description of his experience with the Nez-Percés tribe is not to be taken as a factual and perfect account, as he had his biases. It is important to search other references, as I shall continue to do so in later blog posts. This original conception of the Nez-Percés tribe was something that was later to bring on the Nez-Percés Campaign, where the white men went to war with the tribe. This misunderstanding and refusal to understand other cultures was what brought on violence, and is what I’m referring to as a malicious misunderstanding. While it was not explicitly malicious to begin with, the fact that the newcomers found the native american tribes to be inferior to them was the beginning of homicide. What could be considered a misunderstanding was not solved in an equal and understanding manner, therefore there was no resolution.

Nez-Percés Campaign

Another very interesting document that I found was a map of the Nez-Percés Campaign. It depicts the path taken by the newcomers in their war against the Nez-Percés, as well as drawings of fighting grounds, military movements, and notes of times and dates when specific events occurred.⁶ It is the prime example of the consequences that can happen from cultural misunderstanding and more specifically, the lack of respect and attempt for peace with other cultures.

Nez-Percés Traditions and Religions

The second misunderstanding I’m going to discuss occurs often in today’s world, and is something I’m experiencing currently when researching the Nez-Percés. I am aware that for all of the research I can do, I can only gain a small glimpse into the truth regarding the culture of the Nez-Percés, and I cannot hope to truly understand their culture and traditions. At the same time, in my attempts to research it I hope to gain more insight on something that is both important to me, and should be important to everyone else out there, as it is important to learn and respect other cultures.

In R. L. Packard’s “Notes on the Mythology and Religion of the Nez-Percés,” he goes into detail of first hand accounts of a very small amount of traditions of the Nez-Percés. He gets his information in a discussion with James Reubens, who is a member of the Nez-Percés tribe. Even at the beginning of the conversation, the concept of misunderstanding and lack of respect in learning as portrayed in Reubens’s statement that he was worried Packard only had the “idle curiosity of a white man,”⁷ rather than a true passion for learning and respecting Nez-Percés traditions. This statement is a prime example of the issue at hand, where people are ignorant of the cultures they are stepping on and appropriating, yet make no attempts to learn about them in depth. Sometimes, it is due to pure ignorance, as they do not know that there is an issue, but other times it is due to laziness, which is something else altogether that we must combat.

As Reuben continued to discuss Nez-Percés traditions and beliefs, he touched on another prominent barrier in true understanding. He said that “the way we (the Nez-Percés) get our names is a beautiful thing when told in our language, but I cannot tell it well in English.”⁸ The language barrier that exists is extremely inhibiting, yet unavoidable. Without knowledge of the language and time spent with the culture, one cannot hope to gain true understanding of it. At the same time, this is another reason people are unwilling to learn, and wish to simply continue living their lives in an ignorant manner.

One tradition that was extremely interesting to learn about was the tradition of how children received their names in Nez-Percés culture. I do not dare to paraphrase the process, as it is complex and deserving of a true description. Even now, I am using a paraphrasing that Packard received in his discussion with Reubens.

“When a child is ten or twelve years old, his parents send him out alone into the mountains to fast and watch for something to appear to him in a dream and give him a name. His success is regarded as an omen, and affects his future character to some extent. If he has a vision, and in the vision a name is given him, he will excel in bravery, wisdom, or skill in hunting, and the like. If not, he will probably remain a mere nobody. Not to every child [boy or girl] is it given to receive this afflatus. Only those serious-minded ones, who keep their thoughts steadfastly on the object of their mission, will succeed. The boy who is frivolous, who allows his attention to be distracted by common objects on his way to the place of vigil, or who while there succumbs to homesickness, or gives himself up to the thoughts about hunting in the woods he has passed, or fishing in the streams he has crossed, will probably fail in his undertaking. On reaching the mountaintop, the watcher makes a pile of stones three or four feet high as a monument, and sits down by it to await the revelation. After some time – it may be three or four days – he “falls asleep,” and then, if fortunate, is visited by the image of the thing which is to bestow upon him his name and the wisdom and power belonging to it.”⁹

Why does this matter to me?

One thing in particular rang with me in reading this description, and that was the line “the watcher makes a pile of stones three or four feet high as a monument”¹⁰ atop the mountains. Towards the end of the section, Packard mentions that “there are many of these little monuments referred to on the mountains of Idaho.” Growing up, I often came across these monuments, as did others, but people simply believed they were put there by others hikers, and added their own stones to the piles. I did the same. Never once did it occur to me that the piles of stones were monuments to something more important, something that I should have been respecting throughout my entire childhood.

Why does this matter to anyone?

In learning about one simple tradition, I gained a deeper understanding and respect for the culture, and it is something that I will spread to all those who I am with when I run into these monuments. I believe that it is important to take the time to learn about other cultures, and it is important to learn to respect them. Objects such as the first hand accounts regarding some old white man’s first experience with the Nez-Percés tribe, albeit biased, is something that we must study in order to understand past mistakes, and in order to never make them again. Maps of conquests, while violent, are something that we must view in order to understand the occurrences and events that formed the present. First hand accounts are something that we must listen to, and something that we must always respect, especially when they are difficult to share. While we cannot truly understand, we must make an effort in order to avoid the mistakes of our predecessors and ancestors. Through research, discussion, and open-mindedness to learn, we must work to understand and respect everyone.

1 Lawrence, Kip, “Introduction,” in The Indian Council in the Valley of the Walla-Walla. (1855), (henceforth Kip).

6 Oliver Otis Howard and Rob H. Fletcher, “Map of the Nez Perce Indian Campaign.” (1878)

7 R. L. Packard, “Notes on the Mythology and Religion of the Nez Perces,” in The Journal of American Folklore 4, no. 15. (1891), 327 (henceforth Packard).

8 Packard, 329.

9 Packard, 329-330.

10 Packard, 330.

Howard, Oliver Otis (1830-1909); Rob H. Fletcher. 1878. Map of the Nez Perce Indian campaign. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American West, http://www.americanwest.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Map_6F_G4241_S55_1878_F5 [Accessed September 26, 2017].

Kip, Lawrence. 1855. The Indian Council in the valley of the Walla-Walla. 1855. Available through: Adam Matthew, Marlborough, American West, http://www.americanwest.amdigital.co.uk/Documents/Details/Graff_2342 [Accessed September 26, 2017].

Packard, R. L. “Notes on the Mythology and Religion of the Nez Perces.” The Journal of American Folklore 4, no. 15 (1891): 327-30. http://www.jstor.org/stable/533388?origin=crossref.

The Road West is Paved with Good Intentions

Posted on September 25, 2017 by Siriana

Richard Irving Dodge was a military man who spent his term serving in the American West.

Richard Irving Dodge

According to the introduction of his book Our Wild Indians, he felt compelled to share what he knew about Native American culture from the thirty three years he spent on the Western Frontier. What caught my eye about this particular account was a chapter I found to be completely devoted to music.

Transcription of a Song Irving Encountered. Transribed by Mr. Aschmann, leader of the band of the 23rd Infantry.

The excerpt on the left demonstrates the level of detail used to describe instruments thoruhgout the chapter. The author spends nearly two entire pages of the chapter on the significance of words in Native American Song alone.

Irving offers complex understandings of the intricacies of Native American music, recognizing the inability of the “uninstructed” ear to hear completely the changes in a song. The chapter finishes with transcriptions of several songs Irving encountered. Compared to other primary source accounts of meetings with Native Americans, like those collected by Judith Tick in her work Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion, this chapter provides a far more complete look at music as a part of Native American Culture.

But, as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

When examining the greater context of the book, it is clear to see that Irving’s best intentions were eclipsed by latent, institutionalized racism. At the end of book, Irving offers up a chapter that tackles what he calls, “The Indian Question”. Irving makes an impassioned argument for the political agency of Native Peoples, demanding that they be granted citizenship and calling reservations the “foulest blot on the escutcheon of the Government of the United States”. In that same chapter, however, he refers to Native Americans as an “inferior race”. The introduction to the book, (written by none other than William Tecumseh Sherman) says this:

The fact that this book (at least in the eyes of Sherman) could be used to decide what is “valuable” to keep from Native American cultures is shocking to modern readers. Even the title, Thirty Three Years among Our Wild Indians, is (as the kids say) cringeworthy. In the chapter about music, specifically, Irving refers to Native drums as “primitive”, and, of course, attempts to transcribe in Western notation songs that were never conceived with Western methods.

So what do we make of this?

Primary source authors are steeped in layers of deep cultural socialization. Irving’s best intentions to represent an accurate picture of Native life were foiled by his inability to separate his own cultural prejudice from his observations. Even though he wrote an entire book detailing the culures of different Native American Tribes, the book still advocates for picking and choosing which part of the culturewas suitable for adoption into American society. However, this racism doesn’t become abundantly clear until one examines the introduction and conclusion to the book. Often times, I find it easy to focus just on the musical structures in play while performing historical musicological reserach. This work serves as a reminder: everything (even music) must be taken in context. The descriptions of instruments offered in the full chapter are still valuable, but responsible scholarship demands that we all take a closer look before beginning to pave our own research with good intentions.

Natalie Curtis: A dedication to preserving Native American culture

Posted on September 23, 2017 by Emily Stephenson

In her article entitled “The Perpetuating of Indian Art,” Natalie Curtis unveils a complicated attitude in regards to studying Native American culture. While her perspective is filled with racial biases, she does advocate for preserving Native American music in it’s most traditional and authentic form. This insistence on the importance of maintaining the original music in all its beauty is twofold: it is guided by an appreciation of the culture, but an appreciation driven by a western mindset. This mindset, shared by many scholars and white people in positions of power at the time, takes Native American culture apart in its attempts to honor and preserve what it so earnestly admires.

Natalie Curtis was an American ethnomusicologist particularly interested in preserving American Indian and African American music by transcribing songs as accurately as possible. Her work is often recognized along with the work of Alice Fletcher and Frances Densmore as an essential contribution to the preservation of a “vanishing” culture. In 1907 she published “The Indians Book,” a collection of about 200 songs transcribed principally from live performances. While that work would be thoroughly interesting to study and analyze, I have chosen to reflect on an article she wrote in 1910, which highlights a problematic approach to ethnomusicology of the time. This in no way diminishes its historical significance.

Natalie Curtis in Southwestern garb and Indian beads

“The Indians Book,” a collection of 200 Indian songs transcribed by Natalie Curtis

The abstract of her article is as follows:

“Those who have worked among the American Indians, and have learned to respect the thought, the art, and many of the religious ideas of this most interesting people, must feel a sense of almost personal gratitude to the present Secretary of the Interior for having appointed a Supervisor of Music in the department of Indian Education, whose duties shall be to “record native Indian music, and arrange it for use in the Indian schools.”¹

If I could rewrite her thesis into my own words I would write that Indian art is beautiful and can be of use to white Americans, therefore we should preserve Indian culture instead of trying to stamp it out.

While Curtis recognizes that there are many American Indian tribes, she tends to cast large generalizations of American Indian culture in her descriptions and assertions. She refers to all Native Americans as an “underdeveloped race” and as “noble dogs.” These racially charged generalizations are contrasted with an intense attempt to exalt the beauty of the Indian music and art she witnesses, in order to spread her appreciation for this art to a larger white audience. Sharing this conflicting view of American Indians is Francis E. Leupp, whom Curtis cites in her article as the Commissioner of Indian Affairs. Francis E. Leupp, in his own work entitled The Indian and his problem, asserts that westerns can know nothing of Indian culture unless they observe communities from within, but in doing so reveals gaping holes in his understanding of Indian culture. Both Curtis and Leupp demonstrate a genuine interest in Native Americans, but struggle to view it without a western scope.

Curtis makes reference to the Carlisle Institute, the primary Indian boarding school from 1879-1918. The goal of the school was to Americanize Native Americans, and Curtis undoubtedly saw a problem with this model, shown by her critique of the governments push to destroy Indian culture. She instead believes that white teachers should encourage and inspire Indian children to learn and sing their own songs, free of western harmony and influence. Despite this honest effort to maintain American Indian culture, Curtis’ appreciation of Indian art still forces the culture to fit into her western model, as white people are the ones entrusted with preserving an art form that would disappear without the white savior.

The Carlisle Institute, an Indian boarding school.

Sources

1Curtis, Natalie. 1913. “THE PERPETUATING OF INDIAN ART.” Outlook (1893-1924), Nov 22, 623. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/docview/136640521?accountid=351.

Charles Haywood and Anne Dhu McLucas. “Curtis, Natalie.” Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 23, 2017, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2262178.

Leupp, Francis Ellington. Indian and his problem. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910. Accessed September 23, 2017. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=yale.39002003558856;view=1up;seq=2.

Wirkkala, A. 2012. “The Art of Americanization at the Carlisle Indian School.” Choice 49 (5): 865. https://search-proquest-com.ezproxy.stolaf.edu/docview/921021469?accountid=351.

Jennifer Bess. “Casting a Spell: Acts of Cultural Continuity in Carlisle Indian Industrial School’s the Red Man and Helper.” Wicazo Sa Review 26, no. 2 (2011): 13-38. doi:10.5749/wicazosareview.26.2.0013.

Curtis, Natalie. “A Plea for Our Native Art.” The Musical Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1920): 175-78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/737864

Pottery Performances: Interconnected Art

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Brandon Cash

Throughout this course we have looked at American history through the lens of music, but there is non-musical art that tells a uniquely American story. While perusing a collection of art owned by St. Olaf this work of pottery, sculpted by Steven Lucas, jumped out as an i 2.2002-Lucas interesting challenge. Continuing the the trend of asking questions, what do these patterns mean? From what culture do they come from? How does it connect to American music?

In doing a little research, these patterns belong to the Native American tribe known as the Hopi. The Hopi people reside in northeastern Arizona where their ancestors thrived on a life sustained by corn, spiritual connections, and art. The artist, Steven Lucas, is a descendent of Nampeyo, the great female potter of the Hopi tribe, and is known as one of the great potters of the modern era.

So what can we pull from this pot? The colors follow a strict family of earthen tones to represent the deep connection that the Hopi people have with the land. There are also a series of patterns that are common in Hopi pottery. The first is located in the center of the image and it is known at the migration pattern. Represented by the repeating feathers, the migration pattern is for the flexibility of the Hopi people to move when demanded by the land. The second pattern present on this particular pot (on the left) is the Butterfly Maiden, which represents fertility.

So how does all of this come back to relate to American music history? Native American elements have been implemented into music for centuries and these influences varied in historical accuracy. More often then not, musical style characteristics identified as sounding Native American are primitive and quite degrading. If we take the initiative to extend our view point to ethnomusicological evidence, we see a different story. Art, in all senses, is tied together through the people’s deep connection to the earth. The same concepts that are seen in the visual art of pottery are experienced in dance as dancers focus their motions into the ground and in the incorporation of natural elements into ceremonial dress. Music also has a deep connection to the earth. Musical instruments are constructed from the land and the subject matter of many Native American songs directly involve nature or the higher powers that govern and control the earth.

I believe the take away message of this piece in particular is its connectiveness to the people and how regardless of form, art serves as an expression of culture for a group of people.

Transcriptions and Telling the Whole Story

Posted on April 27, 2015 by simonson

Upon studying an unfamiliar culture’s music, there are many different aspects of the music that could be taken into account. Simply the notational aspects of the music can be notated, such as pitches, rhythms, dynamics, tempos. However sometimes there are extra things that a western 5-lined staff cannot display in detail, such as pitch-bending, amount of vibrato, sliding, and tone-quality. This has been a challenge for many ethnomusicologists for years.

Two transcribers produced books regarding some to their findings about Native American Song. Theodore Baker published his dissertation Über die Musik der Nordamerikanischen Wilden (On the Music of the North American Indians) in 1882 while studying in Leipzig. His book describes most of the primary characteristics of the music he witnessed, like the rhythm, singing quality, dancing, and instruments. His notations include grace-note ornaments and chromatics slides. However, Baker does not go into detail how these features fit in with the music he transcribed, nor does his commentary note what function the music plays in Native American Spiritual life.

Frances Densmore, a well known ethnomusicologist, published The American Indians and their Music in 1926. Her book contains many of the same features as Baker’s, except her transcriptions do not include any grace-notes like Baker. However, she offers far more written context on the music. She has a whole section devoted to each dance, game, and Native American life. Overall I think that Desmore captures more accurately the meaning behind the music.

When looking into another culture that is not one’s own, it is important to mention all aspects that go into music because does not just involve the print ink on the page — it involves our cultural experiences and knowledge.

Hopi-Tewa

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Wenie

Art. I am talking about the physical art: paintings, sculptures, portraits and ceramics. These types of artworks are what make museums or art collections unique. When I look at such artwork, I spend so much time trying to interpret what the artists create. There may be little information displayed about the specific piece or the artist, but honestly how many people actually read it. What I enjoy most about looking at artwork is when I am able to get lost in my own thoughts to help me make sense of the artwork that is right in front of me.

Last week, while visiting St. Olaf’s Flaten Art Museum. There was a lot of interesting artwork displayed. There was one piece of artwork that stood out.

Continue reading →

Recapturing the Dignity of the American Indian

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Cole

The caricature of the savage Native American is all too common in the history of American Art. This is especially true in art of the American West, rife with its depictions of pioneers and cowboys fighting off Indians and the elements in the name of survival and Manifest Destiny.

Some turn of the century artists like Charles Marion Russell (1864-1926) and Frederic Remington (1861-1909) managed to rehabilitate this image, depicting ways in which Native Americans (and men in particular) could be pleasant to look at artistically. In the masculine world of the West, this primarily meant depicting them as active participants in the drama of uncharted territory. However, this also reinforced the notion that American Indians led a violent, uncivilized life.

Painting of a buffalo hunt by Frederic Remington

“For Supremacy” by Charles Russell

This serves as a marked contrast to the Native American Portrait Study by Olaf Carl Seltzer (1877-1957) in the Flaten Art Museum Collection. The first word that came to mind when I saw it was ‘dignity’; the second was ‘still’.

Seltzer lived in Great Falls, Montana from the time he was 19 until his death. From that, I inferred (with the consultation of a map of Native American tribal territories) that this study is of individuals belonging to the Blackfoot tribe. A simple google image search confirmed this suspicion, as I found numerous portraits of Blackfoot members whose hairstyles and earrings strongly resemble those in the study.

Of course I don’t mean to suggest through this analysis that the Blackfoot people or any other group of Native Americans needs a white man to recapture their dignity. But it is refreshing to see that there is at least one instance in American art of someone capturing the dignity of Native Americans authentically not through violence, but through still portraits. Even if it is just a study.

In studying the history of American music, we have seen multiple times how non-white cultures have been repeatedly misrepresented. The violence latent in portraits by Russell and Remington can be found in stereotypical musical depictions of Native Americans that rely on similarly simplistic and vulgar generalizations: I’m thinking especially of pulsing drums, war-whoops, and melodies that only use pentatonic scales.

Even recent depictions rely on the simplistic drum patterns and repetitive melodies that have been stuck to Native American’s since the beginning, even when the atmosphere isn’t as frenetic, violent, or (in the case of Peter Pan) partially sexualized.

Who then is the Seltzer of American music? In other words, is there anyone that we can point to as capturing the essence of Native Americans without cheap theatrics? Perhaps the closest is Edward MacDowell’s Indian Suite (1892), which utilizes (alleged) Native American melodies. Luke provides an excellent study of this depiction here.

The unfortunate truth remains that we are relying on inauthentic depictions of Native Americans by whites to explore Indian-ness. But isn’t to say that there aren’t any Native American composers trying to do the same; a simple YouTube search shows otherwise. Unfortunately, these composers don’t hold a firm place in the current music history curriculum. While articles like this are a start, we as musicologists must strive to support authentic depictions of Native American music while remaining critical of the Russell’s and Remington’s of American music.

“Note for Note Indian”: Finck’s claim on Edward MacDowell’s “Indian Suite”

Posted on April 13, 2015 by simonson

Henry T. Finck wrote in Century Illustrated Magazine about Edward MacDowell’s success in creating an American sound that is a “mixture of all that is best in European types, transformed by our climate into something resembling the spirit of American literature.” In fact Edward MacDowell has become well known as the writer of the 10 Woodland Sketches, including tunes such as “To a Wild Rose.”

Finck was specifically speaking of MacDowell’s Second Suite commonly known as the Indian Suite. As Finck points out, “the introduction has almost a Wagner touch thematically, but it is note for note Indian.” However, when have you listened to any type of Native American music and thought it sounded like Wagner? Even though MacDowell’s piece sounds western to our ears, MacDowell was trying to create a savage piece. However, The fact of the matter is that Edward MacDowell used the transcriptions of Native American by Theodore Baker entitled On the Music of the North American Indians. These tunes have been written down on a western staff using western notational conventions. As you may know, Western staff notation can only speak in notes and rhythms but fails to represent all the subtle dips and bends in pitch.

Yes, I would agree that Edward MacDowell’s Indian Suite is a note-for-note representation of Theodore Baker’s transcription, but I believe that it cannot be considered note-for-note Native American. Native American music’s style is so distinctive from Western style that I think it is impossible from western music to properly represent all the Native American music has to offer.

All Quotations from:

Finck, Henry T. “AN AMERICAN COMPOSER: EDWARD A. MACDOWELL.” Century Illustrated Magazine (1881-1906) LIII, no. 3 (01, 1897): 448. http://search.proquest.com/docview/125517908?accountid=351.

Kill the Indian, Save the Man

But Beethoven, Really?

Further Reading on Boarding Schools in Minnesota

Footnotes