{"id":3769,"date":"2019-09-16T22:26:40","date_gmt":"2019-09-17T03:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/?p=3769"},"modified":"2019-09-16T22:26:40","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T03:26:40","slug":"alice-fletcher-indian-songs-personal-studies-of-indian-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/2019\/09\/16\/alice-fletcher-indian-songs-personal-studies-of-indian-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Alice Fletcher: “Indian Songs: Personal Studies of Indian Life”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Alice Fletcher<\/a> (1838-1923) was an American ethnologist who worked for the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. She extensively studied the Great Plains Indians, and was frequently able to gain their trust and immerse herself in much of their daily lives. She recorded and transcribed hundreds of songs and recorded observations of their rituals and music (using Western notation, similar to Frances Densmore). While she seemed to care about the Native Americans she interacted with, and even helped one woman get a loan to attend medical school, she also advocated for the Dawes Act, which redistributed reservation land and broke up tribes with the goal of assimilation (1<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

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This excerpt<\/a> narrates her experience living on an Omaha reservation. She begins by asking to observe a dance, and her \u201cIndian guide\u201d leads her to a white tent filled with men and women sitting around a large drum (2)<\/a>. She states, \u201cI was startled by a sudden mighty beating of the drum, with such deafening yells and shouts that I feared my ears would burst\u201d (page 1); this echoes Drake\u2019s description of Native American singing as shriek-like. As the music and dancing continues, she describes, \u201cI felt a foreignness that grew into a sense of isolation…I was oppressed with its strangeness…It was nothing but tumult and din to me; the sharply accented drum set my heart to beating painfully and jarred my every nerve\u201d (page 2). She doesn\u2019t see the sounds she hears as music because it doesn\u2019t sound like typical Western classical music, and she, along with many others, holds Native American music to a Western standard. She additionally writes, \u201cThe outstretched arms brandishing the war-clubs…called up before me every picture of savages I had ever seen,\u201d calling the Native Americans \u201cterrible creatures\u201d (page 3). The use of the word \u201csavage\u201d relates to all of the course readings we have done so far, which contrast the white view of Native Americans as violent and savage while also nostalgic.<\/span><\/p>\n

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However, in the next paragraph she says that she later \u201chad a laugh with her red friends\u201d over this incident; she sees some Native Americans as savages, and others as her friends. Fletcher grew ill and Native Americans would come sing softly to her without a drum; \u201cthe last vestige of the distraction of noise and the confusion of theory was dispelled, and the sweetness, the beauty, and the meaning of these songs were revealed to me…from that time forth I ceased to trouble about scales, tones, rhythm, and melody\u201d (4). She seems to finally realize that she shouldn\u2019t base all musical analysis off of Western scales, and finishes her account by describing different types of songs and transcribing several.<\/span><\/p>\n

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  1. DeVale, Sue Carole. “Fletcher, Alice Cunningham.”\u00a0Grove Music Online.<\/em>\u00a02001;\u00a0Accessed 16 Sep. 2019. https:\/\/www.oxfordmusiconline.com\/grovemusic\/view\/10.1093\/gmo\/9781561592630.001.0001\/omo-9781561592630-e-0000009816.<\/li>\n
  2. Fletcher, Alice C. “INDIAN SONGS.: PERSONAL STUDIES OF INDIAN LIFE.”\u00a0Century Illustrated Magazine (1881-1906),\u00a0<\/i>01, 1894, 421, https:\/\/search.proquest.com\/docview\/125523852?accountid=351.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Alice Fletcher (1838-1923) was an American ethnologist who worked for the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology. She extensively studied the Great Plains Indians, and was frequently able to gain their trust and immerse herself in much of their … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jEhR-YN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3772,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions\/3772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.stolaf.edu\/americanmusic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}