oman of his
choice."

Miss Fletcher is easily satisfied. For my part I cannot see in a tune,
however rapturously sung or fluted, or in the words "with the day I
come to you" and the like any sign of real sentiment or the faintest
symptom differentiating the two kinds of love. Moreover, as Miss
Fletcher herself remarks:

"The Omahas as a tribe have ceased to exist. The young
men and women are being educated in English speech, and
imbued with English thought; their directive emotion
will hereafter take the lines of our artistic forms."

Even if traces of sexual sentiment were to be found among Indians like
the Ornahas, who have been subjected for some generations to
civilizing influences, they would allow no inference as to the
love-affairs of the real, wild Indian.

Miss Fletcher makes the same error as Professor Fillmore, who assisted
her in writing _A Study of Omaha Indian Music_. He took the wild
Indian tunes and harnessed them to modern German harmonies--a
procedure as unscientific as it would be unhistoric to make Cicero
record his speeches in a phonograph. Miss Fletcher takes simple Indian
songs and reads into them the feelings of a New York or Boston woman.
The following is an instance. A girl sings to a warrior (I give only
Miss Fletcher's translation, omitting the Indian words): "War; when
you returned; die; you caused me; go when you did; God; I appealed;
standing," This literal version our author explains and translates
freely, as follows:

"No. 82 is the confession of a woman to the man she
loves, that he had conquered her heart before he had
achieved a valorous reputation. The song opens upon the
scene. The warrior had returned victorious and passed
through the rites of the Tent of War, so he is entitled
to wear his honors publicly; the woman tells him how,
when he started on the war-path, she went up on the
hill and standing there cried to Wa-kan-da to grant him
success. He who had now won that success had even then
vanquished her heart, 'had caused her to die' to all
else but the thought of him"(!)

Another instance of this emotional embroidery may be found on pages
15-17 of the same treatise. What makes this procedure the more
inexplicable is that both these songs are classed by Miss Fletcher
among the Wa-oo-wa-an or "woman songs," concerning which she has told
us that "they are in no sense love-songs," and that usua