The Project Gutenberg EBook of Indian Story and Song, by Alice C. Fletcher

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Title: Indian Story and Song
from North America

Author: Alice C. Fletcher

Release Date: April 23, 2008 [EBook #25140]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK INDIAN STORY AND SONG ***

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

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

INDIAN
STORY AND SONG

FROM NORTH AMERICA

By

ALICE C. FLETCHER

_Holder of the Thaw Fellowship
Peabody Museum Harvard University_

Boston
Small Maynard & Company
Publishers

_Copyright, 1900,
By Alice C. Fletcher_

_Entered at Stationers' Hall_

_To_

MY INDIAN FRIENDS

FROM WHOM I HAVE GATHERED

STORY AND SONG

PREFACE.

_At the Congress of Musicians held in connection with the
Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha in July, 1898, several essays
upon the songs of the North American Indians were read, in
illustration of which a number of Omaha Indians, for the first time,
sang their native melodies to an audience largely composed of trained
musicians._

_This unique presentation not only demonstrated the scientific value
of these aboriginal songs in the study of the development of music,
but suggested their availability as themes, novel and characteristic,
for the American composer. It was felt that this availability would be
greater if the story, or the ceremony which gave rise to the song,
could be known, so that, in developing the theme, all the movements
might be consonant with the circumstances that had inspired the
motive. In response to the expressed desire of many musicians, I have
here given a number of songs in their matrix of story._

_Material like t