Produced by David Newman, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. Music transcribed by Linda Cantoni, Espe (Nada Prodanovic), and the PG Finale Team. [Transcriber's Note: This e-book contains passages in Native American dialects; hyphenation and accents have been preserved as they appear in the original. Italics are represented by underscores. Obvious printer errors in English passages have been corrected, in particular the inconsistent use of "rythm" for "rhythm."] INDIAN STORY AND SONG FROM NORTH AMERICA By ALICE C. FLETCHER _Holder of the Thaw Fellowship Peabody Museum Harvard University_ Boston Small Maynard & Company Publishers _Copyright, 1900, By Alice C. Fletcher_ _Entered at Stationers' Hall_ _To_ MY INDIAN FRIENDS FROM WHOM I HAVE GATHERED STORY AND SONG PREFACE. _At the Congress of Musicians held in connection with the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha in July, 1898, several essays upon the songs of the North American Indians were read, in illustration of which a number of Omaha Indians, for the first time, sang their native melodies to an audience largely composed of trained musicians._ _This unique presentation not only demonstrated the scientific value of these aboriginal songs in the study of the development of music, but suggested their availability as themes, novel and characteristic, for the American composer. It was felt that this availability would be greater if the story, or the ceremony which gave rise to the song, could be known, so that, in developing the theme, all the movements might be consonant with the circumstances that had inspired the motive. In response to the expressed desire of many musicians, I have here given a number of songs in their matrix of story._ _Material like that brought together in these pages has hitherto appeared only in scientific publications, where it has attracted the lively interest of specialists both in Europe and America. It is now offered in a more popular form, that the general public may share with the student the light shed by these untutored melodies upon the history of music; for these songs take us back to a stage of development antecedent to that in which culture music appeared among the ancients, and reveal to us something of the foundations upon which rests the art of music as we know it to-day._ _Many of the stories and songs in this little book are now for the first time published. All have been gathered directly from the people, in their homes, or as I have listened to the earnest voice of the native priest explaining the ancient ceremonials of his fathers. The stories are close translations, losing only a certain picturesqueness and vigour in their foreign guise; but the melodies are exactly as sung by the Indians._