The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and ManuscriptsSchoolcraft, Henry Rowe
History
The American Indians: Their History, Condition and Prospects, from Original Notes and Manuscripts
Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe
Indians of North America
The term wagemin, which unfolds all these ideas, and reveals, as by a
talisman, all this information, is derived in part, from the tri-literal
term Waweau, that which is bent or crooked. The termination in g, is the
animate plural, and denotes not only that there is more than one object,
but that the subject is noble or invested with the importance of
animated beings. The last member of the compound, min, is a shortened
sound of the generic meen, a grain, or berry. To make these coalesce,
agreeably to the native laws of euphony, the short vowel i, is thrown
in, between the verbal root and substantive, as a connective. The
literal meaning of the term is, a mass, or crooked ear of grain; but the
ear of corn so called, is a conventional type of a little old man
pilfering ears of corn in a cornfield. It is in this manner, that a
single word or term, in these curious languages, becomes the fruitful
parent of many ideas. And we can thus perceive why it is that the word
wagemin is alone competent to excite merriment in the husking circle.
This term is taken as the basis of the cereal chorus or corn song, as
sung by the northern Algonquin tribes. It is coupled with the phrase
Paimosaid,--a permutative form of the Indian substantive made from the
verb, pim-o-sa, to walk. Its literal meaning is, he who walks, or the
walker; but the ideas conveyed by it, are, he who walks at night to
pilfer corn. It offers, therefore, a kind of parallelism in expression,
to the preceding term. The chorus is entirely composed of these two
terms, variously repeated, and may be set down as follows:
Wagemin,
Wagemin,
Paimosaid.
Wagemin,
Wagemin,
Paimosaid.
When this chant has been sung, there is a pause, during which someone
who is expert in these things, and has a turn for the comic or ironic,
utters a short speech, in the manner of a recitative, in which a
peculiar intonation is given, and generally interrogates the supposed
pilferer, as if he were present to answer questions, or accusations.
There can be no pretence, that this recitative part of the song is
always the same, at different times and places, or even that the same
person should not vary his phraseology. On the contrary, it is often an
object to vary it. It is a perfect improvisation, and it may be supposed
that the native composer is always actuated by a desire to please, as
much as possible by novelty. The whole object indeed is, to keep up the
existing merriment, and excite fun and laughter.
The following may be taken as one of these recitative songs, written
out, on the plan of preserving the train of thought, and some of those
peculiar interjections in which these languages so much abound. The
chorus alone, it is to be observed, is fixed in its words and metre,
however transposed or repeated, and, unlike an English song, precedes
the stanza or narrative.
CORN SONG.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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