It is a peculiar tendency of the American historian to lay the foundation of our national history squarely on the Rock of Plymouth. A solid foundation, truly, but not a very broad one. The predominant influence of New England in the industrial and commercial development of the United States can hardly be gainsaid. That its influences on the country's æsthetic development have been equally predominant is questionable. More especially in musical matters are we inclined to call it into dispute. If we might judge from American popular music, we should be disposed to infer that such influences as may have been active in the shaping of it came chiefly from the South. Nor is popular music a negligible criterion in this respect, for in it have always lain the germs of truly national art. Of course, our knowledge of the state of musical culture in the early colonies does not enable us to say definitely and dogmatically just where and how American musical development first began. It will probably appear eventually that the early musical life of the colonies has had very little to do with our musical culture of to-day. But, purely as a matter of historic justice, it might be pointed out that unqualified statements, such as the assertion of Ritter that 'the first steps of American musical development may be traced back to the first establishment of English Puritan colonies in New England,' are, to say the least, somewhat premature.[1] I A consideration of music among the Indians is not germane to our present purpose. As far as we are concerned Indian music is an exotic, and it is only of recent years that American composers have turned to it in a conscious search for national color which is, perhaps, the first real symptom of aspiration toward characteristically national expression. From the point of view of musical history the development of American music must be considered as beginning among the first white settlers on these shores, and it may be said at once that those beginnings, like Guy of Warwick's death, are still 'wrop in mystery.' Regarding musical life in the colonies before the year 1700 our information is so slight as to be negligible. For almost a century preceding that year white men--many of them men of culture--had been settled in America.[2] That these men completely forgot the art in which so many of them found pleasure, and in which at least a few of them must have possessed some skill, is a supposition too absurd to be seriously entertained. As to the nature and proportions of their musical activities we have no exact evidence and, in default of such, it is necessary for us to dip a little into comparative history.