Songs of the Tewa, by Herbert Joseph Spinden, [1933], at sacred-texts.com

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AN ESSAY ON AMERICAN INDIAN POETRY

with a selection of outstanding compositions from North and South America

A GIFT of noble art in all its manifestations, destined to gather golden opinions with the passing centuries, forms part of the splendid heritage with which America of the past endows America of the future. The Redman has never received the credit due him for his fundamental contributions to human welfare and permanent civilization. On the utilitarian side stand the remarkable series of economic plants which the Indian brought to a high state of cultivation and the important industrial processes which he invented. On the esthetic side stand beauty in sculpture and architecture, beauty in traditional literature of myths, songs and ritualistic poems, beauty in dances and spectacular ceremonies, and beauty, above all, in the ethical and philosophical attitude of man towards man and of man towards nature.

It is easy enough to show that the useful gifts of the American Indian assume gigantic values today, especially since more than half the present agricultural wealth of the United States comes from plants which he tamed. It is not so easy to estimate the influence of his esthetics upon the present culture of his conquerors, but the coming effect will surely be very great. The Indian has abundantly demonstrated his ability to build up and maintain the social illusions of grandeur. Now between a nation which exists as an accumulation of individual abilities and individual achievements—and we are scarcely more than this today in spite of a certain mechanistic ordering—and a nation which finds a truly artistic and communal expression of its cooperative life,

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capable of enriching and ennobling that life, there is a vast and vital difference. Perhaps in this survey of the poetry of the American Indian I shall be able to define this difference in comprehensive terms.

The creative individuals of the Red race, the poets, the artists, the philosophers, whatever their forgotten names may be, had this in common: they were one and all the architects of mass illusion. They were culture heroes, and to my mind this is the highest purpose to which supreme abilities may be devoted. Seeing in the realities the world about them the indices of divine intention, their minds reached out to win an invisible empire. Although possessing separate abilities they were not individualists in spirit but collectivists, and the self-contained societies which they erected were super-organisms instinct with over-souls.

Perhaps the cultural units of ancient America represent primary or youthful civilization. Such a classification would well fit the first splendid efflorescence of the Mayas which produced writing, astronomical science, permanent architecture and high art. Here, if ever, we find self-sufficiency, a nation growing like a tree. For the Mayas drew wealth from their own soil and developed their supreme arts by an intelligent use of leisure in furtherance of their social ideals. It seems that the same process was repeated elsewhere in America. But also it is clear enough that the Incas and the Aztecs had hit upon the deceptive advantages of aggressive warfare in the quick up-building of their respective states. Their predatory policy was still tentative, for the undeveloped condition of both offensive and defensive military science among the American Indians in general proves that the procedures of conquest, tribute and trade were never fully established. The Redman had to dance

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himself into war or find a just cause for it in the imagined appetites of his gods.

THE INDIAN AND HIS COSMOS

In his relations with the immeasurable world about him the American Indian, even today and whatever the state of his culture, exhibits a single psychological attitude. Man is never the lord of creation but always a pensioner on natural bounty. It has been the custom to dismiss the religion of our Indian tribes as animistic in the lower stages and mystic in the higher ones, a classification which certainly emphasizes the supremacy of spiritual forces over material ones. Beginning with a naive belief that a directive mentality combines with a directed physical body in animals, plants and natural objects as it does in man, the first aim of Indian religion has been to make friends with nature whenever possible and when not possible to circumvent in some way the inimical forces. From this universal animism beast gods emerge as the embodiments of natural powers. Ultimately these beast gods combine into composite monster gods which gradually take on human attributes of shape and character. But very early in the development of this system the idea of a single pervasive control makes its appearance, a primal cause, a creator, a modifier, who may deal out rewards as well as punishments.

The Yokuts Indian of California, after appealing to seven vague deities whom he names in order, ends with the request that he may fit into a universal scheme 1.

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In a closing comment on this primitive Californian prayer, Kroeber says: "A certain vastness of conception and profoundness of feeling rising above any petty concrete desire, cannot be denied this petition."

Out on the Great Plains the mystery which pervades the universe is called Wakonda by several Siouan tribes. The quest of Wakonda by the man who would know things "that are fit to serve as symbols" is thus described in the Osage Rite of the Chiefs 2:

From the Osage informant who gave Francis La Flesche the important rituals of this tribe comes an explanation of Wakonda 3. It was the ancients who devised the ritualistic songs, the ceremonial forms and symbols out of their insight into natural mysteries, arising from their power to search with the mind. They noted the -mysteries of the light of day by which the earth and all living things that dwell thereon are influenced; the mysteries of the darkness of night that reveal to us all the great bodies of the upper world, each of which forever travels in a circle upon its own path unimpeded by the others. They searched for a long period of time for the source of life and at last came to the thought that it issues from an invisible creative power to which they applied the name Wakonda." This from one American Indian to another!

Wakonda and his congeners—for the name varies with the language—resides in the heavens and sometimes

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appears to his petitioners in human guise, but aged and austere. In literature dealing with the Indian he is generally referred to as the Great Mystery but he might with equal propriety be called Ultimate Good.

The Pueblo Indians of the Southwest speak of their Earth Mother and Sky Father and in a chant of the Tewa (see number XXIX below) ask for a garment to be woven on the gossamer loom, strung from the sky by the desert rains, that they may walk fittingly in a decent world. If only our materialistic civilizations now stripping the earth in a mad holocaust could pause and take counsel from the calm wisdom of this prayer! But it seems that we accept no lesson from the past and owe no duty to the future. The destruction of forests and all natural resources goes on, the flocks of wild birds and herds of wild animals die and we pollute the streams. Enslaving or exterminating undefended peoples around the world we enslave ourselves to sordid appetites and disillusions.

The Aztecs had a vague supreme deity called Ometeuctli—Lord of Duality—who combined the masculine and feminine principles in one creator god dwelling in a topmost heaven.

Nezahualcoyotl, the emperor-poet of Texcoco, is credited by the Mexican historian, Ixtlilxochitl, with having taught that there was one god supreme above all others named Tloque Nahuaque: "In the ninth tier was the creator of heaven and earth, by whom live the created beings: an only god who created all visible and invisible things." This most famous poet of ancient Mexico also realized the ethical implications of this reduction in his emphasis on just deeds as the proper worship to be offered to an eternal principle. In a poem intended to be sung in his presence we find these verses 4:

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A most splendid Thanatopsis, attributed to Nezahualcoyotl, comes to us through an Otomi transcription, offering internal evidence of its pagan origin. I quote the English rendering of Brinton 5. While faltering here and there in exact phrasing, nevertheless the early American-ist caught the vast scope of this poem. It expresses, as he says, an epicurean philosophy but one permeated by ethical obligations.

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The human soul lost in the immensities of a space-time universe has no recourse from oblivion save in those virtues which blossom in the dust. This is the conclusion of the highest paganism. Seeing order in the heavens instills a belief that there may be an ultimate order in the solution of human affairs.

In conformity with the reflections of the great Mexican chieftain are various ancient hymns and orations

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which are ascribed to the kings of the Incas by one Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua who wrote shortly after 1600. The hymn to Viracocha, a master deity and creator god of Peru, is an oft-quoted fragment of American Indian literature 6.

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So all prefiguring of space and time draws down to the focus of human needs, of human understanding, and of human recognition of something that goes beyond this understanding! Man is the animal who learned to wonder, who learned to question the world, who learned to question himself. Through the length and breadth of ancient America we discover this primitive inquisitiveness and even in the songs of our Indians of today. Here is one from the Pawnee 7:

THE PLACE OF INDIAN POETRY IN THE ARTS

"All poetry," says Grosse 8, "comes from feeling and goes to feeling, and therein lies the mystery of its creation and influence." This writer of forty years ago did not have much truly primitive poetry before him nor did he have much sensitive knowledge of the uses to which that little had been applied in the life of primitive man. His basic definition, "Poetry is the verbal representation of external or internal phenomena in an esthetically effective form for an esthetic purpose," implied that the successful uses of words to express great thoughts and tender feelings were, from the first, intentional creations of specially gifted artists. But was this really the case?

Today, as a result of ethnological studies among nearly all the surviving groups of low-cultured humans, we have masses of traditional myths, songs and ritualistic

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proceedings. The native forms of speech have been written out phonetically, translated in the light of local associations, and coordinated with the rhythms of musical accompaniment and with the ordered action of dancing and ceremonial dramatizations in sound-and-sight records. This slow and searching investigation has proceeded without undue benefit from a priori considerations and without undue loyalty to slender and precious definitions of what distinguishes Art in a matrix of Custom.

The idea that the separate fine arts sprang full-armed from the brow of, let us say, Apollo and that artists were, in the beginning or ever, touched with divine afflatus has no more truth in it than the companion concept that kings operate under a heavenly sanction. Anthropological science can demonstrate easily enough that beauty emerges from use, and that many ancient things which according to our specialized appreciations are merely and completely beautiful were nevertheless conceived for some magical or pseudo-practical service.

Poetry can hardly be called a primary art, at least that class of it which needs only to be spoken or read. As used by the American Indians and other so-called primitive groups, such as the Polynesians, poetry is still a servant of music and ceremony rather than a freestanding utterance. Perhaps this was also its former state in those classic lands where lyrics no longer need the lyre and where ballads are seldom actually sung to dancing feet. Owing to the lack of stringed instruments in ancient America and the slight development of wind instruments the drum exerted an outstanding influence on song, with some help from the steady pulsations of canoe paddling, corn grinding and similar exercises.

Among the Eskimo is found the Arctic tambourine

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and throughout the New World drums of one kind or another are in use. In ancient Mexico the two-lipped log drum had a double pitch and was capable of producing a wide variety of sound patterns through manipulation of the double tones in light and heavy strokes and changing tempo 9. We must imagine that melodic measures coincided with these drum beats and furnished a still more intricate lay-out into which it was the poet's job to fit intelligible words. The drum rhythms are indicated imitatively for a considerable number of old Mexican songs and their variety may be guessed from three examples 10. While the iambic meter goes especially well with the Aztec language, other meters were also employed: else how can the following onomatopoeia of drum strokes be explained?

Modern examples of the ways in which words are forced into inflexible moulds of music have been studied in phonographic records of songs from the Eskimo, the Ojibwa and other tribes. Often the distortion is so great that a song has meaning only for the composer. The expression may be obscure enough in itself with farfetched figures of speech and various poetic licenses. On top of this the warping of the words to the rhythmic pattern sometimes calls for drastic syncopations and reduplications, not to mention the interpolation of meaningless syllables. Poetry schooled under such rigid restraints, and finally overcoming them, inevitably becomes

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differentiated from prose. There is a survival of the fittest expressions until a standard of poetic phrasing becomes fixed.

The common use of extra, meaningless syllables to dilute the intelligible parts of speech is illustrated in a Mide song of the Ojibwa analyzed by Miss Densmore. The words are 11:

The pulse of the drum is regular and the quarter note is maintained except for the fifth and sixth measures. To fit a combination of 2–4, 3–4 and 4–4 time the words of the song are repeated and stretched out as follows, the italicised syllables being interpolated.

There are many songs in which the burden is carried entirely by meaningless syllables but it is not clear that such songs intergrade as a class between instrumental music and songs with intelligible words. In some cases the meaningless syllables may represent old songs, the words of which have been distorted and forgotten, or foreign songs, the words of which never were learned. It would help if we could really measure the life of a song. We only know that the rich repertory of the Aztecs and the Incas has been finished for centuries and that long life in an unmodified state cannot be proven

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for European ballads. Yet there is a common belief that the songs and ceremonies of lowly cultured peoples are maintained from ancient times. "The Amazonian," says Thomas Whiffen 12, "treasures the songs of his fathers and will master strange rhythms and words that for him no longer have meaning; he only knows they are the correct lines, the phrases he ought to sing at such functions, because they have always been sung." This assumption of longevity for traditional songs is, I believe, nothing more than a romantic exit for ignorance. Rather, it seems that generations of song and ceremony succeeded each other like generations of human beings, albeit with a longer natural life, and that survival of traits, or at best survival of broken fragments, is all that should be expected across a span of several centuries. A constant process of leavening the present with the past is sufficient to explain all certain facts.

Words adjusted to the metronome of the throbbing drum, or embodying a rhythmic formality once removed, were composed by the American Indians for various purposes and occasions. Many songs were framed for the uses of magic, others to vivify ceremonies, others to express the deep religious feelings of the social group. Relatively few Indian poems have the strictly individualistic cast which distinguishes so many products of our super-civilized nation. It seems that Indian singers did not consciously cultivate the violent personal emotions for the trade, but ventured only to put into words the social illusions in which they were immersed. Now to examine the outstanding classes of Indian poetical compositions.

REINCARNATION LULLABIES

Indian mothers generally sing their children to sleep with wordless songs but sometimes they use true lullabies

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as may be seen from the Tewa examples given below. There is, moreover, a very special kind of lullaby which deals with reincarnation.

The Eskimo and several other northern tribes believe that the soul of a dead relative enters into a new born child and watches over it during its tender years. This person may be addressed, therefore, in the child's lullaby and, vice versa, the child's prattling tongue may drop words of wisdom, thanks to its experienced soul. While the lullabies of eastern Greenland, which Thalbitzer calls petting songs, are of this type they mostly lack artistic form and some are frankly licentious, ascribing to the infant child the vices and ailments of its spiritual tutor, perhaps as preventive magic. There are a few exceptions. A widow whose dead husband had entered into his brother's son saw in this male child her future provider, and addressed him with a song more befitting our idea of what a lullaby should be. I quote the first of three similar verses 13:

Among the Tlingit of southern Alaska and the Haida of Queen Charlotte Island are found reincarnation lullabies of dignified phrasing which Swanton has translated 14. One such song apologizes for the mean life of the present as compared with the exalted past; it is addressed to an old woman whose spiritual personality continues its existence in a baby girl.

I

II

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In still another reincarnation lullaby the fond mother beholds a famous chieftain in her crawling infant.

I

II

We must now note that as the child grows older his proper soul gradually gets control over the body and the reincarnated adult soul fades away into nothingness. So these northern peoples also have other songs fitted to the understanding of little boys and girls. For instance the Ammassalik Eskimo have a myth for children which tells how a raven teased the geese and how the geese in revenge enticed the raven far out over the sea. When they settled on the water, he was unable to swim. A song describes his fate 15:

And so on until the water reaches the great eyes of the insolent raven; then the song ends with an expressive Ugh!

Elsewhere songs for children and songs in myths which are used largely in the education of children

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emphasize the magical factor. A selection of songs for children from the village of Picuris in New Mexico has been published by John P. Harrington and Helen Roberts 16. A story tells how a child-stealing giant is overcome by a youth's magical songs. The boy's first song sung while he is being carried away in a basket, ends with the phrase:

[paragraph continues] This has the magical effect of increasing the load and tiring out the giant. Later when the giant covers the youth with pitch and throws him in the fire a second song is sung the burden of which is:

[paragraph continues] This has the magical effect of lulling the giant to sleep and the youth steps out of the fire and kills him. The point of this tale is that songs are more potent than common prose, a lesson which the Indian carries through life.

GUARDIAN SPIRIT SONGS

Indian boys of many tribes, and sometimes girls as well, were accustomed to pass through the supreme experience of having revealed to them in a vision a guardian spirit, their special link with the mystical hinterworld. The oldest and best songs of the Plains tribes are said to have been "composed in dreams'' and Miss Frances Densmore thinks that this is only the Indian's way of expressing what we mean by "poetic inspiration." But there was perhaps more method in the Redman's madness.

The Indian youth sought his vision with hope and faith, keeping a lonely vigil till common realities faded and subconscious desires became manifest as spiritual realities. The guardian spirit song of one of my old

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[paragraph continues] Nez Percé friends was a vividly descriptive phrase or two set up in the midst of meaningless syllables. His vision revealed Coyote returning from successful warfare and the intelligible part of the song ran as follows:.

The man's sacred name was Silu-we-haikt which means Eyes-Around-the-Neck. The dream song was first revealed by the dreamer in the annual Guardian Spirit Dance where each dancer costumed himself according to the nature of his vision. Guardian spirit songs could be inherited and so might pass into a tribal thesaurus of poetic expressions. There was undoubtedly a bond between persons with the same protecting animal, a fact of interest in relation to the origin of totemic clans and esoteric societies. Among the Nez Percé, where neither clans nor warriors' societies had developed, there was an unusual number of mad coyote songs, the result of visions which ensured military success. One ran about like this:

and another:

Among the Teton Sioux the men who had the unusual success of obtaining a Thunder-bird vision fell in a special group called Heyoka and at certain times had

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to express themselves in an opposite fashion from normal people. Lone Man of this tribe put on record the details of his vision and the four songs given him by the Thunder-bird people who appeared as horsemen in the clouds. The last one can be arranged as follows 17:

A Thunder-bird song of the Ojibwa seems to depart still farther from the realities of earth 18:

Thunder-bird songs were also developed in connection with the Ghost Dance Religion which I discuss in another place. Such a piece from the Arapaho has always had for me a strong appeal 19:

Among some of the Plains tribes there were dream societies formed by men who had visions of the buffalo, the elk, the bear, etc., which were believed to convey special powers and faculties. Thus the men who dreamed of the bear had songs which helped in curing ceremonies.

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SONGS AS THE INSTRUMENTS OF MAGIC

Believing in the spirituality of plants, animals and even stones it is not surprising that the Indians found ways to make special appeals to the personalities in nature who exemplified special faculties and who might be induced to tutor man. Thus the Eskimo hunter sings 20:

This song is not to be construed as a boast but as a petition. It seems that mere statement when made in the form of a song is compulsive. Indeed, "to sing" often means "to make magic," and back of it all lies the idea that the song has been ordained. The Pima put the matter thus 21:

The hunting animals sing their songs in myths and on inquiry it transpires that these same songs are re-sung by men who wish to have success in hunting.

Of course this procedure is merely an aspect of sympathetic magic in which descriptive words in a musical setting are held to be as potent as painted symbols in other circumstances. A myth of the Pawnee tells how a boy recovered a stolen robe bearing symbols of the storm, invoking the storm itself to destroy the thief. I quote a portion of this myth 22.

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When we find in Indian poetry what seems to be an individual's emotional reaction to natural beauty, in keeping with our own romantic traditions, we should ask whether this is not a purposeful appreciation of the friendly aspects of nature in keeping with the Redman's philosophy that to imitate the way in which good is done is to insure the repetition of that good. For instance, take a Papago song recorded by Frances Densmore 23:

To us these simple and majestic lines present a moving picture. From the given objective facts we construct some old experience and feel the immensity of the roaring ocean while storm racks pile up from below the horizon. Perhaps there comes over our minds a shadow of loneliness for we are accustomed to be sad in the presence of natural beauty—as though we had lost an animal birthright on getting civilized. We may even recall the similar lines which Gustavo Becquer wrote while starving in his garret in Madrid. But what a difference between the two songs when one scans the innermost

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sense. The first verse of Becquer's rhyme can be put in English as follows:

[paragraph continues] In this verse, and the three others that follow it, the German-Spanish romanticist dramatizes his personal despair.

Sometimes I think that individualism is only another social mode, and that it is made possible as a literary method by the psychic unity of mankind. Each person may find in himself a microcosm or miniature world and by correctly representing his own emotions discover a key to the microcosm, or great world. Nevertheless the individualist goes through the motions of being antisocial, using society's words and society's conventions and shouting independence in accepted patterns through the bars of his prison cell. But the Papago song of the salt-gatherers is no enactment of personal joy or anguish but a rehearsing of nature's drama for the good that it may bring. This ulterior thought does not impair the validity of the esthetic experience and its proper expression any more than a fulfillment of function impairs the perfection of a wild rose. To be sure artificial cultivation for either a poem or a flower may proceed at the expense of function and end in sterile beauty.

It is difficult to say at what point beauty is recognized for itself alone, as a purely sensuous gratification. Of course, it is often possible to construe an Indian poem as a mere lyrical outburst. For instance, there is this one 24:

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[paragraph continues] Yet we are informed that this belongs in the magical category of dream songs.

By and large, the more backward tribes of both North and South America pay much attention to magic songs and some tribes possess little else. On the higher planes of culture the magical uses of poetry expand into great religious pieces. The Osage invocations to their sacred animals, patrons of tribal divisions, friends and benefactors of man are examples of this expansion. I quote the first and last passages in the wi-gi-e or introduction to the ceremony of incensing the seven sacred skins in the Rite of the Wa-xo-be. The lynx, the gray wolf, the puma, the black bear, the buffalo, the elk and finally the deer are set forth as symbols of courage 25.

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I suppose the average modern city-dweller sees in these sentiments of primitive religion merely the workings of the pathetic fallacy. Properly here are shifting lights from an old American world of ordered loyalties, which a hundred generations past our own forefathers of weald and down might also have understood. But with hard-bitten logic and under the sovereignty of our own destructive powers we have withdrawn from all democratic contact with the animate children of Mother Earth—except, perhaps, when a lonely man finds something unpurchasable in the companionship of a dog. Even those plants and animals which are necessary to our well-being are no longer the recipients of our gratitude. Our religious sentiment outlaws them as it outlaws the sun and rain. Nature and all its works are merely materials to be taken, wasted and destroyed without responsibility to the past or to the future. But let us not make the mistake of thinking that the throwing off of natural bonds has been an act of wisdom or of intellectual freedom, for today we make a less worthy obeisance to our own inanimate machines, setting up a thousand nervous gods of speed and death and a thousand fleshy gods of comfort and decay. Have these things given a truer purpose to our lives and a finer inward happiness?

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Under the inspiration of religion, albeit pagan, the makers of ceremonies, as Emerson says, "built better than they knew." One finds passages of great beauty in the rituals of the Redman. In the Osage Rite of the Chiefs there are descriptive touches such as the following 26:

But are not ceremonial vestments embroidered and sacred altars enriched?

TRIAL BY POETRY

In the Far North enemies engage in poetic duels and intone their pleas for the public ear to the beat of the Arctic tambourine. Here nith songs, also called juridical songs and drum-contest songs, take the place of courts of law, the two contestants having it out with each other in a rival display of argument and vituperation. Undoubtedly the Eskimo in general get much pleasure in listening to these contests and the contestants themselves are not moved by bitter feelings alone. The airing of grievances and the gaining of public sympathy were undoubtedly the original purposes of the drum-contests but the theatrical opportunities were too great not to be seized upon. Drum-contest songs are still in use from Eastern Greenland to Western Alaska and their influence continues well down the Pacific coast.

Something of the yearning to excel in this strange practise is expressed in the following verses which tell how a man on shore sees a stranger on the sea and desires him as a drum-contest opponent 27.

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An old pair of juridical songs concerns antagonists by the names of Pulangit-Sissok and Savdlat, who rail at each other in the approved fashion. The text was collected by Rink in the late ’60's but the first half of the dialogue was recovered by Thalbitzer some 80 years later in a somewhat softened form 28.

The drum contest songs were used by both men and

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women and the next example shows one woman paying her respects to another. It seems that the "poor Saatina" could not sing but was efficient enough at playing the tom-boy 29.

It was doubtless through the training received in drum-contest songs that the Eskimo reached their rather exceptional ability at expressing moods. Also the Eskimo lack the intensively developed ceremonialism of American Indians in general, although possessing its rudiments, and they live close to hard realities. Take for instance the following piece which exhibits a quality of subjective insight rarely met with in primitive poetry 30.

A much quoted poem exhibits a love of natural beauty apparently for itself alone. But there may have been in the author's mind an ulterior thought concerning seasonable weather 31.

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LOVE SONGS

While genuine love songs doubtless exist among some Indian tribes, their importance has been over emphasized in many articles dealing with Indian poetry. Indeed love songs are most in evidence in those localities where the Indian women have been exposed to make-and-break contacts with whalers, fur-traders, buccaneers and whatnot. Thalbitzer has no divisions devoted to love songs in his work on the poetry of the isolated Ammassalik Eskimo, nor do they exist among the Yuma. In southern Alaska and British Columbia where fur-traders and whalers began to congregate after the voyages of Cook and Vancouver there are songs of stranded and forsaken women, some in the jumbled words of the Chinook trade jargon and others in the native languages. The so-called love songs of the Northwest Coast which seem most authentic fit into the pattern of the poetic duel ridiculing persons who have inflicted harm and with their answers are more like public quarrelling than expressions of tender passion.

The following piece is translated from the Kwakiutl by Franz Boas and is entitled a love song. It was sung by a jilted man 32.

In another example a woman complains that her lover goes to Japan to hunt for seals. Her plaint brings a rejoinder from the man that he is returning post haste. Then there is a third song by him showing him dismissed for all his pains. I give part of the song of Menmenlequelas after Tsak Edek deserts him 33.

Among the Ojibwa are found songs which can hardly be called love songs in the ordinary sense since they are magical formulae with a practical rather than a sentimental value. Frances Densmore gives four examples to be used against the males, each song having its mnemonic picture on birch bark 34.

I

II

III

IV

There are, however, real love songs among the Ojibwa. These songs, according to Miss Densmore, "mark a distinct phase in the development of music as a means of expression." The words frequently run through the entire song with little repetition and may be impromptu in their exact form. The Ojibwa sing their love songs with a nasal twang which also characterizes the

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songs of the scalp dance although this similarity may be fortuitous. Some of them are known to be old and may be sung with slight changes by either men or women. Here is a good example 35:

Schoolcroft gives us an Ojibwa love song of a hundred years ago, which whether strictly aboriginal or not, does have the iterative Indian style 36.

Love songs, except those which are supposed to have a magical and coercive quality of gaining affections and which might better be called love medicine, are not common among the tribes of the Great Plains. Nor are such songs listed by Ruth Bunzel among the kinds in use at Zuñi. The Tewa have them and I secured several examples in the forms of soliloquy and colloquy. While these are clearly enough of Indian composition, I believe the ultimate inspiration to have been Spanish. The same may be said of numerous pieces in Mexico and Guatemala.

European influence of a still different sort has been noted on the Mosquito Indians of Nicaragua. Cape Gracios á Dios and the hidden lagoons on either hand were long the haunt of pirates and buccaneers, and I

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fancy these cutthroats might, in their softer moments, have been sentimental enough. At any rate, in the middle of the last century the natives of this adventurous shore had love songs, several of which were written down by English residents. At the present time such songs are rare for in several journeys to eastern Nicaragua I could not secure a single example.

A fine piece, with original text and translation, is found in Charles Napier Bell's Tangweera 37. He explains that "the young men and women are melancholy, and it is singular that all their music is melancholy. Cheerful music is quite beyond them. Their love songs are plaintive and sad, always the same tune and time, but the words are extemporized by them with a facility which to us would be almost impossible.

I

II

The Mosquito Indians were at the time of Columbus’ Fourth voyage about the most uncivilized people in Central America. Originally from the wooded lowlands of South America they still have ceremonies which point to their first home.

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The Tupi, of the lower Amazon and the coast of Brazil, have long had a reputation for poetic compositions especially among the French. This may date from 1550 when a large band of Tupi Indians took part in a festival at Rouen. In 1557 Jean de Lery recorded during voyage in Brazil several fragments of songs which had impressed him deeply. Much later the eminent Montaigne was provided with a few examples of Tupi songs by a man who had spent several years among these Indians, and was moved to declare that the verses were worthy of Anacreon.

Couto de Magalhães publishes the text and translation of two Tupi songs which are clearly love charms. One is addressed to Ruda who figures in the myths of the Tupi as a warrior residing in the clouds. He creates an amorous melancholy in the hearts of men, making them return home from long canoe trips. The song is translatable about as follows 38:

Another song, addressed to the Moon, also must be regarded as a magical prayer rather than a mere outpouring of emotion. It takes this form:

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The Brazilian ethnologist of half a century ago was quick to realize that many pieces in the Tupi language were nevertheless inspired by Portuguese models. He went so far as to demonstrate how, even in these secondhand compositions, there was a definite deterioration. Portuguese words replaced Indian ones until, finally, only a few meaningless syllables of the original Indian phrases were retained as a refrain. He might have gone farther and shown, how, in the breakdown of the truly Indian mode, magical prayers are replaced by sentimental praises.

DEATH AND ITS MYSTERY

Not all Indian songs about death are mourning songs; perhaps the most remarkable and beautiful ones are songs in which the dead reappear in dreams. Mourning songs are common enough among some tribes while among others they are eliminated by the taboo which forbids mention of a dead person's name. When permissible they have a somewhat broader appeal than love songs. The latter are, or should be, a private matter between two lovers while the former are a family or clan matter which often touches the entire community. The theme of communal loss is struck in the beginning lines of a Tlingit dirge 39:

Another one, following Swanton's text, deals with the all-encompassing mystery 40:

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More poignant and less philosophical are the ending lines of a woman's song about her drowned brother 41:

I quote a mourning song of the Kwakiutl relating to a certain Moda’ena, member of the Cannibal Society, who was drowned with his sister. It was sung at his house by all the people of his village 42.

From the icy shores of Greenland comes an Eskimo song, translated by Thalbitzer, which voices the pretense that death is a new thing and not so bad at that 43.

The Papago believe that the dead return in dreams and teach curing songs. Many spiritualistic pieces are accredited to definite individuals and it is said that the dreams in which the songs were received usually took place immediately after death although in some cases months or even years elapsed before the spirit of the

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dead person returned to deliver his vital message. Some of the most striking songs seem to picture the last thoughts or, more daringly still, the flight of the soul. I give several examples in the fine renderings of Frances Densmore 44

One gathers that elegies were common in ancient Mexico and in ancient Peru as well. This is natural enough in regions where aristocracy was recognized.

VOCATIONAL SONGS

Purely vocational songs are relatively unimportant in American Indian poetry partly because nearly every vocation is drawn into the ceremonial or religious field. There are paddling songs in the Far North while in New Mexico and Arizona men often sing to the scraping of hand stones while the women grind corn. More widespread still are gambling songs. Washington Matthews gives some of the songs used in connection with the moccasin game of the Navaho, played at night in the winter time. There are many animal songs, mostly derisive in character, the following ground squirrel song being typical 45

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The playing is terminated at the first streak of day when the magpie song is sung 46.

Perhaps under vocational songs it would be well to place the curing songs of medicine men. Most of these are dream songs, however, or follow the pattern of songs used in magic.

SONGS OF SEQUENCE

Songs of sequence is a term applied to sets of songs dealing with the same theme and following each other in a definite traditional order. Long ceremonies having such songs are especially developed in the Southwest whence the idea seems to have spread rather widely over the Plains and into some parts of California but without the same richness of detail as in the place of origin. The Mountain Chant of the Navaho has thirteen sets comprising 161 songs, the greatest number in a sequence being 26 and the lowest seven. Says Washington Matthews 47:

But how does the shaman remember the order of these songs of sequence? Does he possess any mnemonic key? He does. There is a myth for each set of songs, and this myth is the key. The song myths of this tribe are very numerous, and few songs except extemporaneous compositions, exist independently of a myth. In some instances the myth is the more important part of the work, and we are impressed with the idea that the myth maker composed his story first, and introduced his songs afterwards as embellishments; but in more cases the myth is a trifling element, and seems devised merely as an aid to the memory or as a means of explaining or giving interest to the songs.

I give an example from the myth of the Mountain Chant of the Navahos to show the relation of prose and poetry 48:

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The First and Twelfth Song of the Thunder in the Mountain Chant are translated by Matthews as follows 49. They show an artful use of repetitions and parallel constructions.

First Song of the Thunder

I

II

Twelfth Song of the Thunder

I

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II

The Night Chant by the same author is an even more monumental handling of the songs of sequence in a great curing ceremony of the Navaho. Here there are twenty four sequences with a total of 324 songs, strung like beads upon strings. Again we find the parallel constructions which seem to produce stanzas, as in the Last Song in the Rock 50.

I

II

Next we have a song to Nayenezgani in two stanzas 51.

I

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II

A second pair of poems to the same personage:

I

II

While a third concerns the bluebird 52:

I

II

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Also in this ceremony there are songs and prayers in which repetitions are made in accordance with colors, plants, and so forth, assigned to the four directions.

If the formal use of songs of sequence, as the first stage in ceremonial consolidations, extended across Mexico and down into South America no satisfactory evidence exists at the present time. F.P. and A.P. Penard report from Surinam that the Caribs have songs which are the aula or "word" of various spiritual beings. These may well belong in such a category. The word of the Snake Spirit they give in parts 53:

The word of the Thunder they give entire:

REVIVALIST VERSES OF THE GHOST DANCE RELIGION

The Ghost Dance Religion was a rather recent and most startling manifestation of Indian mass psychology, producing much fine poetry during the brief span of its existence as an organized cult. It was the united answer of the wilder tribes of the western states to alien aggressions which had destroyed the economies of Indian existence but had not yet completely broken the Indian morale. The new religion rested upon ancient fundamentals, upon ideas of coersive magic expressed in the forms of art. It attempted to reapply these ideas, as it

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were, to the violently new conditions of life. Perhaps it drew something from Christianity.

There were two cycles in the spread of the Ghost Dance Religion. The cult began either in western Nevada or eastern Washington about 1870 and the first expansion was towards the west. The originator of the movement is generally stated to have been a certain Tävibo, a minor chieftain of the Paiute tribe in the Walker Lake region, largely because he was the reputed father of Wovoka, hailed twenty years later as the Indian Messiah when the rejuvenated Ghost Dance was sweeping eastward over the Great Plains. But the evidence concerning the part that Smohalla, a medicine man living near Priest's Rapids on the Columbia River, played in the formation of the cult is more explicit and of earlier date than that of Tävibo.

The Indian office took notice of Smohalla in 1870, although the following clear statement of his beliefs is not so early 54:

This was still the essence of the Ghost Dance Religion when it swept the Plains in 1890 but along the Columbia it was always referred to as the Dreamer Religion. The credo from the lips of Smohalla himself was taken down in 1884 by Major MacMurray who had been commissioned to persuade the Indians to take up homesteads and abandon their free life 55.

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But Smohalla is said to have begun preaching "his peculiar theology" about 1850 and to have been instrumental in consolidating the western Shahaptin tribes in the Yakima war of 1855–56. If the story is true that he made a great pilgrimage down the Pacific coast to Mexico about 1860 and returned to his own people by way of Arizona and Nevada, he must, I think, be given the credit for spreading the seeds of the Ghost Dance Religion.

Both the first and second stages of the Ghost Dance Religion responded to a psychology of protest against an overwhelming material power. Smohalla's teachings were the result of aggressions which came thick and fast after the Nez Percé had extended an invitation to Spaulding, Whitman and their fellow zealots to preach at Lapwai and other missions. For other white men came to trade, to settle and to seek gold. The Modoc War of 1873–74 and the Nez Percé war of 1877 were the result of wrongs and coercions by the whites but perhaps the Indians found spiritual aid in their new religion.

Unfortunately there is a dearth of recorded songs of an early Ghost Dance type unless we imagine that unmodified Guardian Spirit songs were in use. If Kroeber is correct in stating that the first spread of the cult into California in the early ‘70's gave immunity against its

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second spread in the late ‘80's then the following piece from the Yokuts may be old, although I suspect it really belongs to the second epoch. The song was received in a dream by a shaman named Mayemai from his father 56:

The second stage began with revelation of Wovoka when he was ill with fever during an eclipse of the sun. "When the sun died," he said, "I went up to heaven and saw God and all the people who had died a long time ago." He was hailed as a Messiah largely because the economic condition of all the tribes who had lived on the buffalo was then desperate.

The destruction of the great buffalo herds—millions of valuable food animals being slaughtered for petty profit on their hides alone within the space of four years (1880–84) by the whites—illustrates how inevitable was the clash between two philosophical systems of man's relation to nature. The Indian has ever abjured the waste of natural bounty and his religion has sought to give thanks for this bounty and at the same time assure its continuance. The white man's civilization, on the other hand, has most unwisely subordinated the conservation of public wealth to the acquisition of private wealth. A rapid exploitation and liquidation of natural resources in all parts of the world is now being carried on by the dominant white nations threatening the exhaustion of many materials. But if the Indian idea that nature is benevolent be a naive untruth then the white man's idea that nature is inexhaustible is just as naïvely untrue

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and much more menacing to the future welfare of mankind.

The Ghost Dance Religion in its second phase spread out from the Paiute tribe and the earliest and simplest songs must therefore be sought there. Mooney, in preparing for his sympathetic study of the Ghost Dance, was able to secure but nine Paiute songs. Reduced to their briefest statements these sacred pieces are but two lines long. Always there are repetitions, however, which enlarge this briefest length. The first song refers to the open dance place in the dead of winter with the stars overhead. The Milky Way among American Indian tribes is the Spirit Road or the Pathway of Dead Warriors 57.

Then come simple invocations to elemental forces. In one song the line ''the wind stirs the willows" is repeated thrice and "the wind stirs the grasses" is also repeated thrice. Another invocation goes:

The change is coming like a great storm and is pictured by the simplest but most powerful words, the songs rising to a climax.

Then, after the storm has passed, comes a picture of spring, implying the happy ending of the cataclysmic change.

Among other tribes who took the Ghost Dance ceremonial from the Paiute the songs are generally more elaborate. Repetition still serves to give a strange form to some of the songs, but as a rule one restatement is deemed sufficient. The subject matter becomes more specific with references to the Crow, the Eagle or Thunderbird, the Buffalo, etc., as well as to psychic experiences in meeting the dead.

Mooney gives 73 songs for the Arapaho tribe, most of them based on individual dreams and resembling the old time Guardian Spirit songs. But they often refer to encounters in the spirit world with dead friends at which games were played over and happy hunts were renewed. And there are some pieces which advance the argument in other ways. For instance, the following

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song tells how the father will withdraw his favors from the whites and give them again to his red children 58.

Or this piece which thrills with the joy of living.

Then there are sudden turns from ecstasy to pathos.

Next to the end comes a song to the Morning Star.

HISTORICAL POEMS APPROACH THE EPIC

Poems which deal with historical characters or events were rather common in ancient America and some of them approach the epic as giving extensive narratives lighted by nationalistic ideals. For instance among our northern Indians there are such pieces as the Walum Olum or Red Score of the Delaware which presents historical traditions reaching back several centuries and has

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some passages of literary merit. Then there is the Iroquois Book of Rites which memorializes the Great League, a consolidation of related tribes following the breakdown of the Mound Builder civilization. This wide-spread calamity may have been brought about by the introduction of European epidemic diseases after the voyage of Columbus. The Great League rested on the teachings of Hiawatha for its ethical features while its legal form was evolved in council and over much opposition. The Book of Rites, composed long after the events, is essentially a recitation broken by occasional hymns and dirges. Perhaps the most notable is a summary which in poetic form is arranged as follows by Hale 59:

Probably the oldest fragments of New World literature are laments for the great Toltec captains of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 60. The best preserved hymn refers to the rise of the Toltec power in Yucatan and its fall in the valley of Mexico, corresponding to the winning of the Maya city of Chichen Itza by Nacxitl-Quetzalcoatl

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in 1191 and the abandonment of Teotihuacan by Matlaxochitl and other Toltec lords in 1220 A.D.

A Toltec Lament

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The Maya Prophecies of the Katuns contain some references to early times since they are arranged in cycles of 13 katuns of 7200 days each according to the idea that events repeat themselves. These prophecies are constructed in the form of chants. The Prophesy of Katun 9 Ahau, covering events from 1556 to 1575 belongs to the era of persecution under the Spanish Inquisition. History furnishes few more telling indictments directed at their conquerors by a conquered people than this outcry of the disillusioned Mayas. I make three slight changes in Roys’ translation 61 of the latter part of this prophesy although aware that more extensive re-phrasing would emphasize the poetic character of the satirical statement.

No epics pure and simple have survived from ancient America but there are epic-like compositions. The Cakchiquels of Guatamala have an Odyssey which tells how people under valiant leaders set out from Tollan, overcoming natural and supernatural difficulties. Most of this tribal narrative displays a poetic imagery and some of it a distinctly poetic form. If this be history then it is history in a cosmogonic setting with heroes who bulk large in a twilight of the gods. An early passage is about as follows 62:

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Even more remarkable is the Popul Vuh or Sacred Book of the Quiché tribe for here there is, as Alexander points out, "the element of critical consciousness, giving the flavor of philosophical reflection." The recital of Creation resembles that of the Bible, nevertheless we cannot be sure that it is not a pagan parallel.

The self-glorification motive is put to scorn in a passage of the Popul Vuh which relates the unkingly end of a certain Vukub-Cakix. He was perhaps a Toltec overlord who hoped to lead the Quiché to the light in a cultural sense 63

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Next it is explained how two young heroes despoiled Vukub-Cakix of his glory by pulling his teeth!

No examples of pre-Columbian drama have come down to us, but there are references enough to plays and pageants. Father Coto says of the Cakchiquel: "They are friendly to making colloquies and speaking verses in their dramas." At Copan we find theater-like constructions and at Chichen Itza there are platforms upon which it is presumed dramas were enacted. Several post-Columbian plays after the European religious models have been reported in Central America while from eighteenth century Peru comes the famous drama of Ollanta. It shows no traces of pre-Spanish poetic style and seems to have been modelled directly upon a mediocre European work. While agreeing with Hills 64 that it has little intrinsic merit, I certainly cannot agree with him when he says "Ollanta is the most important literary work that has been composed in any language indigenous to America." Rather its European reception was a reflection of Victorian taste.

STYLE IN OLD AMERICAN LITERATURE

Hundreds of mutually unintelligible languages are spoken by natives of the New World and even if most of the consolidations suggested by scientific linguists hold true, there must remain fifty or more unrelated linguistic stocks. For practical purposes each strongly defined language is an independent analysis—the terms of which exist only in the group mind—of all the material facts, actions, mental states and social conventions in settings of time and space, of which the members of the group are conscious, and concerning which they wish to exchange communications.

Language, like any other social tool, refines itself

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through use and takes on appreciated characters of ease and beauty. The deliberate application of the more precise and pleasing ways of communicating thought everywhere gives rise to high style and fine art. Style is so intimately involved in the organic possibilities of a particular language that it cannot, properly speaking, be translated except in so far as it concerns the sequence and arrangements of materials. It can be matched in general effect, and that is about all. In translating poetry, then, the thought and the emotional environment of the thought, can be restated but not the poetic style per se.

But, it seems that ideas, quite aside from the streams of sound which impart them, may have absolute distinction, crystalline simplicity and other gem qualities. Ideas can be looked upon as arrangements of thought stimuli and sometimes a single simile, which we call poetic, may hold a vital comparison or imagery capable of passing freely across the frontiers of speech. It is style of thought rather than style of words which principally concerns the translator.

Indeed, it is difficult enough even to define style in any particular language. Speaking of the esthetic character of Mohave myths Kroeber says in one place 65:

In another place the same writer speaks more broadly 66:

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nation and occasion, in which they expressed some of their profoundest feelings; and we cannot make a single exact and intelligible remark about their accomplishments.

It is of course true that we cannot judge style in the Redman's use of words except in so far as it is discernible in concentration or picturesqueness of thought above the mill-run of ordinary speech and in unusual rhythmic effects and balanced logical constructions. Among the Tewa, for instance, the poetic style is much more concentrated than the colloquial one and it contains "high words" and ceremonial phrases. Sahagun complained that Aztec poems and religious chants were esoteric to a degree. "They were composed," he says, "with such deceit that they proclaim only what the demon demands." When, however, an Aztec poet uses such a phrase as "I, the singer, polished my noble, new song like shining jade" we may be assured that style had passed out of the stage of natural selections and into the stage of purposeful cultivation.

The device of rhyme seems not to have been used by the most cultivated Americans of pre-Columbian times, although some interesting uses of it are found in post-Columbian poems from Peru. Nor were there any certain stanza forms except such as were brought about by the repetition of phrases. The outstanding feature of American Indian verse construction comes from parallel phrasing, or, let us say, repetition with an increment, which gives an effect not of rhyming sounds but of rhyming thoughts. Sometimes the ceremonial pattern demands a repetition for each world direction with formal changes involving the color, plant, animal, and so forth, associated with each station on the circuit. But there are other manifestations of parallelism of a more subtle cast. For instance, the Osage ritualist threads the labyrinth

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of apparent fact to reach ultimate truth in the Little House of Mystery in the following parallels 67:

I have explained how poetry is racked upon musical frames and how it develops artistically out of what survives with least mutilation from the bed of Procrustes. While rhythm might conceivably arise as an absolute esthetic invention, actually in American poetry it is induced by drummings and other pulsations. "The rhythmic sense of primitive people," says Franz Boas 68, "is much more highly developed than our own." He adds: "It requires careful study to understand the structure of primitive rhythm, more so in prose than in song because in this case the help of the melodic pattern is lacking." Here rhythm is conceived as a complex undulation in spoken or chanted words which represents ease and is capable of producing an effect of pleasure. But I think a close analogy holds between the esthetics of poetic diction superimposed on music and the esthetics of decorative art superimposed on a textile fabric. In both cases there is a regulating order which reveals the certain road to beauty.

Many figures of speech and circumlocutions have their origin in the uses of religion, and perhaps we might

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say that the emotional enlargement of religious concepts gives the poet his first opportunity. Aztec ceremonies, grim and grisly with human sacrifice, albeit spectacular and dramatic to the last degree, gained little from the plastic art of the sculptor but much from the euphemistic phrasing of the singer. The latter was able to disclose the hidden spirituality and sincerity of acts, which judged out of their context, could only arouse the sensation of cruel horror.

Take, for example, the Aztec hymn to Xipe Totec, Lord of the Flayed, a foreign god who acquired a wide vogue among Mexican tribes. His ritual challenged all others in the sheer achievement of grewsomeness. But except for the opening passage the hymn addressed to this god deals with returning springtime and the green of corn fields which must be brought to maturity 69

Song to Xipe Totec, Lord of the Flayed

There are phrases here which may seem somewhat cryptic. The golden raiment is, of course, the skin of the

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flayed victim. In the second verse the fire serpent of the dry season changes to the feathered serpent of the rainy season.

More occult still is the hymn addressed to the Fire God of the Aztecs, here called the Yellow-faced One but also known as the Turquoise Lord.

Song of the Yellow faced Ones

His priests prepare a sacrifice to the Sun in Tzommolco, a temple in the ward of the travelling merchants in ancient Mexico City (Tenochtitlan). In the House of Music the shell trumpets and the drums were kept: "the yucca tree booms'' refers to the latter, for the hollow log drums of the Aztecs were commonly made of this wood. At the conclusion of the human sacrifice to the rising Sun the offerer of the ceremony receives his reward in wealth and honors. These the Sun has power to convey while a mountain goddess of the morning mist broadcasts his action.

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Concentration of thought reached its peak in the monosyllabic language of the Mayas. The original text of the Maya chant printed below has 90 syllables, while Brinton's English rendering contains 118 syllables or thirty per-cent more 70. But English is itself a speech which excels in brevity.

The one thing that remained to be developed in the poetic expression of the American Indian was the individual point of view. But perhaps the world is richer by reason of this lack which leaves the social mode uncompromised.

ON TRANSLATING INDIAN POETRY

It is perhaps inevitable that many translators of Indian poems should color, or discolor, primitive ideas with civilized conventions, and this without any intention to deceive. Often their renderings depart so widely from the original texts—as ethnologists know the sense of them—as to leave nothing that is validly Indian, especially when rhyme or warping verse forms are employed. It is well, therefore, to consider the translator's handicap, and also to establish standards of success.

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First of all it must be admitted that some pieces are falsely called Indian, being actually nothing more than compositions by whites in what is fondly believed to be a savage mode. The Taensa songs perpetrated by Parisot in a fabricated language were an elaborate fraud but most writers of spurious Indian songs do not bother with native texts.

Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha is not itself a translation but it has affected translations. It is essentially a literary creation in a peculiar style which the public has come to accept as one befitting Indian materials. Longfellow had before him only Schoolcroft's stilted transcriptions of a few Indian myths. He did not know that Hiawatha flourished about 1600 A.D. and was one of the founders of the original League of the Iroquois. Also he wove into this poem, with its strange medley of mythological incidents mostly taken from the Ojibwa, a love theme which joined the Iroquois of New York with the Sioux of far-off Dakota. He patterned his verse form, with its effective iterations, on the Scandinavian Eddas. It is irony indeed, that Longfellow's Indian Edda—to use his own phrase—should be accepted as archetype not only of Indian expression but also of the Redman's sentiment.

Four great recorders of American Indian poetry have established standards by which the work of others may be judged. The first and greatest of these is Bernardino de Sahagun, conservator of the soul of ancient Mexico. This Spanish priest arrived in Tlaltelolco in 1529, only eight years after Cortes had taken the nearby capital of the Aztecs. He devoted a long life to compiling information on the pre-Spanish culture. The second is Dr. Washington Matthews who served for many years as a physician on the Navaho Reservation. His lasting monuments

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are The Mountain Chant and The Night Chant. The third is Francis La Flesche, himself an Indian of the Omaha tribe and the best student of his race. During the last years of his life La Flesche freed himself from earlier subordinating influences and achieved a great triumph in recording and translating the sacred chants of the Osage tribe. The fourth most eminent achievement in the field of primitive American poetry is that of William Thalbitzer for his thorough study of the songs of the Ammassalik Eskimo. Although a Dane he exhibits remarkable felicity of expression in putting Eskimo over into English.

Sahagun recorded the Mexican songs in the Mexican language and in the same tongue he added glosses to explain symbolic passages in everyday words. He did not make translations of these pieces into Spanish, which is fortunate, for had he done so it is highly probable that his manuscript would have been destroyed. As it was no publication of this or any other part of his splendid compilation was permitted during his lifetime for fear that it would keep alive pagan beliefs and practices which the church was trying to stamp out. The manuscripts lay unnoticed until the end of the eighteenth century. The part containing the ancient songs was first translated into English by Brinton under the title of Rig Veda Americanus. A better translation has been made into German by Seler but it seems that there are archaic expressions which even Sahagun could not explain in his glosses.

The other writers whose works are to be commended from the double standard of fidelity to the original sources and artistic quality in the rendering belong to the school of modern ethnology. They preserve a golden mean while many other moderns incline to one of two

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extreme: some give prosaic renderings of poetic texts and some give poetic renderings which wander so far from originals that they no longer serve as true indices of Indian mentality. After all translation is the carrying over of the totality of expressed thought from the terms of one language to the terms of another.

There is over translation and under translation. Let us consider examples of each for the purpose of defining somewhat more precisely the personal equation of the translator. The Hako Ceremony of the Pawnee possesses dignity and poetic quality of high order and its interpretation with all covert meanings was an achievement of Alice Cunningham Fletcher at the turn of the century. She was assisted by James R. Murie as interpreter and Tabirussawitchi, an elder of the Pawnee tribe, as interpreter. The songs were recorded by phonograph and transcribed into scale music. This Hako Ceremony was an elaborate prayer for children and the welfare of the tribe expressed in symbolical language and action. The fertility of the earth responding to sun and rain produces human food and human happiness. The Corn Mother is the intermediary between man and the cosmic powers.

Admitted that more is meant than the language conveys, nevertheless it is perhaps unfortunate that the English words used by Miss Fletcher in her "rhythmic renditions" go so far beyond the Pawnee words. Implications in regalia, in ceremonial objects and in the pantomime of dancers may form a running commentary in an Indian ceremony and may have esoteric significance in accordance with a veritable philosophy of illusion. But is it wise to enrich the actual text in such fashion as to bring out the context?

Let me illustrate with the first stanza of a typical song as translated by Miss Fletcher 71:

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The Pawnee text out of which this stanza is constructed is mostly a repetition of the simple phrase,

How then did Miss Fletcher obtain her opening address to the supreme deity of the Pawnee and her varied renderings of the other lines? Well the Corn Mother is an object held in the hand of the performer consisting of an ear of corn fastened to a stick with a plume at the top and with the uppermost kernels painted blue. The ear is therefore a combination of supernatural powers in earth below and heaven above, since blue is the color of the sky. The feather is a cloud or perhaps Tirawa. Also, according to Miss Fletcher, the symbolism is continued in the bowl of sacred blue paint. There is, I suppose, no reason for doubting that the ceremony as a whole is addressed to Tirawa. Nevertheless the re-assemblage of these intimations into the specific phrase:

seems to me to go far beyond the proper rights of translation. The expansion found in this poem is characteristic of the method used for the entire ceremony with its twenty rituals.

But under translation is also found. For instance, Frank Russell's translations of Pima songs are a sort of blanc mange which do not do justice to the material.

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Take the Wind Song which he translates as follows in one of his better renderings 72:

On the basis of the interlinear words the following is a closer and certainly more interesting rendering of this piece.

In their study of American Indian Poetry Eda Lou Walton and T. T. Waterman go into a fuller examination of the discrepancies between Russell's literal texts and his literary renderings and also call attention to a Navaho poem doubly translated by Mathews in the Night Chant and by Goddard in Navaho Myths, Prayers and Songs, as poetically very different. But Goddard was able to give considerable distinction to the words of Apache ceremonies where his work stands alone. The short songs by Frances Densmore in her numerous papers on American Indian music are often very fine as are those of Thomas Mooney in his classical Ghost Dance Religion. Ruth Bunzel must certainly be praised for her handling of Zuñi material, where Frank Hamilton Cushing and Matilda Coxe Stephenson had preceded her. William Jones has treated the shamanistic material around the Great Lakes in more delicate fashion than some other writers. As a rule the professional linguists are prosaic: it seems that they pay attention merely to structures and to the denotation of words, neglecting the connotation. It is the old story of botanists not seeing the beauty of flowers.

TEWA POETRY AS A TYPICAL EXHIBIT

In the Southwest the social and spiritual entities of ancient America have survived to our times but today the more precious elements are rapidly disintegrating under manifold contacts. The Navaho retain the traditions of a semi-nomadic life and the Pueblo tribes those

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of sedentary life reaching back to the times of the Cliff Dwellers. The ceremonial and artistic life of Zuñi is better known than that of any other Pueblo group. The other Pueblo groups, including the Hopi villages, the Keres villages and the Tiwa and Tewa villages have been indifferently reported upon, mostly by persons whose ceilings—to use an aeronautic term—are low.

The Tewa constitute a linguistic division of the Tanoan stock and live in the five villages of Tesuque, Nambe, San Ildefonso, Santa Clara and San Juan in the Rio Grande valley north and northwest of Santa Fé. They have been in contact with the white man since the Coronado Expedition and continuously since 1598 when the Spaniards took up residence across the river from San Juan of the Gentlemen—except for the interval of the Pueblo Rebellion (1680–1694). The native culture, always accepting some ideas from the outside, nevertheless managed to intensify its own religious and social life. This was the case until the era of railroad communication when an influx of the whites brought disease and economic pressure. Despoiled of much of their land and water, and burdened with tuberculosis and tracoma, the dwindling villages reached a low level about 1910. Since then there has been some increase in population but the uses of money have struck at the most sacred institutions from the inside.

The examples of Tewa poetry presented in this volume were collected in the years 1909, ‘10, ‘11 and ‘12 while I was engaged in ethnological field work for the American Museum of Natural History. The songs were taken down in native texts, with inter-linear translations and then converted into direct and simple English 73. Fortunately the Tewa language presents no unusual difficulties in translation.

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While this collection does not by any means exhaust the repertory of the Tewa, it does, I believe, furnish examples of all types of poetic expression in use by them. As regards the secular and esoteric poems the reader will find material for comparison in the recent study of Ruth Bunzel entitled Introduction to Zuñi Ceremonialism. There are other publications which might be mentioned but space does not permit. I close with an invocation to the Makers of Storms recorded at Zuñi 74.

Brooklyn Museum

September 18, 1933.