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RESOUND A QUARTERLY OF mE Archives of Traditional Music Volume X, Number 4 October 1991 The Last Great Indian Council: Joseph K. Dixon's 1909 Cylinder Recordings Marilyn Graf Joseph Kossuth Dixon took thousands of remarkable photographs of Native Americans during the early years of this century. As a part of his work to document the disappearing traditions of Native American life, Dixon also made cylinder recordings of renowned members of the Dakota, Blackfoot, Apache, and Crow Tribes. In 1949, these cylinders were transferred to the Archives of Traditional Music by the American Museum of Natural History, which had received them from the estate of Rodman Wanamaker in 1938. These cylinders are among the best preserved in the Archives, with outstanding sound quality. I Joseph Dixon began his professional career as a Baptist minister in Auburn, New York, and later Philadelphia. After helping establish a university library in South Dakota, he went to London, where he worked for two British newspapers. He had already developed an interest in photography before he joined the Eastman Kodak Company in 1904. At Kodak, he travelled widely, lecturing on the recreational and moral benefits of photography. In 1906, the John Wanamaker department store in Philadelphia (later New York and Paris), hired him to lecture and present educational progams to its customers (Krouse 1980:23). William Hammond Mathers Museum John Wanamaker and his son, Rodman, had long Mountain Chief. been interested in the culture of the American Indian. In 1908, Rodman Wanamaker sponsored an expedition to the North American Indian, the first of three, each led by Joseph Dixon. The purpose was to "gather historic data and make picture records of their manners, customs, their sports and games, their warfare, religion, and the So rapidly are the remaining Western tribes putting country in which they live" (Dixon 1913:xv). Wanamaker aside their native customs and costumes, their and Dixon were convinced, as were many modes of life and ceremonies, that we belong to anthropologists, painters, photographers and writers who the last generation that will be granted the were already combing the Plains at this time, that the supreme privilege of studying the Indian in culture of the Native American was indeed vanishing. anything like his native state. (Dixon 1913:5) his plan was important for "educational purposes and for the sake of preserving an ethnological record of Indian manners, life and customs" (Mathers Museum, Dixon files). Commissioner Valentine then wrote letters to three hundred superintendents of Indian agencies, requesting the names of the most eminent chiefs on their reservations. According to a Dixon memo, the qualifications were to be: First-a pure Indian Type Second-a record on the War Path Third-a record of the chase Fourth-a record for oratory and statesmanship From the superintendents' replies Wanamaker and Valentine chose about one hundred chiefs to participate, and asked agency permission for those chiefs and interpreters from each tribe to leave their reservations. Dixon's idea was to have the Indians recreate times past at "Camp Rodman." (Photographs in the Wanamaker Collection show a huge Camp Rodman banner flying prominently over a Blackfoot teepee.) He had them erect about thirty teepees and a council lodge near the Little Bighorn River. There they were to practice their old customs while his son, Rollin Lester Dixon, filmed them. Joseph Dixon would take the still photographs. To achieve the maximum effect, Dixon asked the chiefs to bring all their ceremonial regalia, and other implements of pre-reservation life. Dixon and Wanamaker gathered a distinctive group, if not a representative one, since most participants in the council represented Plains tribes. Some had fought at the Battle of the Little Bighorn thirty-three years before. One of the participants, Chief Two Moon, had led William Hammond Mathers Museum the Cheyennes against Custer, as had Runs the Enemy, a Red Cloud. Sioux leader also in attendance. By this time, some of the more famous warriors, Sitting Bull, Gall, Rain in the Face, and Crazy Horse, could no longer be counted among the Dixon and his company travelled to Cody, battle's survivors. Wyoming, and made Buffalo Bill Cody's hotel their During the council, Dixon assigned a stenographer headquarters. It was not far to the Crow Reservation in to take down the translations of the life stories of twenty­ Montana, where they fulfilled another purpose of the one chiefs, and these later formed a large section of his expedition by making a film of Henry Wadsworth book, Th e Vanishing Race, published in 1913. The stories, Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha." Dixon hired Crow claimed to "faithfully record the idiom and phrasing and Indians to play all the roles in the dramatization of the atmosphere of the Indian's speech as it came from Indian fictional Ojibwa legend, to be used for lectures at the lips" (Dixon 1913:10), included enthusiastic and detailed Wanamaker stores. accounts of battles won; stories, often tragic, about the During the three months of the expedition, Dixon changes in the Indians' lives brought by adopting white took a considerable number of still photos: 1,667 of these men's ways; and at the same time, hopeful statements are housed at the William Hammond Mathers Museum at about further assimilation into white culture. The Indiana University.2 For years, the Dixon version of Vanishing Race, which also happened to be the title of one "Hiawatha" was shown at the Wanamaker stores. The of Edward Curtis' best-known photographs, included prints, often favorably compared to those of Edward S. sepia plates of eighty of Dixon's excellent photographs. It Curtis, established Dixon's reputation as a photographer. became a popular volume, reprinted several times. The second Wanamaker Expedition, in September As a part of the proceedings, Dixon asked the 1909, had a grander aim: to convene and film the Last survivors of Little Big Horn, and Custer's four Crow Great Indian Council, drawing together about one scouts, to give their accounts of the battle. Dixon hundred of the "most eminent chiefs from nearly all the describes the visit to the battlefield, about two miles from great reservations of the United States" (Mathers the camp, where they "transversed every step of the Museum, Dixon files). ensanguined ground and verified their positions, The ambitious event required considerable and recalling the tragic scenes of June 26, 1876" (Dixon complex preparation. The expedite the matter, Rodman 1913:152). Wanamaker went to the top. He managed to persuade President William Howard Taft and the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Robert Valentine, that Another purported activity of the council was to Museum, mention that the presentation was illustrated determine exactly who had killed General George A. with over one hundred twenty-five colored slides and Custer. Throughout the years, many had confessed and three thousand feet of motion picture film. In April 1910, some, like Sitting Bull, had been popular suspects. Dixon gave a private presentation to President and Mrs. Rodman Wanamaker offered a considerable reward for William Howard Taft and their invited guests, including the information, and the money was to be distributed Charles A. Lindbergh and Cordell Hull. After that, he among those at the council. The Indians, realizing that lectured widely to private and learned groups and to the the reward would buy food for their tribes during an general public. especially lean year, obliged Wanamaker. "They Dixon's use of the recordings in his lectures is themselves had no idea who killed him, but after particularly interesting. Dr. Irvin J. Morgan drew from discussing possible candidates, they elected Chief Brave the songs on the cylinders to compose instrumental and Bear of the Southern Cheyennes" (Connell 1980:374). vocal pieces to accompany the visual part of the In addition to shooting hundreds of photographs presentation. Dixon took pains to point out the music's of the chiefs, scenes of camp life, and the council authenticity in the program for a 1912 lecture presented proceedings, Dixon made several cylinder recordings. The to the City History Club of New York: Archives holds one hundred sixty-one cylinders, but of The thematic material has been carefully selected this number, only thirty contain unique selections. None from Indian sources, notably from phonographic of the cylinders is an original, but all are instead either records made during the Wanamaker expeditions. galvano-plastic copies, or bakelite, the type of material Unlike other music drawn from Indian themes, used at one time for mass produced commercial cylinders which upon examination, is found to be of a and discs. fragmentary nature with alterations in rhythms not Each recording begins with a distinct, forcefully at all Indian in character, this music holds intact, delivered announcement: " ... sung for the Wanamaker not only the Indian rhythms, but whole and Historical Expedition Number Two ... at Crow Agency, complete Indian themes, covering in this form Montana." The announcements also give the dates, the names of the singers, and descriptions of the songs. With few exceptions, the sound quality is excellent. Among the genres recorded, war songs, scalp songs, and songs to celebrate victory in battle predominate. Teton Dakota Chief Runs the Enemy, who fought Custer during his last battle, sang a war song. Chief Red Cloud, the son of the famous chief of the same name, sang "a war song of the Sioux just before the battle with Custer." Red Cloud, whom Dixon described as "a winsome speaker. .. his words weighted with the gold of Nature's eloquence" (Dixon 1913:119) contributed the only speech in the Dixon collection, "for the gathering of the chiefs at Crow Agency." Mountain Chief, a Blackfoot, sixty-three years old in 1909, sang a war song sung before going into battle.

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