I J. DELORIA
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C - hair m hrnido rdthc1 than curkrs, which snggesrs that the silver conc> book's tlmd essay. · · I ,\m nfthe P,nJy, "' for example, 1·11suggest that. far I he.1d h.1,r dr_1•c1wasn't 1eally fonctinning!l, In liUl scmc. ,he 1rnr;ht he Ir 0111nne or two anomalous athklk figurc·s-lim Tburpc .md l\1lly h\il I,. more represen,s1twe 1h.,n ,1tw1ualous. \,\·as ,he iokmg .1round with that tor 1nsta11cc~man)' N.lli,e Amenc.rns p.,iticip.ated in .111manner of emnnmy' Or ,ns ,he simply r,ernng he,· t1ails dune' And wh,ll v,ou]J be sports in the earl)' Lwcmieth century. l he11 prc,rncc at mulliple level, so weird , hrn,r tha,,- prnfraarnnal. ,emipro, college, .rn,I loc-al-.rnd in significant numhc-rs
i\s consumers of glob.11nuss"medi.ued cultures. "·e ,11e ail subject w Sl1gi:e,,~ th,,r v.e ought lO rethmk " particular history ot "P'Tt.1t1on, ir, Lhis case their ,um,~nding Jndi.1n mt~grnlion into a w1de1 worl,I nf mnJ j c,pcTtatioa,. The) ,r1cok ir1tu our mind, .md ,l"wn to our hca,ts whrn we "e11 't looking. l'hat doe, not me.rn. however, tluL thc_1·need to 111le crn .1thleric-is111.Thi, bookw1Jl ptlla
,..il[t[l~ cenr11_ry,I_ wa~t t<1m, ke a h,11d n;rn lro1]1 .1nnmaly to fr~qi,ency and STLRLUTY1'1', JDLULU<,Y, lllSCUU ~SI· ,\~I) r,nwrn I .------/ unexpectedness. An importJlll group o! :,; .niw p~ople emDr,l{"ed ., dif' Delming e,,1,c·cto lion is no ens)' 1Jsk. tor expect.1tions .a, e ,imo1 phous ' --- - frrell-iS,Oi)-oDOul U1cmsdws. tlun "e J,·e ,\cci,stomed to he.iring. Ill Li,,. thing,. FxpeeMion, ate c,[[[\OSl im,uiobly r"ced, d.lssed .. rn,I ger,Jerc·d.
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. ""-:--·;,,' sud1 rl,ings as c0Ju,.i«lis111 .,n,1 empire in 'Jm th ,\me11ca 011 ly recently au,,l)·Sis LOshow the ve1y humrn COOLSol ideas that have c-ome to .seem
Jwve 11iswriam turned lOw.1rO cnhmal ,m,lysis .is .1 possibk grnunJ for nm1tal and essenn,l. l.1kcv,ise, by p.1;1nr, attention to im1lnple mcdnings, cuns! ern pbins, espec,c,l ly a, the_\' seem LOspeak LOsim1br .Notive e,periences exr,eetation, p.acihc,1ti,in .,erc·cJ t,Ji>fTdgC[htYanishing- J r1Jian ideology '' cl,c;,hcrc, rvc relied on thi, tm1ch,wne in l•tgc· p.irt betousc i1 mallers of the nm ctn-nth cent UL}'with the 1;rndm1iSl prnnllimm of the twrnti lmto1 _J_c,iljyt~:it Lako_t;ipco_.ele were among the last_IQ_J_~aist milir:iril) ancl cth. !'he s~con,1 "'"')' turns to the question <>frcpre,~nuuon and the . . ------JJ ,\lll{!ll_g the h1 S!.!Oente1 111odc1n ! cpre_,_Cl)lJlio_nol pohncs m s1g111ticant p1:;;_:eoflndion people Jn e ,\ ·0, nem, ,mcl warrioLS-who moved wnh i 11 white e,pcctati,,r,s_ usuolly Jnd,an 1,inlrncc. Ho"' .m 'll1erool" th.1r-t hrmg tuttiiSt"a;;k ~;c-Lhose of hi sto1 )· and of cLJlrur.11 opmem,11 h ,e, ,irehy 01 SOCkllevolm,on he fore tllC)' wel'e a 1](11,cd tu caner ,\11"l)Sis. rranng ,h.1nr,cs in c,pc-cta1ion ,,cross mne, 1 use h1w11 1c,1I moderm[)·. ;\r tlw ,,nn,· time·, ,,ssim1la!I0111Sts i[laisted tlW a 11)·s,gr,i!ier 12 ;,,,Jw·s rn 11".ixprn,c l'l,,m l"L'o'uct1c•c '1 11 I of mndernity was nccessa, 1ly , ,1gn ofpcog, ess In their owH local cm br«ce ot rhe auwm"hile .. :-.·atave pe, ,pie blm1 ed lOi;cLlic·r Indian p.ssts. p1c,rnls. ,Hld iii Lures ,\S they s.,11,ed b.ick .\UJ forth acrnss rlw boundary m"tkers oi"gender. class, and pl'imitinsm. !'hough nwhili,ed ,,s ,l nwkcr oi"sociol prngrcss and rociol di/frrcncc·. e1utornoh1l1t,· w,is, m tmLh. d mLJ THt. KJLLING~ AT LH;H'l'NJ:NG CREEK tue I" each ofthe,c e.ssay,, J tr) w sLJggcst th,,r there w~re and "e ;,~nin bemes. ,md !rum, could .,II be fou r1,I i 11r;re,:ter ~1.a1111ties .rnd beucr c,mt m1111bers nf Tnd ,an ,1nomalies. enough chat we musL retlunk !Jllul- quolit)' off the l'i 11c R1,lge• ie,e11\ar1011. I .1ger to be home. ~i,J "orric,I 1.1r categories. 1,iken togcti1cr. iLseems to me. tlic curnulaLive c,1,c·rirnce, ,1hrn:t " \\') 0111111gsherirf wl10 Jud JCL J,eJ thc,LL <1fi:lc·g,J hunting, the of such am)J)i,ilou, J r,Ji,rn, rwinr IJJ mw l"n,I, of qLJesnn11, cm1cern111g p,it·r,· liad m.1de good time· tlw .,atum11 ,hi). ,·m e1 m~ 01·er tor~r miles. th,· t1tr11of tl1e twentieth cen!llly-- perh.1ps toward a rennaginmg Ol the A g.Lc louJJsc·L "hc,id_ Jn r rnnwurs ol modern1t,• itself: ] hey suggest " secret hiSLOL)'ortl,e unn - I, r,J '"" I''' I lw r,ne fZ1dge t esecv.nion. Jrn-c,"rn1,lc ",1, cr1ti rel\ cnn pcctcJ, ol the cumplc., Ii r,carncr1b of personal ,md rnlttmi I ,dmtity that rc1i11edl,1· .i long ic0mc·, ere, tcJ Ji"· ) ,·,11o cceri,cr. ,;-,"I, fr.1''CS 111.lrked tile c.m never he ce ference and assimilation, wlllle and Indian. primith-e Jad .1drnnccd. au rl, cL J m'."' n , · , ·o rn r : in red p I,,ce 111 :-el.nw Ll 10 , di .n n,m - I [l,h. " " s:m· !'hose seCJ'et histo,·ics ofom·,pem·Jm·ss a1e I believe wurth furLhcr pllr ,,;; S<,ic1l:i11,I ,·11lncr,1' d,w;o·r-i11c1l1.·;_;n ii"· i~1:,;,,,~i~:,;; ti~;. fen,·,,, rnn - - .,uit. Lo, the) um change mi, ,cn,e· !'f th~ Jl_J.\.l.'1lld_l~~,j_''-' .'I.'!'':~', ~i_.!:d~ dmons (,md peoj)JCi\,.,,,,. c.,1,ccLc·J l<>k :11, mltl\',~thni;g:, sk>wl? pto !2'C!I~.t<> the_pre,enr mnm~nt. ~rc»in~ tllw,JLJ I lic~,,dc, 11;,or:d c,,1J'e,·e11nia I .issi nul.lllo'1 .nto it. Al Li.,·"'"'" ti me h, ,.,, ,·v,,;-;1,e 1e,en·.-t'on fence procLu.n,'cl Llu: ,uch "Pie' ' \ .. d.L\, "--N l<'e<,t th I ,, kor.1 wrsion 11.'cldl1,'.1J, uH11e '" ,Lil ,.h 11rr l'll<' ,, ~,v , /!."Ji. 1-.',I). AJ:· ' .\'~- 1 ·11,', mode, 11work: su.-wenclc· 14 lt1,ltan1'" ll,w,p,ct1,J rloc" I! I ,J 0 C > " ' ' 0 "< " '0 "< " " " "' " "C '" s ,C ~C ~ C ' ' ' ' ' " , 5 § " " " r C C' C Ji. ' i,, ------,' .. ·,;, •' ~ Sc £ ~ ~ ·;: C '-~ .• ' C' a' ": '• ' • ,• '_§ e ' ' 'e ' M ' { ' ~' ..;j' ' C s' ~' ' ' jj ' 1 ' . s' ' :r :z' ' ~ ' t • N ' ' ' is. p ' ' ' '0 t { ; ' ' ' § ' I' C' a' i'.' ~ ' ' ' 1 .{;· e ' ca' • 0 3 s C ,, • ' " s '' ' 0 ' ' C' ' ' ' ' C C 'C e' ' ' usic theorist John Comfort Fillmore, whom Fletcher had en11stca ror 111 bis technical expertise. LaFlesche spent a week with Fillmore in Wash ington, D.C., took him back to the Omaha reservation in Nebraska for an other week, and then spent a third week at Fillmore's home. "Without [Laflesche'sJ devoted assistance," Fillmore wrote later, "no thorough or c0roPlete investigation of the music of his tribe would have been possi· ble. No one else was so thoroughly competent in every way to assist a mu· sician in finding out what needed to be known.'"' one might wonder who was assisting whom. Francis LaFlesche had already made attemptS to record and preserve Omaha music, and his ef· forts are readily visible in Fletcher's report. In some of the notated songs, for example, fletcher and Fillmore included an additional "LaFlesche" version. Song 30, "Children's Song for 'Follow My Leader,'" almost cer· iainly comes directly from Laflesche, and it is likely that many other songs do as well. In an 1894 letter to his sister Susette, LaFlesche included the musical notation (with one minor change) of "Children's Song" found in the report, along with the memory: "We used to form in a single line and march through the village singing this at the tops of our voices, following the leader wherever he went through vacant houses, deserted mud lodges, the tall grass and through mud puddles. Little beaded moc casins would be a sorry sight when we got through. I put it in your album to remind you of the fun we used to have."'• Though LaFlesche helped Cadman with Omaha music in 1909, the ethnologist would later employ the composer as his assistant, putting 111lODOREMORSE Cadman to work making transcriptions for his Osage research-and would find that Cadman required strict oversight and correction. In 1910, when Cadman and Eberhardt attempted their first Indian opera, Daomo, FIGURE 42. "BlueFrothtr: lntmnezzo" by Throdort Morst (1909). (Authors collection.) LaFlesche was in the thick ofit, constructing the plot scenario on which the piece would be builL And, when, having failed with Daoma, the two rurned to Shantwis, they sent the rough draft to Laflesche for bis comment Francis LaFlesche proved a perfect collaborator for Fletcher; he and correction. Clearly, Francis LaFlesche was more than simply, in Fill· worked with her for the rest of her life. After education in Presbyterian more's words, a "devoted assistant." Enmeshed in the production ex· missionary schools, LaFlesche took a job as a clerk in the office of the of pectations, he marks a place of unexpectedness, with a preservationist Commissioneroflndian Affairs in 1881, using his time in Washington to agenda and musical and ethnographic authority Jocked quite firmly in earn a law degree, conferred in 1893. In 1910, he would join the Bureau of American Ethnology, winning distinction as one of the first of a gen· place.•s eration oflndian anthropologisrs. His massive four-volume work on the Osage remains a standard and important work today. MUSICAL PROBLEMS Alice Fletcher, John Comfort Fillmore, and Francis LaFlesche recorded Laflesche knew both Omaha song and Western musical conventions, and he served as a primary adviser and collaborator for Fletcher and the Indian music using Western notation; in doing so, they transformed it, Music 191 190 Indians in UnexptctedPloctS coauymg me music around the established Western concepts of mete rhythm, and melody. OmalJamusic confronted the trio \Y1th at le~ 9' s1gmlicant problems: 'first, how to represent the complex multiple No, 20. HAE-THU-SKA WA-AN. Jl(,Jf'tinl, .uJl/e,,lir,g. rhythms produced by regular drumbeats a11dmelodieu/iat refused to /al[ Sqrtg . .), • GO. DMtm b,eal. _., • 110. evenly on those beats; and, second, how fu-~ understand th ~_). rT1 I ~ ~ ~ - 1~ musical scales that defined Omaha melodies. Io the first case, they ros: ~-¥8t · • 1~0-c~;7-----rp;c1-d to the challenge; in the second, they did not Their successes and failures Ht) ~I'" «e M oA wo& Ito • ra a, Ao Qi\ wm I[Q helped produce the sound oflodian that would call up imagery and ex. PP~ > ~ - ~ ~ JJ,, 192 Indians in Untxp«ttd Places ··-~ ~~...... a ...,ug ~uav1or1 t:asuy associated \Vith in1age of Indian violence and savagery. 8 1,a11ier, she wrote in 1873: "Your flute gave me that for which I had ceased to hope, true American music, and awakened in my bean a feeling of pa· The Hat-thu-ska Wa-an excerpt reproduced in figure 43 above also in. rriotism that I never knew before."'° Fletcher's work on Omaha music ar eludes a second familiar Indian device-a "short-long" rhythmic combi. rived at a propitious time for tl1e growing number of composers inter· nation that appears in the melody (see, e.g., the first and fourth measures ested in such distinctly American music. The question of musical in figure 43). This pattern-so clear in Fletcher's recordings of Omaha nationalism, already an issue in Europe, had started to preoccupy Ameri· music-also has a long history in Western art music as a signifier of ex. cans as well. What did it mean to have a national music tradition? How oticism. Musical ideas and meanings mixed together in intricate overlaps. could one best present in music the abstraction of national character? Some (e.g., the "short-long" pattern) existed within the repertoite of could rhythms, chord progressions, melodic intervals, and tonal textures Western composers. Others sprung from the imaginations ofindividuaJ capture something so elusive? musicmakers such as Cadman. Many-the "short-long" pattern in such questions ciystallized around the three-year visit of tl1e renowned cluded-xisted simultaneously, however, in the Omaha music traditions Bohemian nationalist composer Antonin Dvorak, who lived in the United recorded by Fletcher. An overlap like that suggested an intensification States between 1892 and 1895, composing, teaching, and stirring the mu· of meaning. The primitivist expectations built on a "short-long" rhythm sical pot with public prescriptions and pronouncements." Dvorak's main or a modified tom-tom beat in the classical vocabulaiy enriched the prim theme, articulated both in his Symphony no. 9 (From the NewWorld) and itivism of the authentic, which itSelfrested on the fact that such elements in his writings and interviews, concerned the production of a nationalist could be found within actual Indian music traditions. Cadman•s "From fine-art music that would be indigenous to the Americas. The raw mate· the Land ofSkY Blue Waters" offers an excellent example, for it makes the rial for such aesthetic production, he thought, was vernacular folk "short-long" figure central to both melody and piano accompaniment, music-an d he knew too little about American social hiswry to make fine lndianizing the piece in the process. distinctions. "It matters little," he argued blithely, "whether the inspi· ,J No matter how authentic the music made them seem, the meanings ration for the coming folksongs of America is derived from the negro vere, of course, largely Euro-American. Fletcher once pointed out that ft'i melodies, the songs of the creoles, the red man's chant, or the plaintive Indian peo aded e uently but were always sur maintain ditties of the homesick German or Norwegian. Undoubtedly the germs the" opyrighr"- at is, the recognition of the musi on ms In the for the best of music lie hidden among all the races that are commingled overlaps mixtures with Western music, however, tribal meanings 1 in this great countty. "" '> } were compromised and transformed in various ways. They were trans- Into tl1is nationalist ferment came Alice Fletcher's 1893 report, which • lated by ethnographers seeking to salvage disappea;ing Indian culture; included ninety-two Omaha songs, notated and, in most cases, harmo idealized by those who, like Cadman, thought they could capture Native l nized simply by John Comfort Fillmore. By transcribing Omaha melodies, essences; distorted by older musical renderings of exoticism; and Amer- Fletcher had consolidated a body of themes and had made them easily ac· ~ icanized by those who sought to create artistic expression that was both cessible to serious nationalist composers. And she knew it. In August national and indigenous. '9 1893, while attending the Columbian Exposition, Fletcher and Fillmore FLETCHER, DVORAK, AND FAllWELL: provided a copy of the report to Dvorak in an effort to encourage him to TH£ AMERICAN !ND!AN SOUND consider Indian songs as possible folk sources for an indigenous art music.'' Later, Fletcher would encourage Arthur Farwell, Charles Wake So what were some of the meanings behind the first iterations of the field Cadman, and others to take up the Omaha material in their own sound oflndian? Alice Fletchercleatly had aims beyond the ethnographic compositions. lo 1900, she published Indian Story and Son9, which in salvage of Indian music. As a young woman, she had expressed an early cluded, not only musical themes, but also narratives. Fletcher argued that desire for the cre,ition of a particularly American form of music. Taken the utility oflndian music to composers would be "greater if the stoiy, or with the decidedly avian sounds of nature produced by the flutist Sidney the ceremony which gave rise to the song could be known, so that, in de· 194 Indians in UnrxpertedPlaces Music 195 _ , - -~· L ...... u •vv "-'u•t:un. m1gnt be consonant with the ch~ cumstances that had inspired the motive."" ..,usic, having studied electrical engineering at the Massachuseus fnsti rute ofTechnology, but, when he arrived, it was with passion and con Nor was Fletcher alone in producing a new public knowledge Offn. ,icUon, A1nerican music, he thought, 1'must have an An1erican flavor": dian music. The German music student Theodore Baker had investigated ..,r must be recognizably An1erican, as Russian music is Russian, or ' Native music as early as 1880, and his 1882 dissertation served as primaiy french music, French." To find that flavor, Fa1well followed Dvorak in source material for composers such as Edward McDowell, who used recommending a wide range: •ragtime, Negro songs, Indian songs, Cow melodies collected by Baker in his S«ond (Indian) Suite (1897). Franz Boas bOYson gs, and, of the utmost importance, new and daring expressions published Eskimo songs in 1888. Jesse Wafter fewkes published Pas of our own composers, sound-speech previously unheard."'' samaquoddy music in 1890 and joined with Frank Hamilton Cushing to This vision was eclectic, and, to advance it, Farwell founded in 1901 collect the tunes later used by composer Carlos Troyer in his 1893 Two the Wa-Wan Pr 198 Indians in Untxp 200 Indians in Unexp,cttdPlaces Music 2or the first tentative glimmerings of culrural relativism being pondered by some point in our lives-but a lesser nun1ber pass on to inner sanc- Franz Boas."' maries of harmony, where the melodic sequence ... has infinitely less At the same time as he proclaimed universal harmony, however, FiU. interest than the blending of notes into chords so that the combining more also gestured toward the more actively powerful metaphor of de. wave-lengths will give new aesthetic sensations. This inner court of 4 velopment. ' Was the difference between Fillmore himself and the harmony is where nearly all the truly great music is enjoyed. In the <7"'1 Omaha singers simply one of musical training and development?That is house there is, however, another apartment, properly speaking, down , l · J could an i'!!'ividuaJ of modest talent- Indian or otherwise-dm,lop hi~ in the basement, a kind of servant's hall of rhythm. It is there we hear l~. or her sense of universal harmony? Or was the difference more profound? the hum oflndian dance, the throb of the Oriental tambourines and ·'-"-<..\'. ~ Did a social or racial group have to develop to9l'l'hl'l'in order to close the kettledrums, clatter of the clogs, the click of Slavic heels, the thumpty- ~<~ gap between civi,lized concertmaster and underdeveloped primitive? so, ,4 If rumpty of the negro banjo, and, in fact the native dance of a world.43 what were the dangers that racial essences would overwhelm universal ~ if har.monic se~sibilities? Fill~ore skirted the edge of a~guments already The house of music suggests the ways in which even ~velop taking place m Amencan society (e.g., around automobiles): Were Indian ~~ mentalism inevitably tangled wid1 racial difference. If~srured .~~' ,J'\f people capable of developing through social evolutionary stages? Or were ~ '-$" ... " toward universalism, a shared harmonic sense, and a process of social (;i, V they racially doomed, unable to compete or change and, therefore, des- evolution, he also forced Indian people and their music into a racial bind, .;/' tined for extinction? one familiar to d1eorisrs oflndian assimilation and disappearance. What Fillmore seemed to suggest that the idea development might refer ~ of happened to those farther back along a developmental path when they to both individuals and societies. But, when one put the idea of harmony encountered people considered more advanced? The options were usu itselfin developmental tenns, social development began to look more im ally seen to be two: social growth and concomitant assimilation tO white than individual development. The expression universal har· ponant of society or tragic but inevitable disappearance caused by racial difference monic sense, in the context ofWestern art music, was most often seen as that prevented a successful game of catch-up. a historical development. Western music had seemingly evolved from the primitive drone harmonies of medieval church music, tO a lighter touch RACE, MUSIC, APPROPRIATION, using thirds and sixths, to the classic tonal explorations of the baroque, ANO DISAPPEARANC E to the gradual elaboration of that system through the classical and Ro· John Comfort Fillmore's sense of universal harmonic commensura mantic composers. Fillmore certainly understooc!. the contemporary com· bility sugg;sted that Indian music could readily serve as source material poser Richard Wagner's chromaticisms, which pushed the familiar sys for Westerners.As a legitimate form of culrural production, however, In tem of harmony and tonality to its outer edges and suggested further ..- dian music seemed tO have little or no future, except as a primitive curios-~ evolution around the corner. In other words, the idea universal har· of ity, unable to develop on its own tenns and, therefore, in danger of dying 7e..·, ' mony in fact made the very contingent history ofWestern music the nat· out. Ethnographers flooded Indian country in the late nineteenth century, · ~ , ural foundation for understanding the entire world. recording, among other things, its music, because of a widespread belief 7,,. · s In this intellecrual context, it was only too easy tO assign peoples who in the need to salvage vanishing Native cultures. Alice Fletcher put the ~ .. c had never had harmony a retrograde spot on a developmental spectrum. idea in a particularly harsh form, one that reminds us of her Jong career, Indeed, harmony, melody, and rhythm themselves might reflect different not only as a salvage ethnolE also as an advocate and worker for levels of social hierarchy. Addressing in 1918 the troubling rhythmic allotment and assimilation "The Omahas as a tribe," she said, "have power of jazz, one critic explained the relation in detail: ceased tO exist. The young m n and women are being educated in English ~ speech, and imbued with English thought; their directive emotion will } There are many mansions in the house of the muses. There is first the hereafter take the lines of our artistic forms; therefore, there can be no great assembly hall of melody-where most ofus take our seats at speculation upon any furure development of Omaha Indian mu~ic. •44 j 202 Indians in Untxp,cted Ploces Music 203 Indians, in other words, would be incorporated-as both individu:i1 diallS in terms of racial difference, denied tliem tlie chance ro develop and a social group-into modern development. Musical expressio s :eir own musics, and vaguely hinted at their assimilation into musical would follow the same trajectory as social evolution: it would take w- n odernism. While banking on the nationalist allure of the indigenous -•t· ern artistic forms. Such incorporation would deny Indian people the Po (llrimitive, many of the lndianist composers were, nonetheless, forced to S sibility of making Indian music (or any other cultural production) on In. ~ogniz e tl1e utter contemporaneity of Indian people. Alice Fletcher, dian terms-or even in terms of musical hybridity. If Native people were John comfort Fillmore, and Charles Wakefield Cadman were called back denied the possibility of maintaining old forms or of producing new one in Jjne by Francis Laf lesche at one time or another. Cadman, Thurlow s, however, their old forms would not go to waste. Collected and cataloged Lieurance, Natalie Curtis, Arthur Nevin, and others all had music they could be easily and profitably taken up by white composers as th; collecting relationships with Indian people. They found that their inter ground for new cultural production centered on American nationalism. actions often extended beyond coUecting to performance as well. Cadman Given racialized expectations of Indian barbarism, how seriously and Lieurance, in particular, established durable performing relation could an composers take Indian music? The very act of taking it seriously ships witl1 Indian singers, whose unexpected presence on the concert cut firm ly against the grain of expectation and, therefore, allowed rebel stage surely troubled the sounds of expectation that tlieir music and lyrics lious Western composers to challenge their own systems. Perhaps never carried to critics like Howard. were the contrasts between expectation and the unexpected so stark as AS Fletcher had pointed out, music enveloped Native life. It proved a when Indian song was put into dialogue with the elite world of art music. natural place for cross-cultural meetings. Indeed, such exchanges had When Dvorak, Farwell, Fletcher, and others began suggesting the pos been occurring throughout the nineteenth century. As early as the 1840s, sibilities that Native music might have for American composers, they met the Narragansett composer Thomas Commuck had engaged Western stiff resistance, most of which sought to reaffirm older expectations. style and notation. Missionary Christianity introduced pump organs, pi Many critics elaborated on the racism implicit in Fillmore's develop anos, and congregational hymn singing across the continent. Responses mentalist position, suggesting that Indian music was fur too backward. varied, of course, bur many Native peoples established music traditions ., Composer and critic Daniel Mason expressed horror that "the crude war based on hymns translated into Indian languages.•6 dances and chants of the red aborigines of this continent should be in any By the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, Indian singers way representative of so mixed a people" and celebrated the "vaunted were coming to s uch exchanges from a variety of entry pointS. Many had intelligence• of"we who have exrermjnarNI and displaced them • Others already absorbed tribal musical training and repertoire, at least to some '°vargued, nor (only) that the music was crude. but that it was not suffi extent, when they first systematically encountered Western music. Music, ciently pare of the national heritage to be truly American. "The exotic Ra seen in developmencalist terms, made up a critical part of boarding and vor of (Indians'] wild dances,• according to critics like John Tasker day school experience for many Indian children. Bands, orchestras, cho Howard, was "too far removed from the comprehension of the rest ofus ruses, and music lessons of all types-th ese were among tl1e signifiers of to ever become vita! to our artistic expression. ""5 civilization. Native students often cook up instruments easily, and they brought their musical training with them when they left.., Zitkala-Sa, the THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SOUND OF IND I AN well-known Yankton Dakota writer and activist, for example, learned vi John Tasker Howard saw Indian people far outside the pale oftlie lore olin while at boarding school, seems to have studied music in Boston, and traditions that he recognized as belonging to the contemporary and collaborated with William Hanson on tl1e 1913 opera The Sun Dance. FIGU I>.£44. Tht Corlisl, Indion SchoolBand. The band, led by DennisonWhttlock, would lottr tronefonn into tht U.S. Indion Bond, playing afell programon the choutouqua circuit. (Rttords ef the RedpathChoutouquo Collection, Sptciol Collections D TSIANINA REOFllATHER ANO SHAN£WJS Native performers played with expectations even as those expectations were forming around the sound oflndian. At the same time, however, they did not hesitate to contest expectations and to work to set them dif ferendy. The result was often a peculiar pastiche in which racist stereo types might be simultaneously reinforced and questioned through Indian musical performances. Charles Wakefield Cadman's and Nelle Rich mond Eberhardt's Shanewis offers a case in point. If Cadman was quite possibly the leading popular composer of the Indianist school, his long standing partner, the Creek singerTsianina Redfeather, was quite possi· FICURB 46. Th, Nez Ptruons. A rt9ionollysucctzjuljazz band, the Ntz PtrUOM$ bly its leading performer. Born in Indian Territory in 1882 (or possibly mixt 210 Indian$in UnexptttedPlorrs fine, strong beauty of the aristocrats ofher race," wrote another. "A voice ina an anomaly, a lone survivor of a racial group that had failed to adapt that is haunting, appealing-and more than anything else, Indian.• A and develop? Almost certainly, some listeners followed that interpreta· Colorado Springs paper took the familiar comparison between singers tion. The Denver critic Margaret St. Vrain Sanford suggested thatTsian· and birds to an extreme suggested by her Indian connection to nature: ina could "not be compared to other artists": "Because of inheritance, en "All the notes of the nightingale, the meadowlark, the bluebird, the robin vironment and loyalty to her native race, she stands a lonely figure .... and the dove seemed to be harmoniously blended in her wonderful' [SJ he is of necessity a unique symbol of all that is best and finest in the voice."59 fast disappearing race."6' From the stage, however, Cadman began re· jeering his lyricist's invocation oflndian disappearance. A Chicago critic, Tsiaoina Redfeather-and singers like Princess Watawaso, Oskeno0 • ton, and others~rystallized a _:lense of surprise among white audiences. for exan1ple, observed: "When the composer announced that the theme Iflndian music was nothing more than savage screeching and howling, ofTht Moon Drops Low was no longer true because the latest government mindless pounding of drums and rattles, then what were Indian mezzo. reports showed that the Indians were increasing, the spontaneous burst 6 1 sopranos and baritones doing on the concert stage, singing Native of applause was a direct compliment to the singer and her race." l C.C>' ' -~· e.la:.;.,. melodies-much less operal-to elegam and stylishly modern piano ac Otl1er observers might choose to see Tsianina as having been fully as· ~ companiment? Native performers played with white expectation, hold similated and, thus, no longer trUly Indian. The performance turned, ~ ing out fumiliar signs that proclaimed "Indian" even as they offered more however, on her authenticity, and so the promotional pamphlets and nuanced musical performances. For the Indian Music Talk, for example, brochures for the Indian Music Talk took pains to legitimate her in sev- Cadman draped the stage with Navajo rugs, Indian baskets, instruments, eral ways, all necessarily dependent on a racial imaginary. Tsianina, one and, of course, Tsianina Redfeather, outfitted in a white beaded buckskin brochure proclaimed, was not a made-up Indian. Rather, she was "full· costume, beaded headband, and even beaded purse. Audiences did not blooded" and a Native "aristocrat'' (a descendentofTecumseh, no less). fail to read these signs. At Tsianina's coming-out performance before She never wore "the garb of the paleface"; her stage costume was no cos· Denver's musical elite, the audience assumed that she could not speak tume at all but, rather, her everyday wear (see figures 47 and 48)... English, and they put their surprise on display in the postconcert recep As with Indian athletes, the key factor complicating Tsianina's racial tion, wondering aloud in front of her if she was "real or made up" and position was her talent, for it allowed her to refuse to be seen as either a commenting "how strange for an Indian to sing so well. •6o remnant or an object of assimilation. After outlining her racial authen· Cadman frequently closed his lecture with "The Moon Drops Low,• a ticity, then, the brochure's description shifted abruptly, denying that race song based on an Omaha melody collected bx_Fletcher. Eberhardt's lyrics mattered in the face of a different brand of uniqueness, musical talent: sought to set familiar expectations, offering the old sentiment oflndian "Nor does PrincessTsianina claim public recognition on the strength of disappearance: racial difference. She has a beautiful voice, guided by an artistic intelli gence and trained to expressive ends. In any environment she is a charm· The moon drops low that once soared high ing singer. • 6s Other critics followed this lead, mixing together racialized As an eagle soars in the morning sky; signs of authenticity ("rl1is free-limbed Indian girl, with the body of a And the deep dark lies like a death-web spun wind-swayed sapling and the grace of a wild doe") with precise assess· 'Twixt the setting moon and the rising sun. ments of her musical skill ("effortless tone production, perfect breath· Our glory sets like the sinking moon; ..Id' ing, smooth velvety legato and easily sustained power").66 The Red Man's race shall be perished soon; ...,._ In effect, Cadman and Tsianina had created a fail·safe performance. Our f~etshall trip where the web 1s spun, Some might admire her vocal talents while dismissing her racial identity; For no dawn shall be ours, and !IO rising sun. 6• others might appreciate her Native color while doubting her voice; many What must it have been like for audiences to hear an Indian woman would praise both. In the juxtaposition between primitivism- figured as singing this lament? Did it seem the last gasp of a dying race, with Tsian· a racial expression of universal musical sense-and the modern- figured 212 Indians in Unexptttld Plaus Music 213 premise and characters: Indian girl with talent placed in difficult cultural situation by patron who allows her to leave Indian community in order to receive musical training. While the love plot is manufuctured, even it may, in foct, be touched byTsiaoina's life.IS&Her memoir, WhereTrails Haut Led Me, includes, for example, a short section in which her first wooing comes from a young man making arguments similar to those made by the character Philip Harjo. He wonders why she wishes to go further into the white man's world, points out whites' lack of kindness, recalls to her mind their thefts and cheats, asks her to come with him to the Indian world, and, when she demurs, promises to be there if ever she needs him.69 While Tsianina would appear as Shanewis in later performances in Denver and Los Angeles, her stage fright seems to have kept her from ap pearing at the Met.'0 Nonetheless, she made sure to appear conspicuously in the aisles during intermission at the Met opening. lo full Indian en· semble, she was naturally mistaken for the soprano lead, blurring the re lation between frontstage performance and backstage authenticity in a FIGURE 47. Tsianina R,df,athtr. The promotional ima9,at ltjhuB9tsts therltmtnts way that would have done Buffalo Bill Cody proud. Her challenge to the necessaryto th, prmntation ofonestlf as an Indian princess-new and niuly tanned experience of the opera audience suggests that s he wanted to make sure buckskin, with bt4d and shtll decorationsand copiousftin9t, braids, ht<2dband, that the story was read, not as fiction, but as something that spoke to real, arrowheadnttklace, and moccasins. Jnlater ima9es, s uchas theont prtstnttd inji9ure contemporary Indian people, herselfin particular. Equally telling, how· 48 at ri9ht, Tsianina would adopt a difftrtnt look, combinin9htadband and n«klau ever, is the way in which the plot inverts the vanishing Native-Indian love with skirts, blouses,and a btautlful wournblankrtjack 214 Indians in UnexptttedPla ces Music 2 15 Audiences were undoubtedly familiar with the idea of two women pectations built on race, but also those built on gender. He sees her as an one Indian, the other white-vying for the affection of a white man. It Indian in modernity who might be drawn back to the tribal. He fails to was, as we have seen, a staple of the early film narrative. The classic In see her as someone who might inhabit modernity equally powerfully as dian love plot, however, nl'lltr asked that the white man die-not for love a woman. As Shanewis rejects Lionel as the betrayer of herself and her and certainly not for a treachery that was both personal and historical'. history, then, she also rejects I larjo as someone who would use tradition Usually, it was the Indian woman who either had to die or had to take her to control her as an Indian woman. In the end, Shanewis affirms a richly self away so that the white lovers could have a future {after betraying her layered identity: She is Indian, as demonstrated in her rejection ofLionel. people for the love of the white man, naturally). Here, Lionel dies still lov She is modern, as wimessed by her refusal to wield the poison arrow her ing Shanewis. His betrayal is multilayered-a betrayal ofShanewis and self. She is a woman, both Indian and modern, as demonstrated in her oflndian people in general, of Amy, and (as framed by the latter) of the refusal to be used by either man. And she is independent, for, in return purity of the white race. ing Lionel to Amy, she declares herself freed of her debt to her patron. Yet the opera's central Struggle is not among the main characters but While it may seem that the play ends in tragic love-death, in fact it ends between two supporting ones-Harjo and Amy. Both reject the idea of a with a new affirmation ofShanewis, who is left in possession ofidentity, cross-race romance, one on the eugenic grounds of race purity and su moral standing, and, in a sense, love. periority, the other arguing that a history of white betrayal will lead to One might take Shanewis as a briefforTsianina's subsequent career, more betrayal and tO a cultural loss. The unholy alliance between the op which was marked by durable independence (and an unsuccessful ro posites, Amy and Philip Harjo, is counterpoised to the relationship be mance). Tsianina served as a traveling entertainer for American troops in tween Lionel and Shancwis. For the lead characters, love offers the pos Europe during the First World War. Her adventures included the torpe· sibility of racial and historical redemption. Lionel will come to htr people, doing of her ship and meetings with Lillie Langtry and various minor roy and he will do so with the open mind of the modern primitivist. Of course als. Arriving with letters ofintroduction, she courted Lord Northcliffe, a it is the universalizing liltoflndian song that gives their love a potentially newspaper publisher who immediately developed a series of sympathetic transcendent power over race. It is critical, then, that it is not Amy's articles on American Indians, and Sir Thomas Lipton, who introduced racialist argument that undoes the lovers but Harjo's historical one. her to London society and had chocolates delivered to her room daily. She Shanewis and Lionel prepare tO part, reluctandy. Lionel moves tO Amy but followed the front lines to Paris, across France, and into Germany, where~""".., never adopts her racialist position; indeed, he is still pledging his Jove she,E.otedthe depth of Germanlmawledge concernine:Indians. Return- Ao · to Shanewis when the fatal arrow strikes, and be.dies, not in Amy's arms, ing home, she became actively involved in the Santa Fe Fiesta, appear- but in those ofShanewis, who reclaims him at the moment of death. ing there for nine straight years. She undertook several Indian Music Talk The act of parting is fully controlled, not by white racial fear, but by In· tours with Cadman before bis death in 1946, and she sang the lead in per· dian history, given form in Sbanewis's parting lament. The wayward fi. formances ofShantwis in Denver in 1924 and at the Hollywood Bowl in 1926 ance's death is not sacrifice, butlndian vengeance; Lionel dies for the sins (at that performance, she was joined by the Yakama baritone Yowlache, ¢:cbe colonial past. Philip Harjo, ambiguously savage, stands at opera's singing a prelude, and Oskenonton, who sang the role of Philip Harjo)." F end as the Native critic who understands the folly of allowing the ideo Tsianina realized, over the course of her early career, that her per logical figure white man-Indian womanto remake itself yet again. This formances offered her a political and educational platform. At the 1916 liaison, he seems to say, is the exp~tation that has driven our hist0ry. It Pan-American California Exposition, for example, Cadman repeatedly de· means, not simply innocent romance, but white triumph and Indian dis ferred to her in speaking to public audiences. "This was shocking to me possession, made visible through the capture offuture generations via at first," she recalled, "but the inner voice said 'This is your opportunity the bodies oflndian women. to tell the truth about the Indian race.'"73 She adopted a sort of generic Harjo's awareness that the personal is, in this case, also the political pan-Indian position from which to critique American policy and culture. prevents him from seeingthatShancwis has problematized, notonly ex· In doing so, she sought to put social considerations back into any dis· 216 Indians in Untxptettd Places Music 217 cussion that would focus solely on her as an example of individual devel dian. Those same years, however, saw the development of new Indian opment. In 1921, at the Santa Fe Fiesta, for example, she refused to stand musical forms-most notably the beginnings of the powwow tradition, alone as an individual but insisted on drawing attention to Indian people itself rooted in older musics but now infused with a significant amount as a social group. Coming backonstage for an encore, she decided to tum ofintertribal exchange.76 They also saw the development of a cadre ofln· her back on the (predominantly white) grandstand and sing for the Jo. dian performers-Indian vocal princesses and baritones, ethnographic dian people gathered in the plaza behind the stage. "Indian Day" at the informams, and hundreds oflocal bands and performers-expressions ' h fiesta had been full of music-traditional songs and dances, an Indian oflndian-non·l ndian musical crossing. Many of these performers were school chorus, a pair of small girls singing a duet-but observers agreed able successfully to question the older formulas of expectation. At the y that Tsianina's back-to-her-audience performance was the highlight. "A same time, however, the Jndianness that brought them in front offavor· more dramatic picture could not be imagined," commented Dorothy ably disposed audiences also constricted the possibilities that they might McAllister. "There was no mistaking the f.ict that the Indian princess was have to effect change. giving her best to her people, and that she was unconsciously receiving Perhaps the most important thing that the composers and performers inspiration from them."'• Tsianina made it clear that it was not simply of Indianist music did was to attach concrete and specific images to Indian melodies that mattered but also Indian people.J sounds. When Arthur Farwell included detailed descriptions of the sto· Nor was she tied to Cadman. In 1924, for example, she appeared, ries surrounding the melodies that he appropriated, he was not simply alone, in the descriptions of available chautauqua acts. In 1927, she un educating American listeners to emotional and cultural contexts for his dertook a series of concerts with the Iroquois baritone Oskenonton. In music. He was also linking the sound oflndian to imagery, be it that of 1928, she traveled and sang as a fund-raiser for the Republican Party. the love song sung in the early morning or the war party preparing to at· Health problems led to her retirement from active performing during the tack. The fact that these two particular images preoccupied many, if not 1930s, but she remained active socially and politically for the rest of her most, Indian-sound compositions helped create the perceptual frames life. She continued to serve on the board of the Santa Fe Fiesta, devoted through which non-Indians imagined Indian people when they heard the much of her energy to Christian Science, and, as John Troutman points sound of a tom-tom beat or a descending minor-third "short-long" pat· out, played a significant role in establishing the Foundation for Ameri· tern in a melody. can Indian Education, an organization created to send Indian students to Likewise, when Tsianina, Watawaso, falling Water, Irene Eastman, colleges in Albuquerque and Phoenix.~ Sausa Carey, Ataloa, and others appeared onstage in nearly identical cos· tumes, surrounded by the props oflndian primitivism, they connected FROM MAJOR TO MINOR Indian sounds together with mental images, giving those sounds mean· Cadman and Tsianina, Lieurance and Watawaso, Oskenonton and ing. Consider, for example, a promotional poster for Princess Watawaso, Yowlachie, Cardin and Reddie, and all the many other Indian and Jodi· which evokes any number of expectations and images (see figure 49). anist musicians scattered across the country point toward a powerful re· Familiar signs oflndianness are jumbled together. A birch-bark canoe working off.imiliar expectations. They crossed back and forth between mingles with plains tip is, Pueblo pottery, the words PrinassWatawaso built Indian melody and Western harmony, generating an Indian sound built out of rustic wood, and, in case we are in doubt, a prominent identifica· on expectations and ethnographies, constructed for art-music listeners lion of the singer as "full blooded." The image is divided vertically in two, and popular audiences. Old primitivist themes mingled in their work with and these Indian objects sit, nearly enclosed, amid a dark forest of seem· Native rhythmic and melodic ideas, the latter made available through a ingly dead trees. A small path shows Watawaso emerging from this In· Hurry of musical ethnography. dian landscape, a place with a certain lingerin,g cultural vitality, perhaps, Many of the elements of the Indian sound that we hear today at base but also a place of death and quiescence. figured as every bit as "in be· ball games and in Disney movies originated in the decades between 1890 tween" as Tsianina Redfeather, Watawaso is placed exactly in the middle and 1930-the founding years and the boom years for the sound ofln· of this landscape, on the beach between water and woods. Ahead lies un· 218 Indians in Untxptcttd Places Music 219 those settings. Even as the Indianists created a sonic melancholia distinct from that of other American and European composers, many followed John Comfort Fillmore in relying frequently on major keys and chords, saving the minor accompaniment (or that of open fifths) only for the most rollicking war dance songs. If many of the key elements of our con temporary imagining of the Indian sound were in place by 1920, they had, nonetheless, not yet tilted so heavily toward pounding war themes and minor cadences. And sowe must suggest one last critical transition. In the midst of the flurry of Indian-sound music being produced in the early twentieth cen ~ tury, film producers like James Young Deer and Thomas Ince established ---~--- the production efficiencies and Indian plot thematics that drove so many of the early silent films. The silents offered only bare-bones textual nar -- -=-- ,- ration, relying instead on their imagery to tell stories. Musical accompa· .::.::- niment helped advance the stories from placard to placard, and organists and pianists sat below the screen, pounding out music designed to work FRINC:Eis ·-- - with tl1e films' images to set mood, signify character, and enhance action. Music provided critical clues to audiences, signaling them to feel sus WATAWASO pense, hate the bad guy, celebrate the hero, and full in love with the hero A Full Blooded PenobscotIndian MezzoSopro110 ine. Aswe have seen, by the 1920s film had become a repository for many of the images of violence and savagery found in nineteenth-century dime novel literature and anti-Indian propaganda. As films grew less sympa· SoN&sLm~INlD§ DA~rr;Es thetic toward Indian characters, so too did the accompanying music. In 1913, John Zemecnik, a composer who had studied under Dvorak, put wgethcr a collection of music to be played for silent films. Included in his array were the sounds of ethnicity ("Oriental," Chinese, Mexican), work (cowboy, sailor), events (battle, church, festival, stom1s), and emo THF, PRJf',,,'c_·£ss US~s TIie '\.Vl?.HeR OUO - ..\PT Pl\ t'-: 0. tion (death, mystery, struggle, duels, and plaintiveness). Included also was, of course, the Indian sound-with pounding tom-tom beats on the FICURE 49. PrinttssWatawaso Ftytr. From Tsianina to Watawasoand acrossthe board, th, Indian prinuss drru cod, rtmaintd th, sam,. (Rtcordsof th, Redpath interval of the open fifth and a minor-key melody--a nd a four-part battle ChautauquaColltttion, Spuiol ColltetionsD,partm,nt , Uni11trsityoflowa , IowaCity , sequence, with plenty of tl1e bugle-call imagery so characteristic of film Iowa.) cavalry charges. Zemecnik had little of the sympathy, artistic aspirations, or nationalist agenda of the Indianist composers, and his collection re known-but apparently not Indian-land, characterized by the waiting flects the consolidation of a number of stereotypical expectations into canoe, which promises to take her to that new place.n simple sonic shorthands. Zemecnik's was only one of the many collec ;? Indianist music tended, as the musicologist Michael Pisani points out, tions available, and most theaters had their own libraries of various mu co offer more sympathetic portrayals of vanishing Indians than did most sical accompanin1ents. As silents became talkies in the early 1930s, music literary represcntations.78 And, indeed, listening now to the music of remained central to films, aural cues to tl1e in1pending conflicts to be found Cadman, Farwell, and others, one is struck by the plaintive appeal of on western ridges silhouetted with saddled warriors. Such westerns as In 220 Indians in Unexpect,dPla ces Music 22 1 viu ,mzona (~ox, 1929; the first sound western), The BigTrail (Fox, 1930), beauty parlor, many Americans almost uncqru;ciously find themselves Cimarron (RJ 222 Indians in Unexp,cttdPlaces Music 223