It is impossible to cover the range of dance forms and dance practices in less than a lifetime of study. Rather than offer a summary of miscellaneous dance forms, I offer some comments on a single tribe--the Cherokee.

There is no doubt that the Cherokee are among the best-known Indian tribes. The exceptional rapidity with which they took over the technology and ideas of Europeans and the continuous pressure on their frontiers from the sixteenth century have been common literary coin for a century. The invention by Sequoia of his syllabary, which made a literate people of his tribesmen, added luster to Cherokee ethnohistory. So thoroughly did the Cherokee change that they became known as one of the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast. Historians have dwelt upon the early wars of the Cherokee, their intrigues with the French, their coming to grips with the settlers of Tennessee, Georgia, and the Carolinas, the tragic event of the Removal, and the experiences of the Western band in Indian Territory. In short, the Cherokee people have received much attention from both popular and technical writers, and the Cherokee nation looms large in the bibliography of American ethnohistory, missionary
activity, treaty negotiation, and sentiment. But systematic ethnological studies of the people have been relatively few, considering the wealth of other work.

The ethnology of the Cherokee has been so little investigated that Cherokee culture is known chiefly for its acquisitions from white civilization rather than for its native properties. In this study we find that Cherokee dance and drama have undertaken the task of correcting one part of this deficiency. We  to describe in detail the surviving forms of dance and ritual as practiced among the eastern band of Cherokee and especially among the Big Cove group during the past two decades. The record thus accumulated was made too late for us to achieve a full and rounded account of Cherokee ceremonial life, and yet it is sufficient to warrant some historical comparisons and it is certain that the speed with which the aboriginal culture is fading makes this a more adequate record than could be secured even now.

 The general attributes of the culture of the Southeastern tribes are too near the horizon of a civilization—a simple one, to be sure—for us to find in their ceremonial exhibitions the intensity and the individual magic that one expects in the religious and public rituals of peoples of the marginal cultural types. In technology the Cherokee operate on a level decidedly above the simple hunting stage. Their ritual has lost some of the primitive flavor of simple symbolism, and aesthetic elements seem to have developed, at least so far as dance performances are concerned. In the combined dance and drama, obscured religious motives are undoubtedly present, but they are no more important than artistic conventions. Surely they are less important in the direct
consciousness of the participants and spectators than are the aesthetic and the dramatic elements. It is our impression from observations over a period of years that Cherokee rites exhibit a definite consciousness of dramatic gesture, which reaches its peak in the performance of the Booger Dance, and this dramatic quality seems to us more evident than in the dance rites of the Iroquois.

While the Eastern Cherokee as a whole occupy the position of a marginal people in the Southeastern culture zone, the Big Cove subgroup, with whom we have been concerned almost exclusively, is again marginal within Eastern Cherokee culture. Theirs is a terrain of chilly mountain slopes, conifer-shaded ravines, and cold torrents, where severe winters shorten the growing season. These conditions and a former abundance of animal resources molded the economy of a relatively sparse mountain population in a fashion different from the settlements in the more favored bottomlands. All students assume that the Big Cove settlement preserved more of the old-time life of the Cherokee natives. But isolation alone may not account for cultural persistence.

More is to be found in the Booger Dance drama at Big Cove than a cultural form persisting in a geographical pocket. In this dance, which stands in sharp contrast to the others, we have a record of the anxieties of a people, their reactions against the symbol of the invader, and their insecurity in their dealings with the white man. In general, the dances reveal equilibrium between the Cherokee and their environment, both animate and inanimate. In the Booger Dance the equilibrium is precarious. We make bold to interpret its function in this way by relating the invasion of the white man to the spiritual forces of nature with which the Cherokee aboriginally learned to cope, the potency of the threat is somehow lessened. This is truly an anachronism, for the Cherokee come to feel more secure in dealing with a strange physical reality when they are able to transmute it into a familiar ritual context. With the white invaders as men they cannot deal, but with the white invaders disguised as mythical animals and frivolous demi-men they feel competent to deal. The reader will want to bear these comments in mind in reviewing the ceremonial descriptions.

In presenting this material we have a kind of moral problem to face. Like all outsiders coming to the Cherokee, in truth like the prototypes of the Boogers themselves, we often appear in their midst uninvited, seeking something to exploit. Like the Boogers, with unmannerly insistence we ethnologists break into Cherokee home circles at the height of their social festivities. Politely these people tolerate our intrusion until, our desires gratified, we depart.  And if this applies to the study of those whose language, habits, and daily life are identical with ours, how much more careful must we be in dealing with those who live in entirely different surroundings, who are strangers to us, and whom we approach usually with either marked hostility or unconscious aversion, or with sentimental idealization and studied friendliness. We can look back somewhat differently, however, upon our intrusion into the privacies of Cherokee society. Only a free cooperation on the part of our collaborator, West Long, enabled us to accomplish the task of putting on record this repertory of songs and dances. A1though West Long is now dead, some part of his extensive knowledge of festivities and rituals is preserved in a literature bearing his name as its primary source. This accomplishment is what he desired for his people and himself. We lament the fact that West Long's death occurred before he saw his knowledge in print. Parts of the discussion, however, had been completed and read to him in his mountain cabin, and the descriptions of all the dance proceedings had been checked and corrected by him over the long period of preparation. He was pleased that his name should appear as their sponsor, and he knew from the beginning that he would be a collaborator in the final record of his people's drama. His reward, aside from the honorariums he received as an informant, was to preserve the tradition of Cherokee ceremonies.

We do not regard our heavy dependence on one informant as a weakness. The very nature of Cherokee dances and their organization at Big Cove make the method a necessity and, in this instance, the necessity a virtue. The dance is, to be sure, an aspect of social life that represents the action of a group, not of an individual. But West Long was a leader, an authority, as a priest would be in a rite. The people, at least in this late stage of acculturation, are the laity, not unlike the manikins of a performance who play their parts under the manipulations of their master. Cherokee ritual dance performance includes some of the aims of a dramatic exhibition. It is only from the leaders—the self-appointed cult of the learned—that deeper meanings and spiritual motives may be discovered. The wise men of the dance songs and the dance singers and leaders appear to be also the medicine men, for those chiefly responsible for Cherokee survivals are not narrow specialists in aboriginal lore. West Long himself was an example of this bilateral profession.

We have dealt here only with the rites in song, those performed in connection with the dances, and some of the chants used in hunting. The series of dance songs is more complete for the Big Cove group than the hunting songs that were collected and recorded as chance offered; but the hunting songs are interesting because of their strong magical content. To increase the hunting song series will require more intensive inquiry and wider travel among the people, since hunting songs often prove to be individual heritages and may be purchased. The entire song series, nevertheless, both these and the dance songs that are a social property free to be acquired by anyone—constitutes a conceptual unit so far as origin and function are concerned. West Long explained them as emanating from one source, bequeathed to the Cherokee as spiritualistic aids in their struggle for life against an adverse animal kingdom, the agency of disease, and a menacing world of mankind.

Although it is easy to compile highly modified Biblical tales in the guise of Cherokee myths, the ceremonies themselves seem to have been little modified by Western influences. However, we have not attempted in this paper to explore in detail the influences of European dances on the Cherokee forms. This, rather, seems to be the proper task for a specialist on the eighteenth-century colonial dance. If any such changes have occurred, they have been sufficiently integrated with the aboriginal forms to present an uninterrupted facade. We do, however, suggest the analysis of Western elements as a worthwhile and interesting problem.

Beyond the range of and destructive nature of European influence is the outright hostility to Native American dancing. Of all the art forms of the American Indians, dancing has been the most often attacked. Of course, we must keep in mind that there are towns in Oklahoma where dancing by anyone is still restricted by law.

From the beginning of missionary contact early in the nineteenth century until the present, both native and white religious workers among the Cherokee have regarded the dances as competitive systems and treated them as curious practices of ignorant savages to be derided, as symptoms of idolatrous behavior to be challenged, or as a system of decadent revelry and a focus of infection for the forces of sin equated with the forces of intemperance.

A pre-Removal commentary conveys a remarkable amount of information as well as a perspective of missionary attitudes. The conversation commenced by one of the young ladies inquiring "if the Cherokees were idolaters."

Cornelia. Properly speaking they are not idolaters: yet before the missionaries instructed them they were totally ignorant of the true character of Jehovah. They knew nothing of Christ; and were universally superstitious; consulting witches, conjurers, and other wicked persons upon the most trivial occasions.

Jerome. What kind of beings are conjurers?

Cornelia. Indian conjurers are generally called medicine men, and rank next to the chiefs. They are consulted with great ceremony, by all descriptions of persons, and are accounted to be very powerful; formerly, there were annual festivals, in which the conjurers bore a very conspicuous part.

Delia. Please do describe some of their festivals.

Cornelia. They used to have one when the corn was in the milk, before they tasted it; on these occasions, there was a general meeting of all the inhabitants of the district or village, and, after all were assembled, the conjurer took the kernels from seven ears of corn, and after burning them in the fire, with many foolish ceremonies, the whole company were allowed to feast upon roasted corn, and eat it in their cabins, after they went home. Before eating the green bean, they go over the same ceremony. When the corn gets hard, they have another frolic called the green corn dance, which lasts several days. In March, they used to have a yearly frolic called making new fire.

Talbot. How is this performed?

 Cornelia. They meet, and dance all night. In the morning, drilling a dried grapevine produces the fire; it takes the conjurer, and seven men, to accomplish this work—everybody puts out every spark of fire in his dwelling, and comes to this, and receives the new. The physic dance is going out of fashion now, but it was once in high repute. It is the province of females to manage all the ceremonies of this dance, excepting the services of seven men, who bring the water to boil the medicine, and to carry it when boiled to every person present, to drink of it, which is never done before a person ascends the top of a building called the town house, and sings a song; the house is previously painted with white clay; the dance is continued seven days; and they are obliged to continue it two nights out of the seven; after bathing, and drinking a small quantity of the physic, they all disperse. I suppose I have told you enough about conjurers.

 Andrew. I long to hear about the eagle tail dance.

 Cornelia. That is designed to inculcate a warlike spirit in the young. When a large assembly have convened, the old warriors rehearse, in the dance, their former "deeds of noble daring"; the dangers and deaths they have encountered ; and the victories they have won. At daybreak, the boys partake of some slight refreshment; they go out to meet the young men, who set themselves in battle array against the boys, and pelt each other most heartily with mud.

Jerome. Are conjurers of no other use?

 Cornelia. In seasons of sickness, when any epidemic prevails, no person feels safe until the conjurer has rendered him invulnerable to the disease.

Jerome. How can he do that?

Cornelia. He cannot; but the deluded heathens think he can.

Delia. What does he do?

Cornelia. He first selects seven men to go out and hunt until they have taken seven deer, which are to be carried to a particular place; he then orders them to retire to the woods fasting, and gather a variety of roots and herbs, and place them with the deer, in the meantime, fasting himself; he puts the herbs into a large pot, and keeps them boiling till every person desirous of escaping the contagion assembles, the deer being caught, roasted in haste, and eaten by the multitude. At night every female, old and  young, dances round a large fire seven times, to the music of a drum made of a keg, or old pan. The old conjurer sits all the night over his pot of herbs, to prevent their ceasing to boil a moment. At day-break, the whole assembly dance with great zeal till sunrise; then each person partakes of the conjurer's dose, washes his body in a small quantity of the liquor; then the pot is again replenished with fresh herbs, and seven men are selected to stay by, and keep it boiling seven days longer, refraining from food each day till sunset. At the end of seven days, the assembly breaks up, every family being careful to carry away a portion of the liquor. After seven days more, they all return, and go over the same ceremonies seven days, they then go home fearless of the distemper, and rejoicing in the skill and power of the conjurer.

Jerome. Do they always succeed in preserving from disease?

Cornelia. No; but when they fail, it is easy to satisfy the deluded multitude; on one occasion, the measles prevailed, and the conjurers failed to check their progress.

Jerome. How did they pacify the people?

Cornelia. By telling them that the missionaries prevented the success of their charms.

Jerome. Are the conjurers paid for their labor?

Cornelia. Yes, they receive the skins of the deer, and a string of white beads from every family whom they render proof against the distemper.

Although those Cherokee dances that may be called rites are likely to be performed in either summer or winter, the majority of the animal or social dances may be called at any time.

The winter dances, the Booger, Eagle, and Bear dances, associated with ghosts, the defunct, and arbitrarily with certain animals, are supposed to be given during times of frost, lest they affect the growth of vegetation by attracting cold and death. The summer dances, the Green Corn and Ballplayers' dances, are associated with crops and vegetation. The remainder may be performed freely, usually on Saturdays, at the home of a member of the Big Cove community.

Ordinarily, these dances are prompted only by the desire for social entertainment.

Special occasions, however, call for an assembly, such as the Burial Dance. This was practiced in the Big Cove in West Long's time. The Burial Dance takes place at the home of the deceased for the purpose of alleviating the grief of the bereaved family and turning their thoughts again to the normal affairs of life. It lasts for seven successive nights after the death. One may observe a correspondence here with the condolence ceremonies of the linguistically related Iroquois.

In the ceremonial dance series the allegorical drama is a chief feature. Its objective is the benefit of the community, and a volunteer company carries out the action, not by any esoteric group, society, sibling, or family. Participation is open even to strangers and aliens. Performances are symbolic of amity and hostility, animal pantomime of pursuit and hunting. They are placative in purpose and illustrative of myth and a cosmic outlook. Collectively, the songs may be conceived as medicine to prevent affliction or to provide immunity. The evil potencies against which they are directed are innate in animals, plants, human beings, and ghosts. Finally, they provide social gatherings for amusement and diversion in a small and isolated community of agriculturists and hunters in a mountain environment.

The dances may have tangential historical connection with the legend of the Seven Dancing Boys Who Became Transformed into Stars, the widely known Pleiades fable. The version of the tale as narrated by West Long is  close to one that is current in Cuyahoga Iroquois and Delaware-Munsee mythology, although the story is not specifically associated with the origin of dancing in the Cherokee tradition.

A curious development in the arts is the success of Native Americans in a totally unrelated dance expression. These dancers go from a community-based expression to a highly elitist one. That they were so fully embraced by the culturally-concerned people of the state is equally strange.

In the 1940's five American Indian women achieved international acclaim as ballerinas. These are Moscelyne Larkin, Marjorie Tallchief, Maria Tallchief, Rosella Hightower, and Yvonne Choteau. In October of 1997 Governor Frank Keating honored them at the Oklahoma State Capitol. All five of these women had long and distinguished careers. However, if we examine Maria Tallchief's repertoire of dances between 1942 and 1961 we find a singular absence of any dance forms relating to Native American dancing. While all five women give credit to their respective tribes and regularly attend Ceremonial Dances, none of them made attempts at reconciling the vast difference between Russian and American Indian forms.
 

Ballets are arranged in alphabetical order, according to Miss Tallchief's affiliations with the producing companies. Asterisks denote roles created for the companies; some of these were in world premiere, as may be verified from this book.

1942-1947 Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Member of the corps de ballet for company repertoire; later, soloist.

First created role—walk-on in Rodeo* (1942). First ballerina role—Chopin Concerto (1943). Ballet roles: Ancient Russia—solo variation; L'apres Midi d'un Faune—Nymph, in revival of Nijinsky's ballet, with Leon Danielian as the Faune; Le Baiser de la Fe'e— Fairy-Gypsy; Ballet Imperial—second premiere*; Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme—Danse Indienne*; Coppelia —Mazurka lead; Danses Concertantes—solo variation*; Etude—solo variation*; Ga~te' Parisienne—Cocodette, Cancan Girl, Premiere Cancan Variation, Lady in Green; Mozartiana—soliste role; NiBht Shadow—The Coquette*; Raymonda—solo variation; Sche'he'razade—odalisque, Zobeide; Snow Maiden— Spring; Les Sylphides—Waltz variation; Virginia Sampler—Unidentified Lady on Horseback. Broadway musical: Song of Norway. Member of the corps de ballet, and understudy to prima ballerina Danilova.

1947 Paris Opera Ballet. Guest artist. International debut: May 21, 1947.  Ballet roles: Apollon Musagete—Terpsichore*; Le Baiser de la Fe'e —Fairy-Gypsy*.

1949-1950 Ballet Theatre. Guest ballerina, U.S.A. tour. Ballet roles: Apollon Musagete—Terpsichore; Black Swan Pas de Deux—Odile; Bluebird Pas de Deux—the Enchanted Princess; Don Quixote Pas de Deux; lardin aux Lilas —The Mistress; Princess Aurora, Balanchine-Tchaikovsky version; Swan Lake—Petipa, Ivanov-Tchaikovsky version—Odette; Theme and Variations—the ballerina role.

1954 Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. Guest prima ballerina, U.S.A. tour. Ballet roles: Ballet Imperial—first premiere; Le Beau Danube— Street Dancer; Black Swan Pas de Deux—Odile; Don Quixote Pas de Deux; Gaite' Parisienne—Glove Seller; The Nutcracker, Ivanov-Tchaikovsky version— Snow Queen and Sugarplum Fairy; Schehe'razade— Zobeide; Swan Lake, Petipa, Ivanov-Tchaikovsky version—Odette.

1947-1960 The New York City Ballet (formerly Ballet Society) Ballet roles: Allegro Brilliant*; Apollo, Leader of the Muses—Terpsichore*; Le Baiser de la Fee—Fairy-Gypsy*; Bourree Fantasque*; Capricorn Concerto—Earth*; Capriccio Brilliant*; Caracole*; Concerto Barocco*; Danzas Sinfonicas, Cuba in Pan America*; Divertimento; The Filly*; The Firebird*; The Four Temperaments—ballerina of the Sanguinic Variation; ~ la Francaix—The Sylphide*; Gounod Symphony*; The Guests*; Harlequinade Pas de Deux*; Illuminations— Sacred Love; lones Beach*; The Nutcracker, 1954, Balanchine-Tchaikovsky version— Sugarplum Fairy*: Orpheus—Eurydice*; Pas de Dix, Balanchine-Glazounov*; Pas de Trois from Don Quixote, Balanchine-Minkus*; The Prodigal Son—The Siren*; Scotch Symphony*; Serenade; Swan Lake, l 9Sl, Act 11, Balanchine-Tchaikovsky—The Swan Queen*; Sylvia Pas de Deux, Balanchine-Delibes*; Symphonie Concertante*: Symphony in C*; La Valse—The Girl in love with Death. Motion Picture: The Million Dollar Mermaid. Acted, spoke lines in character of Anna Pavlova, and danced, as Pavlova, a version of The Dying Swan.

1960-1961 American Ballet Theater (formerly Ballet Theater). Prima ballerina. Ballet roles: Black Swan Pas de Deux—Odile; Grand Pas-Glazounov; Lady From the Sea—Ellida; Miss Julie; Swan Lake, Petipa, Ivanov-Tchaikovsky version—Odette; Les Sylphides—Mazurka and Pas de Deux.

April, 1961, season at the Broadway Theatre, New York; she performed the Grand Pas-Glazounov only in the U.S.A. Other roles include those performed as guest ballerina with the Robert Joffry Ballet at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, 1960; several appearances at Jacob's Pillow circa 1950 and 1960; engagements with the San Francisco Ballet; and engagements with the Chicago Opera Ballet, notably in Ruth Page's Camille, 1961.

Further details of stories, choreographic descriptions, and critical estimations of most of the ballets in Miss Tallchief's repertoire are to be found in Dance Encyclopedia, by Anatole Chujay and Balanchine's Complete Stories of the Great Ballets by George Balanchine.

From the text by Gilbert Chase on the Record Jacket on the Indianist Movement in American Music we read the following:
 

The "Indianist" movement in American musical composition that flourished from the 1880s to the 1920s had its antecedents in nineteenth-century Romanticism, with its cult of the "noble savage" nourished by such writers as Chateaubriand, James Fenimore Cooper, and Longfellow, whose Hiawatha was like a magnet for many musicians. On the stage, the famous actor Edwin Forrest starred in the drama Metamora (1828) as the noble Indian chief who leads his warriors in a desperate struggle for freedom--"Our Lands! Our Nation's Freedom--Or the Grave."

Romantic writers tended to identify the Indian with the grandeur of Nature. Chateaubriand, a Frenchman, in his novel of the "noble savage" Atala gushed on "the soul's delight to lose itself amidst the wild sublimities of Nature." Such writers often lost their heads but seldom risked their lives. The American wilderness, viewed as untamed, primitive, exotic, lured not only explorers and adventurers but also scientists, artists, poets, novelists and at least one musician who came to know at first hand "the magnificent wilds of Kentucky" about which Chateaubriand rhapsodized. This venturesome musician was Anthony Philip Heinrich (17811861), a native of Bohemia who immigrated to America in 1810. From 1817 to 1823 he lived in and around Lexington, Kentucky, calling himself "the Wildwood Troubadour." According to a contemporary account:

Heinrich passed several years of his life among the Indians that once inhabited Kentucky, and many of his compositions refer to these aboriginal companions. He is a species of musical Catlin, painting his dusky friends on the music staff instead of on the canvas, and composing laments, symphonies, dirges, and on the most intensely Indian subjects. He would be the very one to set Hiawatha to music.

Although Heinrich chose to ignore the hint about Hiawatha, by 1856 (when the quoted article appeared) he had indeed earned the right to be regarded as a musical counterpart of the artist-ethnologist George Catlin (1796-1872), whose Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Condition of the North American Indians was published in 1841. Heinrich may well have known this work, as well as Henry R. Schoolcraft's The Indian in His Wigwam, or Characteristics of the Red Race of America (1848). We know that be did read John Mclntosh's The Origin of the American Indians (1843), from which be quotes in the headnotes to several of his scores, notably the orchestral fantasia Pushmataha's A Venerable Chief of a Western Tribe. This work has been described as "probably the first attempt in all history to treat in music, in any adequate manner, the idea of the American Indian" (William Treat Upton) - The key word here is "idea." Unlike the later Indianist composers, Heinrich did not actually use (or misuse) Indian musical themes. He was essentially an imaginative composer, stirred by the tragic grandeur of the Indian race. He was especially affected by the forced removal of the Indians from their own lands, which occurred in his lifetime during the administration of Andrew Jackson. In all, Heinrich composed eight large orchestral works on Indian subjects, plus several pieces for piano and for voice with piano. On his death his music--often oddly original and bizarre in style--quickly fell into oblivion (there has been a recent revival of interest). Hence there is no continuity between him and the later Indianist movement. Furthermore, between the time of his death and the later development, significant changes had occurred both in the situation of the Indian tribes and in American culture as a whole.

The rise of ethnology and folklore studies in the second half of the nineteenth century contributed greatly to our knowledge of American Indian cultures. When the American Folklore Society was founded in 1888, its stated purpose was the collecting of the fast-vanishing remains of folklore in America--in particular that of the Indians and the Negroes. The notion that folklore was rapidly vanishing was a shibboleth of that period. At least it stimulated the systematic collection and preservation of these presumably fast-vanishing remains. As the Indians had been settled in reservations, the task of notating their songs, dances, and ceremonies was considerably facilitated.

In 1880 the American musical scholar and lexicographer Theodore Baker transcribed some harvest songs of the Iroquois as well as songs from the Cheyenne, Comanche, Dakota, Iowa, Kiowa, and Ponca tribes--a task be was able to accomplish conveniently because of a meeting of tribal chiefs organized by the Indian Office of the Federal Government. Two years later he published these and other Indian melodies in his doctoral dissertation at the University of Leipzig (it was in German and has never been translated into English). When Edward MacDowell decided to write an orchestral work using Indian themes, he took these from Baker's dissertation. The result was his Second (Indian) Suite, Op. 48 (1894), which remains one of his most frequently performed works.

MacDowell was by no means a dedicated "Indianist." He once said, "I do not believe in 'lifting' a Navajo theme and furbishing it into some kind of musical composition and calling it American music. Our problem is not so simple as that." The "problem" to which be referred was that of establishing a national identity in American musical composition.

This issue had been brought to a head by the arrival in New York of the famous composer AntoninDvorak, who, like Heinrich, was a native of Bohemia. He spent from 1892 to 1895 in the United States, teaching, composing, and expressing his ideas on how American composers should go about creating an American "national" music. Although he declared that the "Negro" melodies provided "all that is needed for a great and noble school of music" (a statement that infuriated MacDowell), he also gave some attention to Indian music. He became superficially acquainted with the latter, as reflected in the Quintet, Op. 97, during a stay in Iowa. But his influence was mainly in the challenge he put to American composers: stop imitating European models and turn to your native sources.

If one took the term "native" literally, in the sense of "indigenous," that would logically lead to the Indian trail. When the composer Frederick R. Burton declared that he was searching for music "that is truly and wholly indigenous to our soil," be stated the Indianist motivation in its most intense form. But his quest proved to be illusory. After transcribing some Ojibway melodies he transformed them into such picturesquely superficial art songs as "My Bark Canoe" and "The Lake Sheen." These were "truly and wholly indigenous" only to the genteel tradition of the turn-of-the century decorative picture postcard.

From 1890 to 1910 many books on Indian lore and music were published. Francis La Flescbe, an Omaha Indian, collaborated with Alice C. Fletcher in A Study of Omaha Indian Music (1893), while Fletcher herself brought out Indian Story and Song from North America (1900), with melodies harmonized by the composer John Comfort Fillmore. Natalie Curtis, who worked mostly among the Hopis and Zunis, published The Indians' Book in 1907, and Frederick Burton's American Primitive Music appeared in 1909. Ethnologists such J. Walter Fewkes, Benjamin Ives Gilman (Hopi Songs, 1908), and Frances Densmore under a more "scientific" study of Indian music, with transcriptions and analyses. Fewkes was the first to use the phonograph for recording Indian Music and speech among the Passmaquoddy of Maine in the winter of 1889-90. Densmore, working from 1907 under the auspices of the Bureau of American Ethnology produced the largest body of work in this field. For example, her two monographs on Chippawa music (1910 and 1913) contain a total of 340 songs--the largest collection ever published from one tribe.

Among the composers who became interested in the music of the Indians, some simply lifted their themes from the available publications, while others went to the reservations and did their own notations. A pioneer among the latter was Carlos Troyer (1837-1920), who worked mainly among the tribes of the Southwest. In his "Ghost Dance of the Zunis," "Kiowa-Apache War-Dance" (both for piano), and Traditional Songs of the Zunis (1904), for voice and piano, his aim was to be as "authentic" as possible.

Harvey Worthington Loomis (1865-1930), who bad studied with Dvorak in New York, used Fletcher's transcriptions of Omaha themes for his Lyrics of the Red-Man (1903-4), for piano. Less concerned with authenticity, be aimed rather at artistic "framing." Charles Sanford Skilton (1868-1941), a New Englander educated at Yale and musically trained in Berlin, became interested in Indian music when be went to teach at the University of Kansas and heard Indian students at the nearby Haskell Institute sing tribal melodies. More than any other Indianist composer, be established the stereotypes of the genre with such works as "Deer Dance " and "War Dance", from the Suite Primeval for orchestra (based on songs of the Winnebago, Sioux, and Rogue River tribes).

The Indianist movement also produced a slew of operas, from Arthur Nevin's Poia (1909) and Victor Herbert's Natonta (1911) to Alberto Bimboni'sWinona (1926); Charles Wakefield Cadman'sShaneivis (1918) was the only notable success of the lot. Grand opera and Indian culture were poles apart.

Above all it was a voice and a spirit from the Midwest, in the person of Arthur Farwell (1872-1952), that gave deep and enduring significance to the Indianist movement. Not that his vision was confined only to that aspect of America's musical heritage-he took a "broad and all-embracing view" of the "realities and possibilities of American musical life." In taking up Dvorak's challenge to American composers to create a truly "national" music, he proposed a pluralistic approach that would include, "notably, ragtime, Negro songs, Indian songs, Cowboy songs, and, of the utmost importance, new and daring expressions of our own composers, sound-speech previously unheard." Yet there is no doubt that within this broadly humanistic prospect he had a particular affinity with American Indian lore.

Farwell was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. As a youth be showed musical aptitude but with no strong vocational urge. Parental expectations led him to enroll at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in electrical engineering. What really turned him on to music were the concerts of the Boston Symphony. By the time be got his degree, be knew that music would be his life's work. After several years of musical study in Boston, Germany, and Paris he returned to the United States in 1899 and thenceforth devoted himself to a highly active, varied, and productive musical career that took him throughout most of the nation, from New York to California. His first important enterprise was the founding of the Wa-Wan Press-named after a tribal ceremony of the Omahas in 1901. Its main purpose was to publish the work of younger American composers--including himself--in whom the established publishers showed little or no interest. Volumes were issued periodically until 1911. They included most of Farwell's Indian pieces, as well as the Indianist works of Troyer and Loomis previously mentioned. These were usually preceded by explanatory essays describing the relation of the music to Indian tribal lore. They also reveal Farwell's deep affinity for and identification with the underlying symbols and values of Indian life. He had a strong feeling for nature, and his favorite spot for composing was a forest hideaway in view of the Teton Range.

For many of his Indian themes Farwell relied on the melodies transcribed by Alice Fletcher, but in other instances he made his own transcriptions, including some from phonograph recordings. He visited a number of reservations, particularly in the Southwest. Most of his Indian pieces were composed from 1899 to 1908; later exceptions include a string quartet (The Hako; 1922) and some choral arrangements.

For Farwell, Indian music was neither an exotic novelty nor an ingredient of "native Americanism" but rather a profound and primeval source of inspiration. He saw it as an innate force by which we are carried "into a new world of meanings." The Indian melodies, he maintained, are "not in the realm of what is commonly regarded as Art, but only in that which we understand by the term Religion. Song, an invisible agent, is to the Indian the direct means of communicating with his invisible god."

Compared with the towering stature of Farwell, Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946) is a minor figure in American music. But he had what Farwell lacked, the gift of facile expression that wins popularity. In his involvement with American music his role was that of a popularizer. He thought of himself as an "idealizer" of Indian music, dedicated to the task of making it artistically palatable to white audiences. He won immediate fame when his song "At Dawning" was taken up by the celebrated tenor John McCormick; eventually it sold more than a million copies. Another song, "From the Land of the Sky-blue Water," achieved a comparable success when sung by the soprano Lillian Nordica.

Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Cadman pursued his musical studies in Pittsburgh. He became interested in American Indian music by reading the publications of Alice Fletcher and Francis La Flesche and in 1909 he made phonograph recordings of melodies from the Omaha and Winnebago tribes. Later he gathered more songs from the Pima and Isleta tribes of Arizona and New Mexico. From 1909 to 1923, assisted by the singer Tsianina Redfeather, he gave lecture-recitals in the United States and Europe on Indian music. He wrote three operas on Indian subjects: Daorna, or The Land of Misty Water (1912), Shanewis (1918), and The Sunset Trail (1922). His Idealized IndianThemes for piano date from 1912, his Thunderbird Suite for orchestra from 1914. By 1925 his interest in American Indian music had waned--as had indeed the entire Indianist movement, which during close to half a century had left its mark on the course of America's music.