have a place in these rituals, breaking in on the recital particularly when an emotion is evoked, for music is the medium of emotional expression. An old Indian priest explained this peculiarity by saying: "Harmonious sounds unite the people."

Unaccustomed as we are to the use of songs that have no words, we would not only find it difficult to understand their meaning but we would lose much pleasure when singing them. To obviate the perplexities arising from the Indian's peculiar treatment of words and to make clear the meaning of a song, words have been supplied. These words are in no instance a literal translation, for the few broken words that belong to some of the melodies used in these Dances and Games, because of their fragmentary character, would have no value as an interpretation either of the music or of the action. In a number of instances the original vocables are retained, where the music is merely a rhythmical accompaniment to a simple, easily understood movement. Where words are given to a song, they follow closely both the accents and the rhythm of the music. The written stanzas are not meant to be read but to be sung. They express the thought or the feeling that gave rise to the music, they aim to make its meaning understood so that the song can be intelligently sung. In arranging these words, care has been taken never to forget or to change the natural and the psychical environment that belongs to the melody.

Indian songs are very short. They have no preliminary measures, but at once voice the actuating emotion; that done, they come to a close. Although they are so short, they have form and in their structure follow in simple lines the rules of phrasing and motivization taught in our schools. These songs, speaking in general terms, partake more of the character of motifs than of musical compositions. They do not stand alone or apart from the ceremonials or pleasures of which they form an essential feature.

THE DANCE

The different Indian tribes vary in their modes of dancing; moreover, the same theme is not interpreted by all the tribes in the same manner. In some

Every Indian dance has a meaning. The dance is generally either the acting out of some mythic story or a presentation of a personal experience. Every movement of the body, arms, hands, feet and head is always in strict time with the songs that invariably accompany the dance. Indian dances are complex rather than simple. Their "spontaneous activity" is not the result of "a dominating emotion" but of a desire to present dramatically certain mental pictures. This is particularly true of dances which form a part of religious ceremonials. As a consequence, none of these dances are improvised. All follow forms that have been handed down through generations and have become more or less conventionalized.

When the dance portrays a personal experience the dancer is allowed a freedom of invention not elsewhere permitted. Even in this case the dancer is obliged to follow certain conventional forms, as in the sign language; otherwise his story would not be understood.

On the eastern continent the peoples from whom we are descended had songs and dances peculiar to their different vocations, so on this western continent the song and dance were the accompaniment of the Native industries.

A study of the Indian dramatic dances shows that by means of them the vocations of men and women were lifted out of drudgery, made types of activity and allied to the forces recognized in the religious beliefs of the people. The dances here given, those relative to the Corn and also the Héde-wache, not only illustrate what has been said above but they reflect back a light upon the religious dances that obtained among the eastern nations of antiquity.

When the Indian dances, he dances with freedom; his whole body becomes expressive of the actuating emotion of the scene he intends to portray. Because of his freedom, his remarkable sense of rhythm and the strong mental picture he aims to present, whether it be the flight of the eagle, the sportive pleasure of birds, the movements of animals, the alertness of the warrior in attack, or in eluding a blow, his motions are always sharply vivid and natural.

It is a pleasure to be able to offer in the following pages a number of Indian songs with their original accompaniment of action, as the two complement each other for the expression of certain native thoughts and aspirations.

Whoever takes part in the dances here presented should never attempt to imitate what is supposed to be the Indian's manner of singing or his dancing steps and postures; in either case the result would probably be an unmeaning burlesque. Each dancer should have a clear mental picture of the scene to be enacted and then give free play to bodily movements for its expression, always keeping in rhythm with the song, so as to make sound and motion a rhythmic unit.

THE LIFE OF THE CORN

A DRAMA IN FIVE DANCES

INTRODUCTION.—These Dances in their purport and music are taken from the sacred rituals of the Omaha, the Osage and the Pawnee tribes. The richness and beauty of symbolism in the original language suffer a loss of native naïveté in their English interpretation.

The American food plant known by the general term "Corn" was developed ages ago from certain native grasses. The Euchlaena luxurians found in Guatemala is probably an ancestor of the maize. The word "maize" belongs to the language of a people living by the Caribbean Sea and never was a universal term for corn among the Indians of our country. The tribes to which maize was known gave it a name derived from their own languages. So very many centuries have passed since corn was a grass that there is no way now of finding out when in the remote past the natives of this continent began the task of developing from a grass a staple article of food like the corn. The process required years of careful observation, manipulation and culture. Not only did the Indians accomplish this task but they took the plant from its tropical surroundings and acclimated it throughout the region east of the Rocky Mountains up to the country of short summers in the North; Cartier, in 1534, found it growing where the city of Montreal now stands.

From this hasty glance at the long history of the maize we can discern the natural sequence of its close relation to the thought and to the life of the Indian, and to a degree understand the love and the reverence with which the corn was held and regarded as a gift from God. Every stage of its growth was ceremonially observed and mentioned in rituals and songs.

Among the Omaha tribe when the time came for planting, four kernels from a red ear of corn were given to each family by the keeper of this sacred rite. These four red kernels were mixed with the ordinary seed corn, that it might be vivified by them and made to yield an ample harvest. Red is the symbolic color of life. In this ceremony is preserved a trace of the far-away time when all the precious seed corn was in the care of priestly keepers. The ceremony of giving out the four red kernels served to turn the thoughts of the people from a dependence solely on their own labor in cultivating corn to the life-giving power of Wakon'da dwelling within the maize.

In the Omaha Ritual Song of twenty-six stanzas which preceded the distribution of the four red kernels, the Corn speaks. It tells of its roots reaching in the four directions (where dwell the messengers that bring life), of the growth of its jointed stalk, of the unfolding of its leaves, of the changing color of the silk and of the tassel, of the ripening of the fruit, of the bidding of the people to come, to pluck and to eat.

The music of this Ritual Song is simple. It is here given with a very brief paraphrase of the words of the Ritual Song.