PREFACE
The specific words and phrases which the American Indian utters in song and ceremony are few and fragmentary. In their original forms of expression the utterances of Indian dance, song, and ritual are often crude and inadequate. Literal translation, therefore, will rarely reveal the emotional and ideational content of a ceremony. For example, the only words uttered in the course of a long and richly meaningful scal-pdance song may be the following:
The few fragmentary phrases may be repeated over and over again, interspersed with apparently meaningless syllables and ejaculations. The meager phrase in a medicine song may be slight in its denotation; it can represent merely the peaks of an emotional flight, or it can merely symbolize a great situation. Yet if the fragmentary ideas be interpreted against a background of legend, or supplemented by the accompanying incidents of the dance,-its music, postures, gestures, and vocal embellishments,-if they be refracted through the prismatic glass of Indian imagination, the few words that are uttered may suggest
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