songs, lullabies, and love songs; war-dance, pipe-dance, and social dance songs; gambling-game songs, songs narrating personal achievements, songs to accompany gifts and songs of thanks, songs for the spirits, songs for the dead, and songs to heal the sick,—songs without number, In all his music there are many weird, haunting qualities—certain qualities and certain motives which American musicians might profitably study, and develop into a distinctive American contribution to musical history. Indian music may be instrumental,—as for example the music of the Béebee-gwun, the Indian flute—or it may be vocal. The latter may be accompanied, as in the dances, the medicine songs, and similar ceremonies, by drums and rattles, or it may be unaccompanied.
All Indian music, despite its seeming formlessness, its complexity, and its cacophony, is for the most part quite simple, and fairly definite in form. In most of his songs he uses but few simple notes, and these usually in downward progression, beginning with high falsetto tones and ending in low guttural sounds, punctuated with an occasional slurred note, a slide, a quaver, a wail, a call, or an explosive shout.
Although the "Chippewa Flute Song" will yield its melody through any one of several simple methods of interpretation that will occur to the reader, if in interpreting the poem aloud he will improvise his own melody, merely bearing in mind the suggestion that he should chant the words softly with an occasional downward slide at the end of every sentence—not line—and at other points where the voice natu-
