POETIC FORMS IN AMERICAN INDIAN LYRICS

The true touchstone of primitive verse is familiarity with aboriginal life and manners. Let the observer sit among the American Indians under a starlit sky in the far spaces of the desert, or with his horizon bound by native forests, where only blazed trails penetrate the shadows—wherever these people sing, encircling a quiet fire. Not even the folk-songs of the colored race on their native plantations convey the sense of detached unreality that comes with hearing these evening songs of the red race.

When a thousand songs have beaten their way into his pulse, the listener may hope to understand both the form and the spirit of this verse. Only this certain recognition acquired by personal knowledge can direct him to sound judgments of the current pseudo-Indian verse. It is the only safe basis for comparison when studies lead far afield into the song-literature of many tribes. Many of us, however, cannot readily explore the remote places of aboriginal song. For such readers, fortunately, there is an increasing number of printed studies and of records gathered by our great museums.

Even after wide observation and the close study of years, many questions will still remain to baffle us. To reconcile many apparent inconsistencies of Indian lyric verse forms, we must first understand the thought-movement of this body of poetry before we approach the whole subject of thought-rhythm, with the questions of repetition and of stanzaic and metrical structure.

In the mood of the poet, to be sure, lies the chief influence which shapes the poem and marks its larger formal characteristics of thought-movement and rhythm. There are the graceful, lilting verses that go swiftly to the golden melodies of some of the shorter lyrics, as in the Song of the Coyote and Locust; others which move in slow processional to stately chants, as in the odes of The Night Chant.

But the thought-movement is the more immediate influence upon the structure of a poem. The pre-eminently characteristic movement of the Indian lyric is recessional.[1] It perceptibly intensifies the haunting, melancholy effect in which the lyric usually finds voice. The motif appears at the opening of the song, with the emotional intensity or emphasis gradually dying away toward the close. This movement commonly occurs in the shorter songs which are entirely repeated several times. This recessional movement is effective with its musical accompaniment, repeating the melody in a descending scale, and ending on a low note. Thus pitch and accent, as well as varying quantity, mark the repetitions and lessen their monotony.

As a modification of the recessional movement, there is the poem which opens with the motif and repeats it at regularly recurring points throughout, concluding abruptly without the refrain. There are some stanzaic units in this group. Whatever may be the gain in emphasis and in organization, there is a distinct loss in atmosphere. This type is interesting as a transitional stage.

The second type of thought-movement has influenced a third group of songs which shows wide divergence from the first. In this last group the major emphasis always opens and closes the song, though it recurs at intervals, as at the opening or close of each stanza. This is the most finished lyric in design, the most completely thought out, with stanzaic units distinct. Mood and idea join to create a beautiful form.

To a less extent, the processional, or forward, thought-movement appears in lyric form. It may progress toward an emotional climax at the end of a song or a sequence. In the songs before sunrise, as the Daylight Song in The Hako, the intensity increases toward the close as dawn appears. The forward movement finds its most natural place in the ballads and in those ritualistic poems which anticipate dramatic gesture or action. This dramatic relationship, whether in formal ceremony or in vocational songs, shapes the thought-movement in direct contrast to the characteristic order.

There are other poems which carry the thought forward to the close, rounding with an effective summary, sustaining the heightened interest, yet showing the fine intellectual perception of form in relation to thought which appears in Mount Koonak: A Song of Arsut. In characteristics, this type approaches the lyric which Doctor Moulton has classified as the free sonnet.

Whatever variations appear in the sequence of thought, it must be remembered that the use of the recessional movement is a primary law of Indian lyric art.

There is within the lyric a sense of symmetry, of poetic consistency, which cannot be measured by Anglo-Saxon rules of prosody. The Indian poet achieves this symmetry in structure by using varied patterns of thought-rhythm; that is, by means of infinitely modified forms of repetition which are as distinctively characteristic of his genius as parallelism was of the ancient Hebrew or as the variations of rhyme and of stanzaic pattern are of the English lyric genius of the last four centuries. The subtle relationship of patterns of thought-rhythm to the whole movement of a poem is often so fugitive as to escape analysis. One origin of these patterns is the most obvious dramatic association which may also determine the direction of the entire thought-movement. Although the dramatic motif shapes both aspects of thought, there is no apparent connection between the progression of an idea and, let us say, the alternating rhythm, except when the alternation becomes incremental. The determining values of pitch and of melodic repetition are also important external factors. Where these influences end, it is difficult to say.

So far as this study has proceeded, five characteristic patterns of thought-rhythm appear in Indian lyric poetry. The iterative rhythm appears in the simpler poems, of which the Navaho Mountain Song and The Omaha Tribal Prayer are particularly fine in spirit. The iteration is not always pleasing, sometimes beating with the steady monotony of a kettle drum; but, contrary to reasonable supposition, it does not necessarily indicate a dance song.

The alternating rhythm offers the Indian poet some æsthetic relief. It creates a graceful lilt in his verse and often accompanies the quicker movements. This is a universal pattern; but some Katzina Songs of the Hopi and songs of the Zuñi and Pima Indians have markedly achieved this freedom of movement. The elasticity of this form provides an infinite variety of uses, from carrying a pleasant refrain to providing a choric response for the support of a dancing soloist. It has a place in the vocational songs, as well as in the ritual songs of a tribe. There are many variants which employ alternating patterns of thought at the opening and close of a stanza, or with dramatic pose and gesture, as in the Zuñi Invocation to the Sun-God, in singing which the Indian mother appeals to the sun, moon, and stars to guide her sleeping infant. Mr. Troyer marks the values of pitch as heightening the rhythmic movements of this song.

Balanced forms of thought, that is, forms in parallel structure, do not appear commonly. Perhaps it is more exact to recall that pure iteration and alternation of thought approximate the effects which parallelism may contribute, especially when the repetition is sung in a different pitch from that of the key thought. The infrequent occurrence of sharp contrasts of imagery, or antitheses of thought, may explain the rare use of parallelism. The ancient lament of the Onondagas, preserved in The Iroquois Book of Rites, remains one of the most beautifully wrought poems of this type brought down to our time.

The interlacing design of thought is one of the most graceful as well as one of the most difficult. This pattern shows skill and delicacy in poetic construction, as the interlacing repetitions frequently carry from one stanza to another, as from first to third and second to fourth, found in The Morning Star and the New Born Dawn, from The Hako. This device carries the thought forward. It is, therefore, definitely related in purpose to the form which is universally the vehicle of the ballad—incremental repetition. The Indian poet uses this form both for narrative and for descriptive purposes. The Navaho Song of the Horse shows a studied picture, framing each detail with repetitions; while the same incremental use of repetition carries forward the narrative in the Navaho Rain Chant.

There is a further structural use of these forms. If we can point to a single prototype of the lyric stanza, we must find it in the unit of thought-rhythm. As it assumed different aspects, enlarging itself with repetitions, there appeared the first conscious step, the stanzaic germ with varying possibilities of structure. This æsthetic origin of the stanza appeared before the intellectual recognition of unity of thought. In this song recorded by Miss Fletcher, there is a stanzaic germ of typically primitive quality. It is lengthened, possibly, for singing. The composer shaped three words into the form of a stanza by the use of repetitions and the addition of vocables.

Noⁿ-we shka-dse, noⁿ-we shka-dse;

Ha-ha! e he tha, Ha-ha! we

Ha-ha! e he tha.

Ha-ha! e he tha tha. Ho-ga!

Noⁿ-we shka-dse, noⁿ-we shka-dse;

Ha-ha! e he tha.

In countless song-poems, however, the compactness of thought and swift unity of impression have evolved stanzas with complex and studied patterns of thought-rhythm.

Other distinct influences over the varying patterns of the stanza are the mystic numbers and the dramatic element in the ceremonials, the former more often determining the length of the stanzas and the number of such divisions in a song. The ritualistic use of the numbers two, three, four, five, six, seven, and occasionally of multiples of these numbers, determines the number of stanzas and repetitions in ritualistic songs. It is rather unusual to find distinct tribal preferences in the number of song divisions; although the Taos Pueblo uses two parts and the Blackfoot tribe often seven. Orientation to the world quarters has almost universally established some use of four stanzas and four repetitions in religious songs. Dramatic influence emphasizes the fourfold division, especially in the ritual.

The length of the stanza at no point appears as fixed as the number of stanzas and repetitions. The stanzaic pattern repeats itself exactly more often in a ritual song than in a secular. Many of the odes have extremely long stanzas, some units of thought reaching to one hundred lines, as the Prayer of the First Dancers in the Navaho Night Chant. The length of the stanza in other songs may range from the distich to the sixteen line unit, although little stanzas of three to six lines appear to be the most pleasing to the Indian poet. The longer stanzas commonly employ preludes and refrains and at times resort to repetition of matter.

The oral lyric makes certain special demands of the composer. There must be devices for marking off the stanzas. In addition to certain formal patterns of repetition, these devices include tag endings, such as conclude the scenes in Elizabethan drama, endings with a sharp contrast in pitch and care in enunciation. The drop in pitch appears at the close of the unit of music corresponding to the unit of verse. There may occur, also, a complete change of rhythm and a distinct change in thought from stanza to stanza. Cycles of short songs, or song-sequences with fixed repetitions in the ceremonials, give the effect of stanzaic divisions. We must conclude that the lack of written or printed forms appears no hindrance to the development of stanzaic patterns.

The question of rhyme schemes invites more attention than some other markers of the stanza. It is, to be sure, a relatively unimportant factor in Indian rhythms: although the wide use of assonance commonly approximates rhyme, and elaborate schemes of repetition serve a like purpose. Various schemes of rhyme are used in the songs of The Night Chant, particularly in the internal and end rhymes. In the Song of the Meal Rubbing[1] the second element in the internal rhyme scheme binds the lines together:

Bĭtsísi ...

Estsanatléhisi ...

Alkaíye ...

Bikenagádbe ...

Bitalataibe ...

Bĭdatóʿbe ...

Biselataíbe ...

Bĭthadĭtínbe ...

Bĭdetsébe ...

Sána-nogaíbe ...

Biké-hozóbe ...

A simpler and more characteristic internal rhyme scheme is found in the Prayer of the First Dancers,[2] aaa bbb, in lines 14 to 21:

... nĭkégo ...

... nĭsklégo ...

... niégo ...

... nitságo ...

... bininĭnlágo ...

... dahitágo ...

Two further illustrations show the Navaho command of end rhymes. In the Daylight Song,[3] there is easy inversion of pattern, abba:

... dóla aní,

... bĭźa holó,

... bĭźa hozó,

... hwí he inlí.

In Slayer of the Alien Gods,[4] the rhyme aaaaa achieves a definite tone color, rounding with a full open syllable:

... sĭnĭsnlígo,

... hánatahasgo,

... nítatahasgo,

... ínatahasgo,

... nínatahasgo.

We must keep in mind that these uses of rhyme serve only a secondary purpose in drawing together the elements of the pattern within the stanza.

The stanza of Indian verse, it readily appears, is flexible in form—both in length of line and in length of thought-unit. The rapid tempo employs a short line, as in this Maliseet Dance-Song:[1]

Kive-hiu-wha-ni-ho

Ya hi ye

Kive-hiu-wha-ni-yo

Ya hi ye

Kshi-te-ka-mo-tikʹlo

Ya hi ye

Pilsh-kwe-sis-tokʹlo

Ya hi ye

Kshi-te-ka-mo-tikʹlo

Ya hi ye

Twa, twa, twa, twa!

The short line does not merely accompany rapid movement. It appears a measure of severe economy in some prayers in which the Indian catalogs his daily needs for seventy or more lines! The formal invocations, however, commonly use the longer line and the slower movement. Long, slow, even lines breathe the lament of the Death of Taluta and the reflective cadences of Mount Koonak: A Song of Arsut.

The variation of the lyric line shows technical skill. The Dance-Song just quoted beats out only a simple alteration of long and short lines. The Song of the Coyote and the Locust begins with long flowing lines, but snaps off with a gay quick ending:

Tchumali, tchumali, shohkoya,

Yaamii heeshoo taatani tchupatchiute

Shohkoya,

Shohkoya!

When the shorter line falls within the stanza, there is greater play of mood and thought, with the elasticity of the outward swing and return in the rhythm of the thought as we feel it through the succession of stanzas in The Song of the Rain Chant. The line of verse sweeps outward and the thought recedes at the ebb, as clearly as a Hiroshige wave crest lifts and the waters return to their level.

Within the silhouette of the verse are indisputable metrical patterns, some structural, some decorative. These patterns frequently occur in phrases; and these phrases, in turn, fall into a larger pattern which may be repeated or may be interchanged with other patterns of corresponding values. They are sometimes of amazing complexity, yet form a compact unity of design.

Few correspondences appear in the versification of the white race; but the Indians’ use of pitch[1] for marking off rhythmic units is similar to such a use in Chinese poetry. For analysis, we must observe native singers and study phonographic records. The printed verse gives little opportunity for the study of meter except through musical accompaniment, when the phrases of the music and of the verse coincide, as few notable investigators have set down accent and quantity. Only phonographic records show the use of pitch in rhythm, an element most familiar to any one who has ever heard the Indians chant and sing. Two related arts explain the unique character of Indian lyric measures, the musical setting and the oral rendition of the poem.

Miss Natalie Curtis once asked an Indian singer, “Which came first, the words or the music?”

“They came at the same moment,” he answered.

We must accept that explanation for the choicest lyrics: yet we cannot, in that way, account for some performances of remarkable ingenuity. A singer with the art of a counterpuntist may subordinate the iambic word-rhythm of his poem to an alternating three-four and two-four rhythm of the melody, while he dances at the same moment to the unaccented rhythm of the drum. The whole question turns again in his next song in which he faithfully sets the lilt of his verse to the corresponding rhythm of the music. Any first hand comparison of the word-rhythm and the melodic rhythm proceeds with the greatest difficulty. Since the Indian invariably sings the lyrics, often many times, before dictating the words, he tends to employ the melodic rhythm in speaking the lines.

It is possible, of course, that the shifting of natural speech stresses to adapt the verse to the music marks the distinct composition of words and of music, with the latter as the earlier effort. There can be no doubt that, in aboriginal life, music is more generally persistent than words, and that new verses sometimes replace forgotten songs. On the other hand, it is equally certain that many of these misfit songs are only inferior compositions, hobbling in their meter just as the white poet’s lyrics at times go haltingly in their rhythm.

Whether the Indian poet composed his lyric and melody simultaneously or composed the verse to the rhythm of the melody, he conceived his song as an oral expression which should set free his mood through an interpretive accompaniment. That some melodies have changed their verbal associations in the history of centuries may indicate that new experiences have informed their characteristic rhythms. If the original words have been lost, it is entirely possible that the new poem is perfectly adjusted to the music as a genuine re-expression of the rhythm and sweep of the melody. We have a notable instance in English in the poetry of Burns.

Indian lyric poetry has, we have noted, the qualities of oral verse. It employs a number of devices to mark off rhythmic units: stress, accent, range in pitch, quantity, and effort in enunciation. Stress and the higher pitch coincide almost universally. The dramatic and the musical influence require some use of quantity. Aside from its main use in the tag ending of verse or stanza when stress is not used for that purpose, effort in enunciation appears to be an accidental rhythmic element, depending upon the use of the high, close vowels, as e, and the aspirated, closed, and guttural consonants. It is, therefore, least useful when it coincides with the other devices of rhythm—lost, as it must be, in the use of stress. Indian poetry makes a sharp distinction, it must be observed, between accent and stress, the latter requiring definite bodily effort, even explosive enunciation.

The oral rendition of a poem brings us to some unexpected turns in versification. A scholar observes that one must have an Indian throat to sing these songs. This physical control is two fold: unique control of the breathing and contraction or pulsation of the glottis, especially in measures of unusual length. In Indian verse, there is a lengthening of the metrical unit beyond the ordinary limits of European verse in feet of six, seven, eight, and nine syllables, with but one syllable prominent in stress, pitch, or quantity. The Indian sings and speaks on for hours without apparent weariness.

The elemental two and three syllabled feet appear universally in Indian poetry, but commonly in phrases with the longer feet of five to nine syllables, as in the Pledge Song of the Chippewa: nín-da-ca-mi-gog | éya. Another pattern has the recurring metrical phrase of three, six, and five syllables: í e ba | bá-pi-ni-si-wa-gûn | gé-non-de-ci-nan. A rhythmic group of five and one may be varied by the substitution of a three syllabled and a two syllabled measure for that of five syllables. A song may carry a two syllabled rhythm consistently, even when all repetitions of line are disregarded:

O-kú-wah-tsá, úm weh dah án,

Hang wén bo wú u wán moon pí,

Han wán bo hí wut di ún wéh dah án,

É yan ne yá ah né yáh na án.

Ah é yan ne yáh ah né yáh na án.

A Papago harvest song, for instance, balances high and low pitched measures in rising three syllabled rhythm, which suggests a dance with gesture or swaying of the body. In each phrase of the song, the foot of the higher pitch carries the heavier stress. This double use of pitch and stress, or accent, in phrases of two measures runs throughout the song, showing the regularity of metrical pattern to be expected where the lyric accompanies action or ritual observance. Such definite schemes of short measures do not appear as commonly as in English lyric poetry. In many Indian lyrics there is a tendency to avoid such emphatic rhythms—a tendency toward the free rhythms, though the sense of measure is never lost. On the whole, Indian lyric poetry is highly rhythmical in structure, although not closely metrical.

The most interesting metrical patterns are the long units which almost escape the ear as they die away in the low pitched glottal vibrations of a glide. In these measures, liquid consonants frequently combine with open vowels; though a Chippewa singer may take b, t, g, and k in one long unit. The singer finds the feet of eight and nine syllables easiest when they are made up of vocables or of elongations of a syllable, as e-ye-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-, receding in delicate sound waves and requiring no effort in enunciation. These sound waves may occur as a scarcely perceptible double pulsation within the long unit, in such syllables as e-ya, ai-ya, which require little articulation. The poet can sing them indefinitely, as they fall into the rhythm of respiration. This syllabic group is the irreducible unit within the foot; if we eliminate the lengthening of a vowel, a device for the singer rather than for the poet.

The function of the vocable in the metrical design is nonessential from the intellectual viewpoint; but there is a clear value, from an æsthetic viewpoint, in the full rounded vowels of many syllables. They give tone color to the whole song, and enrich the metrical design.

The range in metrical patterns gives infinite variety and freedom to Indian verse. The poet varies even his repetition of rhythmic phrases by using different degrees of pitch. By far the most notable element in Indian versification, in fact, is this art of combining dissimilar rhythms and of playing one against another with the effect of many instruments.

All the subtlety of charm and melody in the verse evades analysis in the study of rhythms; yet poetry is no less beautiful because we catch the grace of a flowing line and the play of assonance through open syllables, as in the Zuñi Sunset Song; the contrasting gaiety of light, quick, staccato movement; or the faultless symmetry of antiphonals. It is extremely difficult to interpret in terms of occidental prosody the poetic genius which arose from an alien civilization. We must constantly return to our cultural backgrounds for explanation.

It is not an incidental play-motif that the Zuñi children sing in the Hymn to the Sun, “Listen, just listen,” as they hold spiral shells to their ears. Mr. Troyer wrote: “The primary aim seems to be to develop early in life, by mechanical aids, the perception of solar vibration, which later in life becomes a natural gift.” A critic whose hearing is less sensitive than that of the Red Man will remain wholly unaware of many delicate nuances.

These subtle changes in Indian lyrics can scarcely be said to follow metrical laws, yet cannot be thought accidental. The shifting influence of pause is negligible. There is slight use of quantity except in vocalic and consonantal interplay, and that is most elusive. Subtleties of mood and thought in the line may turn swiftly from the flowing movement to the staccato with corresponding shift in measure. A distinct influence appears in the cluster-rhythms of holophrastic compounds. This element becomes especially noticeable when the singer pauses to dictate the words of his song. The crest words or syllables in a line, particularly in the recessional movement and in descending pitch, may also shift the metrical emphasis. In the Zuñi song Lover’s Wooing, the crest words are most distinct: blanket, maiden, awaiting, alone, walk, come. The rhythm bends to them.

To one who has listened to countless Indian songs, there remains another logical influence over the exquisite variations of these lyrics—mimesis of elements of the natural world. The rhythms of nature float through the rhythms of Indian verse. The winds are imitated in the oral rendition of many poems: the minor key, the little rushes of wind, the full swell of sound, the gradual dying away. Curiously enough, the Plains tribes call their songs in recollection of the absent “wind songs,” in true appreciation of their minor key.

The steady patter or downfall of rain sings a welcome rhythm to the Indian of the plains and of the southwest. There is an insistence in the rhythm of many rain-songs that is mimetic, not only in the total effect of rain but distinctly so in the character of metrical units. “I like those songs,” an old man once said to me quite simply, his face quickened with a smile. His songs had just measured the summer rain, then dropped away through gliding syllables to a whispering echo—the wind and the rain!

It is the natural, joyous response of the Red Man to his surroundings that catches up these free rhythms of the out-door world and shapes his gesture and thought in measure with them in his improvisations. In the subtlety of its rhythms, Indian lyric poetry cannot detach itself from these external influences; for no race of the modern world lives more intimately with nature, sensing its most delicate expressions, its most exquisite sounds and movements.

These natural rhythms, though constantly recurring, may appear largely incidental; yet there are elemental laws at work determining lyric rhythms, laws we must seek behind the poetic impulse. One law is that poetic art, as all other arts, shall be rooted fast in the physical surroundings which temper the race. Any effort to wrest an art from that traditional environment breaks it off at the tap root.