[6] Both story and song were recited to me by an old priest of the rite, and were interpreted by Mr. James R. Murie.
[7] It was one of the customs of the Omahas to cease wailing at a certain stage in the funeral ceremonies, that the departing friend might not be distressed by the sounds of sorrow, as he left his home behind him,—a custom founded on the same belief as that expressed by this funeral song.
[8] Young men carried small looking-glasses with which they flashed signals.
[9] Sighing vocables.
[10] Dakota term for the thunder bird.
[11] These songs were never before noted, and have hitherto been sealed from the knowledge of the white race. They were given and explained by a priest of the rite, through Mr. James R. Murie.
[12] A careful analysis of hundreds of aboriginal songs, gathered from the arctic seas to the tropics, shows that in every instance the line taken by these tones is a chord-line where the tones are harmonically related to each other. Out of these related tones the untutored savage has built his simple melodies. The demonstration of the interesting fact that "the line of least resistance" in music is a harmonic line was made by my late associate, Professor John Comfort Fillmore.