"At first it was very hard to hear them," said Miss Fletcher. "The Indians never sang to be heard by others. Their singing was a spontaneous expression of their feeling—for the most part, religious feeling. In their religious ceremonies the noise of the dancing and of the drums and rattles often made it very hard to really catch the sound of the voice."
Day after day she strove to hear and write down bits of the music, but it was almost like trying to imprison the sound of the wind in the tree-tops.
"Do you remember," said Miss Fletcher, "how the old Saxon poet tried to explain the mystery of life by saying it was like a bird flying through the windows of a lighted hall out of the darkness to darkness again? An Indian melody is like that. It has no preparations, no beginning. It flashes upon you and is gone, leaving only a teasing memory behind."
While this lover of music was vainly trying to catch these strangely beautiful strains of melody, the unaccustomed hardships of her life brought upon her a long illness. There was compensation, however, for when she could no longer go after the thing she sought it came to her. Her Indian friends who had found out that she was interested in their songs gathered about her couch to sing them for her.
"So my illness was after all like many of our so-called trials, a blessing in disguise," said Miss Fletcher. "I was left with this lameness, but I had the music. The sigh had become a song!"
You have, perhaps, heard of the great interest that many learned people have in the songs and stories of simple folk—the folk-songs and folk-tales of different lands. Did you know that Sir Walter Scott's first work in literature was the gathering of the simple ballads of the Scottish peasants which they had long repeated just as you repeat the words of "ring games" learned from other children?
Did you know that most of the fairy stories and hero tales that you love were told by people who had never held a book in their hands, and were repeated ages and ages ago before the time of books? Just as it is true that broad, flowing rivers have their source in streams that well up out of the ground, so it is true that the literature of every nation has its source in the fancies that have welled up out of the hearts and imaginations of the simple people. The same thing is true of music. Great composers like Brahms and Liszt took the wild airs of the Hungarian gypsies and made them into splendid compositions that all the world applauds. Chopin has done this with the songs of the simple Polish folk. Dvorák, the great Bohemian composer, has made his "New World Symphony" of negro melodies, and Cadman and others are using the native Indian music in the same way.
Just as the Grimm brothers went about among the German peasants to learn their interesting stories, just as Sir George Dasent worked to get the tales of the Norse, so Alice Cunningham Fletcher worked to preserve the songs and stories of the Indians. Others have come after her and have gone on with the work she began, following the trail she blazed. All musicians agree that this native song with its fascinating and original rhythms may prove the source of inspiration for American composers of genius and give rise to our truest new-world music.
Much of Miss Fletcher's work is preserved in great learned volumes, such as "The Omaha Tribe," published by the National Government, for she wrote as a scientist for those who will carry on the torch of science into the future. But realizing that the music would mean much to many who cannot enter upon the problems with which the wise men concern themselves, she has presented many of the songs in a little book called "Indian Story and Song." We find there, for instance, the "Song of the Laugh" sung when the brave young warrior recounts the story of the way he has slain his enemy with his own club and so helped to fill with fear the foes of his tribe.
We find, too, the story of the youth who begins his life as a man by a lonely vigil when by fasting he proves his powers of endurance.