Contents of "Primitive Indian Tunes"
Arrangements that draw on Fletcher’s Indian Story and Song
The Tunes Identified as Omaha
- 01 "Omaha Rest Song of the Leader” (He dhu shka)
- 02 "Trysting Love Song” (Omaha)
- 03 “Zon-zi-monde”
- 05 “Song of the Coquet”
- 06 “Omaha: He-dhu-shka”
- 09 “Indian Love Song"
- 13 “Omaha Tribal Prayer”
The Tunes from other Indigenous peoples
- 04 "Mocking Bird Song” [Tigua, New Mexico]
- 07 “Prayer for Rain” [Mexico]
- 08 "Pawnee Love Song” [Pawnee]
- 12 “Song from Brit. Columbia” [Kwakiutl]
- 15 “Navaho Ritual Song” [Navajo]
- 16 “Game Song” (Vancouver’s [sic] Island)”
Arrangements that draw on Burton's American Primitive Music
The Tunes Identified as Ojibwa
- 10 “The Red Blanket”
- 11 “My Bark Canoe"
- 14 “The Lake Sheen” (Ojibway)
Arrangements where the source material is unclear
The Tunes Identified as Eastern Cherokee
- 17 “Weaver Dance Song”
- 18 “Eagle Dance Song”
- 19 “Social Dance”
- 20 “Quail Dance”
- 21 “Bear Dance” [in part]
For tunes #17-21, these are identified as "Eastern Cherokee." #17 and #18 are attributed to Moses Walking Stick and dated June and Summer 1938, respectively. #19 and #20 are identified as Indian Fair October 1938. A page of pencil sketches titled "First Impression of Eagle Dance Song" and "First Impression of Weaver Dance Song" suggest that Zeisberg himself made the original transcriptions. It is unclear, however, whether these were made from live performances or recordings, and whether he might have met Moses Walking Stick or attended the Indian Fair. Likewise, it is unclear whether he was at home in Missouri or whether he was exposed to these materials when visiting the Eastern Cherokee Reservation in North Carolina.
It's hard to know exactly for what purpose Zeisberg used these arrangements. He was retired by the time he penned them. Were they exercises to share with private students, pedagogical exercises in the art or arranging, arrangements to entertain guests in the parlor, or work towards his own compositional or arrangement project? We don't know why and how he came to be interested in Indigenous sonic practices. We can assume that he was inspired to take up the charge articulated by Fletcher in the preface to Indian Story and Song, to use the "stories" and "songs" as "themes, novel and characteristic" for compositional activity. Using her terms, he took the "wild flowers" and subjected them to the "transforming hand of the gardener" (1900:vii-viii). Indeed, I am not aware of the historical record offering up clearer evidence of this kind of engagement with Fletcher's book. And, at the very least, these artifacts do tell us some about colonial attitudes towards musical practices of Indigenous peoples: to be collected, to be arranged for entertainment of Settlers, whether the motivations were benign and enlightened for the time, or not. I share these transcriptions in their entirety as an artifact of colonialist social and musical history. However they make us feel, they are our past.