which our earliest literature and music flourished.

Within a generation diligent search has begun among some of the Indian
tribes, to ascertain, through a sympathetic study of rites,
ceremonies, and customs, what were the red man's ideals, what his
beliefs, and what his actual attainments. Already this labour is
bearing fruit. Scholars are recognising that the aboriginal conditions
on this continent throw light on the slow development of human society
and its institutions; and the time seems not distant when students of
man's culture will turn hither for evidence needed to fill gaps or to
explain phases in the development of art,--art in form, in colour, and
in melody,--for, it has been well said, America is the "fossil bed"
where are preserved stages of progress unrecorded in written history.

In Indian story and song we come upon a time where poetry is not yet
differentiated from story and story not yet set free from song. We
note that the song clasps the story as a part of its being, and the
story itself is not fully told without the cadence of the song. Yet in
even the most primitive examples a line of demarcation can be
discerned; and when this line has deepened, and differentiation has
begun, we are able to trace the formative influence exerted by story
upon song and by song upon story, and can observe what appear to be
the beginnings of musical and poetical structure.

The brevity of Indian songs at once arrests attention. They begin
without introduction, almost abruptly, breaking out upon us as though
surcharged. This peculiarity arises from the relation of the song to
the story. The story is always founded upon a dramatic circumstance,
in which at some point the emotion is forced to find a means of
expression beyond the limitation of words alone; and the song is the
result. This dramatic circumstance may be a danger confronted or
averted, a valorous deed achieved or a difficulty surmounted, a
religious experience or an ardent craving for supernatural aid. The
Omaha tribal prayer will serve as an illustration, where the cry to
Wa-ko_n_-da is the climatic voicing of the youth's desire in the midst
of his weary vigil and fasting. His long preparation for the rite, the
solitude of his surroundings, the suffering of mind and body as alone
he faces nature and the supernatural,--all these conditions make the
story, and, to the Indian, form the true setting of the song.

The motive of a song and its distinctive rh