American
Indian Love Lyrics

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
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THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO

American Indian Love
Lyrics and Other Verse

From the Songs of the
North American Indians

Selected by
Nellie Barnes

Foreword by
Mary Austin

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
1925

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
SET UP AND ELECTROTYPED, PUBLISHED DEC., 1925.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY
THE BERWICK & SMITH CO.

PREFACE

The influence of American Indian song-literature has touched both the music and the literature of contemporary America. Those writers who use Indian themes are legion. Mary Austin has gone farthest, perhaps, among the writers of the day in relating her poetic work to the native rhythms of America.

These native rhythms pulsed through the songs of our Red Men for centuries before our Christian era. The very beautiful Aztec and the Inca poetry belong to the earlier and more highly developed civilizations. Since it is the purpose of this volume to treat of the more primitive forms of rhythm, it has seemed best to limit the illustrations to songs from tribes north of Mexico.

The late Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin’s collection of songs in The Indians’ Book makes that volume quite the most representative source book for the study of Indian lyrics. The original texts of unusual range in poetic patterns, the musical settings, the interlinear translations, and the accompanying narratives add a rich context to free translations of genuine literary merit.

Among other contributions to Indian song-literature, the studies of Miss Alice Cunningham Fletcher, Mr. Carlos Troyer, and Doctor Washington Matthews hold a particular charm for the investigator.

Mrs. Austin’s notable work, The American Rhythm, an analysis of the primitive poetic impulse, with illustrations from her own translations, came from the press after the writer’s study of Indian poetic rhythms had been under way for some years. The conclusions for this volume have been limited, therefore, to those about poetic forms.

The writer is greatly indebted to Mrs. Austin for her generous interest in earlier work and especially for her helpful criticism of this study.

N. B.

Santa Fe, July 29, 1925

FOREWORD

The student of poetry in America enjoys an opportunity, such as has never been practicable for the European student, to come in contact with the source and mould of poetic form. For in Europe, the overlaying of all native activity by the sedulously cultivated Greek and Roman preferences, the deliberate turning of scholarly inquiry from what was self-sprung and indigenous toward what had been perfected in another environment and upon other roots, left the whole subject of the origin of form dangling in the atmosphere of theory and surmise. To this day the most that we know of the high forms of poesy in Europe is owed less to authentic tradition than to the scholastic rehumation of native remains in dance and ritual, of what was once, in the interest of the classic ideal, discarded and buried, or at the least, permitted to survive only among the unlettered folk.

Fortunately for our general understanding of poetic form, the Greeks had no such snobbish scruples as arose later throughout Europe against admitting the origin of their most majestic poetic medium in the communal dance around the tribal altar. Here in the United States we are, by a turn of fortune, undeserved and underappreciated, able to watch the evolution of poetic form from stages somewhat earlier than those recorded by Aristotle, going on as an indigenous type of human expression. We are face to face here with the evolution of lyric form out of the stanzaic act, ritualistically repeated; with the approach to the ode, along the path struck out by primitive man in the identification of himself with the sources of high states of being.

We confront these things as unselfconscious acts, rather than as fragmentary and over-annotated poetic remains. We are able to refer them directly to accompanying gestures, to generative social occasions, and the environmental matrix. And we have to guess or to theorize, where these things are obligatory, only in reference to minds whose movements are influenced by factors lying open to intelligent apprehension.

To point this out, by way of introduction to the first thoughtful attempt to put the material for a valid conclusion as to the origin of poetic form, in order for the unspecialized reader, is not to subtract anything from the difficulty of the task, nor to minimize the importance of the result. So careless has American scholarship been of our rich resources in this direction, that merely for Miss Barnes to have realized their richness and to have collected illustrative examples of them from the widely scattered and occasionally obscure sources, implies not only a general background of wide literary knowledge, but a fund of literary intelligence and much industry. It also implies a quality of restraint not infrequently lacking from such undertakings, in not attempting to bridge the gaps and supply the missing links by even the most plausible theory. Such restraint in view of the usual American demand for a complete tabloid statement, an assumption that does away with the necessity for further inquiry, is so much the more unusual that some of the credit for making this inquiry accessible surely devolves not only on the University in which it could take place, but upon the publisher who ventures to present it.

Merely by collecting from authentic sources, by discarding doubtful examples and by intelligent grouping of the best translations of Amerindian lyrics, according to their formative tendency, Miss Barnes has done more than perhaps she herself realizes, to uncover the influences at work on the primitive poetic impulse, to crystallize it into forms best suited to the expression of a progressively higher poetic content. To one who reads her simple statement of the relation of sacred numbers, fours and sixes and sevens, to what Miss Barnes calls the “thought rhythm” as determining the form of primitive verse, and reads it without other knowledge of Indians than is included in these pages, it will scarcely appear that the still profounder influence is the natural environment, determining the force of climate, landscape line, and food succession in the cultural life of the particular tribe. But to one familiar with environmental distinctions between Zuñi and Iroquois and Omaha, there will be distinctive pleasure in tracing relationships between verse forms and the known formative features of the given landscape. To such a reader there will also appear intimate relations between the repetitive pattern of formal elements, the range and interdependence of dance movements, and of decorative patterns of beadwork and textiles. It would, in fact, be very little trouble to accompany each poem in this collection with an appropriate design either of gesture or decorative elements, drawn from the life of that tribe, in which the distribution of formative elements would make a pattern recognizably that of the poem. As for example, in the Paiute Lament of a Man for His Son, the gesture of the first movement would be that inevitable to a man standing at the head of his son’s corpse, and striving beyond his grief to descry his son’s spirit walking the spirit road; the gesture of the second movement, the reverent, slightly swaying tread of friends bearing the body on their shoulders over uneven ground; and of the last movement, the final tearing wrench of human affection. In the same manner, the Iroquois Hymn on the dissolution of the Great League, carries the gesture of up-flung arms, and the bowing of heads that dust may be cast upon them; while in the Navaho and Pueblo Rain Chants, there is the recurrent but always slightly variable motif of the landscape as the determinant of the verbal pattern, as you can see on any old Zuñi tinaja. It is the precision with which Miss Barnes makes these things appear to the initiate, without at the same time obscuring the more obvious conclusions for the average reader, which distinguishes what she has to say above all other writings on the subject. No one who reads her notes on Amerindian verse forms need feel the limitation of personal knowledge a hindrance to his æsthetic and intellectual enjoyment of the poems themselves.

I know of but one parallel to this achievement in the current descriptions of aboriginal culture in the United States. That is in George Bird Grinnell’s account of Cheyenne games, in which, without saying as much, the relation of all games to man’s aboriginal puzzlement about the world he lives in is convincingly brought out. Mr. Grinnell’s account should be read in connection with Miss Barnes’ work for the further light it throws on the origin of patterns, social, decorative, or literary, in living human impulses. In so far as any study does this, and especially as it does it in respect to areas of literary activity all too scantily familiar, it constitutes an indispensable service to American scholarship.

Mary Austin.

CONTENTS

AMERICAN INDIAN LOVE LYRICS

PART ONE
Indian Love Lyrics and Other Verse selected from the songs of the North American Indians

MY BARK CANOE (Ojibwa)

In the still night, the long night through,

I guide my bark canoe,

My love, to you.

While the stars shine, and falls the dew,

I seek my love in bark canoe—

I seek for you.

It is I, love, your lover true,

Who glides the stream in bark canoe.

It glides to you,

My love, to you.

HER SHADOW (Ojibwa)

Out on the lake my canoe is gliding,

Paddle dipping soft lest she should take alarm;

Ah, hey-ah hey-ah ho, hey-ah hey-ah ho, thus I go!

Somewhere along shore she is hiding,

She is shy to yield to love’s alluring charm;

Ah, hey-ah hey-ah ho, hey-ah hey-ah, love will win, I know.

There is a shadow swiftly stealing!

Should it be her own, soon I will win the race;

Ah hey-ah hey-ah ho, hey-ah hey-ah ho, I think it is!

Will she but turn, herself revealing,

I will shout aloud when-e’er I see her face.

Ah! hey-ah hey-ah ho, hey-ah hey-ah ho,

There she is!

LOVER’S WOOING or BLANKET SONG (Zuñi)

I

O what happiness!

How delightful,

When together we

’Neath one blanket walk.

We together

’Neath one blanket walk,

We together

’Neath one blanket walk,

We walk.

O! What happiness!

How delightful,

When together we

’Neath one blanket walk.

We together,

’Neath one blanket walk,

We together,

’Neath one blanket walk,

We walk.

II

Can it be that

My young maiden fair

Sits awaiting,

All alone tonight?

Is she waiting

For me only?

Is she waiting

For me only?

III

May I hope it is

My young maiden

Sitting all alone

And awaiting me;

Will she come then?

Will she walk with me?

’Neath one blanket

We together be,

We—we two, we two,

We two, we two—

Will she come?

PAPAGO LOVE SONG (Papago)

Early I rose

In the blue morning;

My love was up before me,

It came running to me from the doorways of the Dawn.

On Papago Mountain

The dying quarry

Looked at me with my love’s eyes.

LOVE SONG (Dakota)

Many are the youths, many youths:

Thou alone art he who pleaseth me.

Over all I love thee.

Long shall be the years of parting!

THE BRIDE’S SONG (Algonquin)

There are many men in the world,

But only one is dear to me.

He is good and brave and strong.

He swore to love none but me;

He has forgotten me.

It was an evil spirit that changed him,

But I will love none but him.

LONELY (Ojibwa)

Fear not, he sayeth,

Though far away,

Thy lover strayeth

At break of day.

“Go not, my sweetheart,”

Vainly I cry,

“To yon far island,”

Yearning I sigh.

Thither must I go,

Sadly I moan;

Heavy my woe,

Left here alone.

WAR SONG (Dakota)

Friend, whatever hardships threaten,

If thou call me,

I’ll befriend thee;

All enduring fearlessly,

I’ll befriend thee.

ONONDAGA HYMN (Iroquois)

Woe! Woe!

Hearken ye!

We are diminished!

Woe! Woe!

The cleared land has become a thicket.

Woe! Woe!

The cleared places are deserted.

Woe!

They are in their graves—

They who established it—

Woe!

The great League.

Yet they declared

It should endure—

The great League.

Woe!

Their work has grown old.

Woe!

Thus we are become miserable.

LAMENT OF A MAN FOR HIS SON (Paiute)

Son, my son!

I will go up to the mountain

And there I will light a fire

To the feet of my son’s spirit,

And there will I lament him;

Saying,

O my son,

What is my life to me, now you are departed!

Son, my son,

In the deep earth

We softly laid thee

In a Chief’s robe,

In a warrior’s gear.

Surely there,

In the spirit land

Thy deeds attend thee!

Surely,

The corn comes to the ear again!

But I, here,

I am the stalk that the seed-gatherers

Descrying empty, afar, left standing.

Son, my son!

What is my life to me, now you are departed?

DEATH OF TALUTA (Siouan)

Ah, spirit, thy flight is mysterious!

While the clouds are stirred by our wailing,

And our tears fall faster in sorrow—

While the cold sweat of night benumbs us,

Thou goest alone on thy journey—

In the midst of the shining star people!

Thou goest alone on thy journey—

Thy memory shall be our portion;

Until death we shall watch for the spirit.

WIND SONG (Kiowa)

O you warriors, you have loved ones

Longing for you, longing for you;

Rich are ye.

O you lovers, you have maidens

Longing for you; none have I.

Wherefore droop ye in silence, so downcast?

Cheer your hearts with song, ho!

BLUEBIRD SONG (Pima)

Hai-ya, hai-ya,—hai-ya, hai-ya—

All my song is lost and gone.

Sad at heart is the bluebird,

All my song is lost and gone,

Woe is me, alas! alas!

All my song is lost and gone!

SONG OF THE UNHAPPY WIFE (Dakota)

Sorely I am distressed;

Sorely I am distressed;

Sorely I am distressed.

The earth alone continues long;

I speak as one not expecting to live,

Sorely I am distressed;

The earth alone continues long.

THE SONG OF UKIABI (Cegiha)

I am walking to and fro!

I can find nothing which can heal my sorrow.

A LOVER’S LAMENT (Tewa)

My little breath, under the willows by the water-side we used to sit,

And there the yellow cottonwood bird came and sang.

That I remember and therefore I weep.

Under the growing corn we used to sit,

And there the little leaf bird came and sang.

That I remember and therefore I weep.

There on the meadow of yellow flowers we used to walk.

Oh, my little breath! Oh, my little heart!

There on the meadow of blue flowers we used to walk.

Alas! how long ago that we two walked in that pleasant way.

Then everything was happy, but, alas! how long ago.

There on the meadow of crimson flowers we used to walk.

Oh, my little breath, now I go there alone in sorrow.

MY HOME OVER THERE (Tewa)

My home over there, my home over there,

My home over there, now I remember it!

And when I see that mountain far away,

Why, then I weep. Alas! what can I do?

What can I do? Alas! What can I do?

My home over there, now I remember it!

HUNTING-SONG (Navaho)

Comes the deer to my singing,

Comes the deer to my song,

Comes the deer to my singing.

He, the blackbird, he am I,

Bird beloved of the wild deer.

Comes the deer to my singing.

From the Mountain Black,

From the summit,

Down the trail, coming, coming now,