Mary Jo Ruggles is an ethnomusicologist who served as professor of music at the University of Oklahoma prior to her retirement in 1994. She has worked extensively with the tribal music of the southern plains. In a show of great respect, the Cheyenne people have allowed Ruggles to record songs associated with the Sun Dance. This essay originally appeared in Remaining Ourselves: Music and Tribal Memory—Traditional Music in Contemporary Communities, edited by Dayna Bowker Lee, published in 1995 by the State Arts Council of Oklahoma.
The core of Native American musical expression is found in its songs. The use of the term "music" is not strong enough to describe the importance of song in Indian cultures, causing a loss of perspective and appreciation in regard to the spirit of personal expression. Songs of American Indian people, when learned in context, offer a window through which we may begin to comprehend many vital lessons from the culture of the people. The song matrix encompasses the name of the tribe, the singer, the maker of the song, the purpose of the song, and the proper time to sing the song.
Many Native American singers close their eyes when they sing, especially personal songs, spiritual songs, memorial songs, or any song that embodies a heightened emotion. They sing from within with the intensity of joy, sadness, love, and knowledge of their Creator. They sing for fun and to promote laughter and good humor. They sing for themselves and they sing for all beings, for all the creatures of the earth. They sing for the earth itself, clouds, water, air, fire, and for all creation.
The songs of the plains tribes are as expansive and diverse as the area known as the plains. There are songs made for all things that are important in the lifeways of the people. The plains of North America have been described as the area contained by the Missouri River on the east and the Rocky Mountains on the west, and by southern west-central Canada on the north and the southern border of Texas on the south. They comprise a vast area of grass prairies, tall grass in the north and shorter grass in the south, with few trees, most of which are willow and cottonwood—an area perfect for the growth of herds of North American bison or what we in Plains Indian Country call the buffalo. One of my favorite descriptions of the plains is found in Scott Momaday's book On the Way to Rainy Mountain:
The earth unfolds and the limit of the land recedes. Clusters of trees, and animals grazing far in the distance, cause the vision to reach away and wonder to build upon the mind. The sun follows a longer course in the day, and the sky is immense beyond all comparison. The great billowing clouds that sail upon it are shadows that move upon the grain like water, dividing light….The sun is at home on the plains. Precisely there does it have the certain character of a god.1
Most of the tribes we now consider to be plains people migrated to the plains from the eastern, southern, western, and northern parts of North America and Canada as necessities of life or tribal wars made it undesirable to continue to live in their places of origin. Many of the tribes now associated with the plains area were not originally nomadic hunters of buffalo but lived in villages near rivers where small game, fish, berries, and other edible plants were available. Some of these tribes were also cultivators of crops, especially corn. As is the way with Indian people, they embraced the changes necessary to continue to live and enjoy family and the earth. After the arrival of the horse (1659-1775),2 a plains culture developed that included traditions from the past, traditions borrowed, and new ways of life.
The songs of these people of the plains reflect reverence for the Creator, who is known by many different tribal names. This reverence extends to the earth, sky, wind, rain, and all the elements of creation, and to the human and animal families of the earth. Songs also profess loyalty to family and tribe, thanksgiving for the spirit and the earthly manifestation of the buffalo and the horse, and good humor for a peaceful and loving existence. A wonderful attribute of Native culture is that everyone can be a singer if they choose, and most choose to sing either privately or with a group. The singers and singer-drummers learn the appropriateness of performance as they learn the song. As with all tribal peoples, songs are intertwined within the layers of lifeways and ceremonial traditions. To learn a song is also to learn about private ownership, family songs, tribally associated songs, ceremonial songs, and songs for all the competition dances. The number of song genres (types) are numerous, and songs within a genre are beyond counting. This great body of songs includes songs of joy and sorrow, courage, love, celebrations, ceremonies, animal songs, personal spiritual songs, church songs, songs for dancing, honoring the earth, honoring each other, social songs, and so on.
The style of songs stretches from reverent prayer chants to wide-ranging melodies expressing joy and excitement. Personal and family songs include tender and funny baby songs and songs of gratitude for love and families. There are also exuberant, raucous songs unbounded by convention, and songs of friendship and gathering together. The songs come to singers in a vision or a dream, on the wind, from the simple need to express joy or sadness, or in the emotion of a moment when nothing else but song would suffice. Songs are embellished, as the spirit moves the singer, with exclamations and ululations or lulus.
Songs of native North Americans are born with a purpose—to fill a specific need in the life of the singer, his family, or his/her tribe. Songs are for singing and all that it implies. A single person offers living breath to express deep emotions. Singing can be either individual or collective, but songs are, from inspiration to first utterance, a gift from the Creator, and always individual. Although songs are an individual expression, they are often shared to become collective expressions. Individual expressions are sometimes kept in individual or family ownership, an ownership that may descend through many generations. As a song is received as a gift from God, it is sometimes given as a gift to another singer or friend as an offering of honor, love, or respect. When a gift of song is given, it is usually given without fanfare and kept only in the memory of those who receive the gift. This exchange represents the value of the song as well as the personal generosity of the giver. When a song is made for a special occasion, in honor of a person or event, the gift is even greater.
The most prominent text used in a large percentage of songs, in addition to tribal languages, is that of the vocable. In her comments about "Oklahoma Two-Step," Charlotte Heth states that "it should be emphasized that these untranslatable syllables (vocables) are not chosen arbitrarily, and that in many cases songs can be identified by their vocable texts as well as by their melodies."3 Vocables are nonlexical syllables that perhaps were once word parts of a tribal language or abbreviations of words no longer in use. It is my opinion that vocables used throughout the plains are made up of the primary vowels used in tribal languages. Thus, tribal people from different language groups within the plains use different vowels as the vocables in their songs. These language groups of the plains are Siouan (Crow, Mandan, Quapaw, Omaha Ponca, Osage, Missouri, Kansa, Iowa-Oto, and Hidatsa), Algonquian (Blackfoot, Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Gros Ventre), Caddoan (Caddo, Wichita, Pawnee, and Arikara), Uto-Aztecan (Comanche), Athapaskan (Kiowa-Apache), and Kiowa-Tanoan (Kiowa).4
Vocables are also used in conjunction with tribal language and sometimes act as introductory and closing parts with tribal language text in the middle. Vocables are also added to phrases of tribal language text to finish a melodic or, more often, a rhythmic gesture.
Although the human voice is the most used instrument of song, it is not the only one. Instruments such as drums, rattles, flutes, and whistles accompany the voice at appropriate times. The drum is the major instrument of the Plains people. It is said to be a home for the spirit of the Creator as manifested by the spirits of the elements that gave up their existence to become the spirit of the drum. Its musical offering stretches from the rolling sound of thunder or buffalo hooves to the somber and respectful cadence of Flag and Memorial songs, from the incessant pulse of a Gourd Dance song to the welcoming and friendly beat of the Round Dance song. Perhaps the most familiar sound to urban America is the exciting sound of War Dance songs used for competition dancing.
The rattle, found in so many forms and used for many different purposes, is often a personal accompaniment to singing. Made from such diverse elements as gourds or aluminum cans, they are often decorated with beadwork that has been constructed with a prayer on every bead or, as used for hand game, with a dazzling tassel made for distracting the guesser for the other side. There are loud, high-pitched rattles, soft sounding rattles made of gourds and natural seeds, and gentle-sounding rattles made of deer toes. Each of these instruments is special to the person who has ownership for as long as he or she needs it. The rattle may have been made by the person using it or given to that person as an honor by a friend or a member of the family.
The instrument called the plains flute has had a place in plains culture for hundreds, even thousands, of years. Its origin is still the subject of much individual and academic speculation. The plains flute, most scholars agree, originated as a courting flute and a personal companion on long journeys. Since the 1970s, this flute has experienced a flowering of renewed popularity. Most of the flute songs heard on radio, cassettes, and compact discs are not in the style of the traditional flute song. The use and sound of the flute has been borrowed by contemporary musicians, both Indian and non-Indian, to create peaceful, serene, and tranquil melodies. Acoustic flute sounds are enhanced by electronics, by the use of several sizes of larger flutes, and aboriginal flutes from other peoples around the world. The flute, once a companion on journeys, is now used by many people for another kind of journey—a journey in an automobile during which it is used to bring a little peace to drivers in a world going too fast and out of control. Through the magic of electronics, it is still used as a courting instrument for both Indian and non-Indian people. Traditional flute songs may still be heard at cultural exhibitions and at native ceremonial and social gatherings and by request from some flute players who remain in touch with the old ways and old songs.
This is a story or afterthought, as a way to synthesize the act of creation, performance, and gift of song:
Not long ago a friend and colleague made a surprise visit to my classroom to give me (and the students in my class) a gift, a gift of himself. He talked about how he felt about songs, and what they meant in his life. He does not sing on a regular basis with a drum group but sings with his people as he joins them on social and sacred occasions. He sang songs in two tribal languages and others with vocables. His story reminded me of how the need to voice an emotion rises within a person and demands expression. He related a time when he made a song. He was riding alone in a pickup truck in northern New Mexico headed for the mountains when the need to express his feelings brought forth a song—a song about the human spirit, first; about the travail of being a human being, second; and, last of all, to voice renewed understanding that all is well under God. His feeling was of a renewed faith caught from the overwhelming display of God's creation. All of these sentiments were expressed with vocables as the human spirit transcended the human being and the song was born on breath from the Creator. Thank you, Phil, for sharing.
NOTES
- Momaday, N. Scott. (1969). On the Way to Rainy Mountain. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 7-12.
- Kehoe, Alice Beck. (1982). North American Indians: A Comprehensive Account. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Press, pp. 297-98.
- Heth, Charlotte. (1976). Songs of Earth, Water, Fire and Sky. New York: New World Records NW 246. Side two, band four.
- Hollow, Robert C, and Parks, Douglas R. (1980). "Studies in Plains Linguistics." In Anthropology on the Great Plains. Ed. W. Raymond Wood and Margot Liberty. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, p. 75.
