2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 53 



showing occasionally changes in unimportant progressions or in the 

 number of phrases at the close. In the course of these comparisons 

 it was shown that an old man repeated vnth. accuracy at mtervals of 

 several months a song of very irregular rhythm; it w^as shown also 

 in one instance that a young man modified the rhythm of an old song, 

 making it conform somewhat to the common rhythms of the white 

 race. 



A number of Chippewa songs, as transcribed, have no words. Some 

 of these songs originally may have had words and in a limited number 

 of the love songs the words partake so much of the nature of a 

 soliloquy that they can not conveniently be translated and given 

 with the music. The words of most of the Chippewa songs are few 

 in number and suggest rather than express the idea of the song. 

 Only in the love songs and in a few of the IVIide' songs are the w^ords 

 continuous. In the latter the w^ords may be altered slightly, provided 

 the idea remains the same (see Bulletin 45, p. 14). A similar change 

 of words in a war song is noted in the analj^sis of song No. 37 in the 

 present work. A change of words in love songs is described in 

 Bulletm 45 (p. 2). Although the Chippewa say that the words of a 

 song may be changed, it is the experience of the writer that, with the 

 exception of love songs, the words of a song seldom vary in renditions 

 by different singers. The words of Chippewa songs are frequently 

 changed to conform to the music, syllables being omitted or added, 

 and meaningless syllables introduced between the syllables of a 

 word. The accent of a word is frequently changed in accordance 

 with the accent of the music, and a word is sometimes accented 

 differently in the several parts of a song. These and other changes 

 are permissible in fitting the words to the note-values of a song. A 

 subordination of words to melody, and use of meaningless words and 

 syllables has been noted by Doctor Myers in his study of primitive 

 music. ^ 



What do the Chippewa Sing? 



Some peculiarities of Chippew-a music are indicated in 22 tables of 

 analysis (pp. 18-33), 14 of which concern the melody and 8 the 

 rhythm of voice and drum. This section is descriptive of the results 

 of this tabulated analysis. 



The first broad division of the material is into songs of major and 

 of minor tonality. (Table 1.) The term "key" can not properly be 

 used in this work, as the complete tone-sj^stem implied by that term 



1 Charles S. Myers, M. A., M. D., The Ethnological ftudy of Music (in Anthropological Essays Presented 

 to Edward Lurnett Tylor, etc., 'p.ZiS): "The v.-0Tds are commonly sacTif.ced to the tvne. . . . We fre- 

 quently find that liberties are taken with words, or that n-carinfless words or syllables are introduced into 

 primitive music. Yet another cause of the rresenceofnteaningless words lies in the antiquity of the music. 

 The words become so archaic, or their sense was originally so invoh cd or so symbolical that all meaning 

 gradually disappears as the song is handed down from generation to generation." 



