120 Fillmore—Forms Spontaneously Assumed by Folk-Songs. 
stamping of feet also finds expression in shouts ;• and these vocal 
impulses naturally tend to recur in regular pulsations corres¬ 
ponding to the rhythm of the feet, the handclapping, or the drum. 
The evidence goes to show that these shouts, after a while, tend 
to become musical in character, to occur in a monotone of defi¬ 
nite pitch, or, more frequently, in successive tones which bear 
to each other well-defined pitch-relations. 
Of course these phenomena must be governed by some natural 
law, and that law must be discoverable. When primitive man 
begins to produce musical tones varying in pitch, the sue ces- 
sive melodic intervals must occur along the line of least resistance. 
He is not working on any preconceived theory; he is expressing 
his excited feelings freely and spontaneously and it would seem 
self-evident that the results of this activity must be expressed 
in forms determined by the universal law of all physical move¬ 
ment. 
It has fallen to my lot to become the pioneer as regards 
special inquiry into the problem: What is the line of least resis¬ 
tance for the primitive man making music spontaneously; and it 
has been my good fortune, as I believe, to have discovered the 
clue to the solution of the problem. Before I answer, in words, 
the question just propounded, I desire to call your attention to 
some phonographic records of songs of the Navajo tribe of 
Indians. These records were very carefully taken by Hr. Wash¬ 
ington Matthews of the U. S. Army, during the time when 
he was stationed at Fort Wingate, N. M. They are clearly to 
be taken as the connecting link between excited shouting and 
excited singing. You will observe that, in the two songs 
recorded on this first cylinder, (No. 41), the tone-quality is that 
of shouting or even howling; but that the pitch-relations into 
