Their Songs: Music, Law and Memory

Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending

How to read this entry: Documented fact = land-claims text, census, or published scholarship (Sources). Tradition — the people's own account = Indigenous oral history / Indigenous-organisation teaching, labelled as such. Debated / Claim = disputed point. No ceremonial or restricted content is described. This is a history: song in law, healing, diplomacy and record-keeping north of Mexico; the collecting era; suppression; survival and return. Restriction rule, applied throughout: ceremonial, sacred or society songs that a people does not itself publish are recorded as existing only — never transcribed, never summarised, never dug out. Only published collections and the published record are described, at the level at which they are published.

Song as Law and Record

• A record system, not decoration. Documented fact: on the Northwest Coast, potlatches — feasts witnessing births, marriages, deaths, name-givings and transfers of privilege — served "as a method of recordkeeping in cultures which traditionally did not have a written language," guests receiving gifts to validate the host family's claims (University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology [MOA], n.d.).
• Songs tied to land and rights. Documented fact: among Northwest Coast peoples, "not only objects and property, but also names, songs, dances, and their associated stories are owned by families," use requiring community recognition (MOA, n.d.); potlatches maintain social order "by regulating the ownership of land, title, ancestral names, and music" (Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.). A potlatch song asserted a right before witnesses — closer to producing a deed than giving a concert.
• Haudenosaunee condolence and council song. Documented fact: Horatio Hale's The Iroquois Book of Rites (1883) prints the Condoling Council — a deceased chief lamented, his successor installed — including "the fundamental laws of the league, a list of their ancient towns, and the names of the chiefs who constituted their first council, chanted in a kind of litany"; in every important council "a song or chant is considered a proper and almost essential part of the proceedings" (Hale, 1883). No condolence song text is reproduced here; its published existence and constitutional function are the record.
• Tradition — the people's own account: Haudenosaunee teaching, in published Great Law accounts, places condolence at the Confederacy's foundation — the Peacemaker condoling the grieving Hiawatha, that requickening thereafter opening councils and raising chiefs (Hessell, 2021). The Confederacy's formation date is Debated / Claim in the scholarship.
• The Arctic repertoire. Documented fact: the Copper Inuit (Inuinnait) collection below is organised in print around dance songs and related public categories — song as shared repertoire and social record (Roberts & Jenness, 1925). Restricted Inuit ceremonial material is recorded as existing; it is not described here.

Song in Diplomacy

• The calumet. Documented fact: across the Prairies and Plains the calumet, a ceremonial pipe, served "by ambassadors and other travelers as a passport," "to ratify alliances," and "to make binding any sort of contract or treaty," chiefly "in peace ceremonies in which representatives of both sides smoked the pipe of peace amidst the singing and dancing of a formal character" (Driver, 1961, via Jordan, n.d., UC San Diego). Song was part of the binding instrument, not accompaniment.
• The Pawnee Hako, published level only. Documented fact: Alice C. Fletcher's The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony (1904, Bureau of American Ethnology [BAE], 22nd Annual Report), recorded with Pawnee leader Tahirussawichi and James R. Murie (Pawnee), is the most detailed published calumet account; its published conclusion is that it insured "friendship and peace" between clans and tribes and could adopt members of another tribe (Fletcher, 1904). Its songs are not transcribed or summarised here.
• Council song as diplomacy. Documented fact: Hale notes council songs appear in many French and English treaty reports (Hale, 1883).

Song in Healing — Published Record Only

• Caution: the historical record that songs were used in healing is not proof of clinical effectiveness. No song text, preparation, dosage or treatment instruction is given here.
• Documented fact — existence and place only: Densmore's Chippewa (Ojibwe/Anishinaabe) volumes record medicine-connected songs as a recognised, owned category (Densmore, 1910, Chippewa Music, BAE Bulletin 45); her Teton Sioux (Lakota) work records songs used in treating the sick among the categories she was permitted to document (Densmore, 1918, BAE Bulletin 61). Society and ceremonial healing songs, including the Chippewa Midewiwin songs named in her volumes, are recorded as existing only.
• Documented fact — protocol: a Chippewa singer prefaced a song with a speech naming what it was and whence it came, so "the facts concerning the song become strongly associated with the melody in the minds of the people" (Densmore, 1910, via Anishinaabe literature review, n.d.) — a statement about record and practice, not a clinical finding.

Ownership and Inheritance

• The general finding. Documented fact: across regions the early record shows songs owned — held by person, family or clan, transferred under rules, wrongfully used by others. Pound concluded song was of individual composition, with "a feeling of private ownership in his song" (Pound, 1917).
• Tlingit — at.óow. Documented fact: Tlingit songs, stories, designs and names are clan property under at.óow, "an owned or purchased thing," tangible and intangible alike, acquired by ancestors and held by descendants (Dauenhauer & Dauenhauer, 1990). The living rule stands in archive practice: clans "retain the intellectual property rights to clan stories or songs" (Sealaska Heritage Institute, n.d.); school protocols require a family's permission before its song is used (MOA / Surrey School District, 2017–18, quoting Silvey, Time Immemorial).
• Chippewa — a contrasting, individual system. Documented fact: "The Chippewa have no songs which are the exclusive property of families or clans. Any young man may learn his father's songs… by giving him the customary gift of tobacco, but he does not inherit the right to sing such songs" (Densmore, 1910). Medicine songs were stricter: no one might sing another's "unless he has purchased the right to sing it," the buyer receiving some of the medicine with it (Densmore, 1910, p. 26). Systems differed by nation; no single rule is asserted.
• Omaha — inheritance and initiation. Documented fact: the ninety-two Omaha songs of Fletcher and La Flesche include religious songs "to be sung by a certain class either through initiation or inheritance," beside group and individual songs (Fletcher, La Flesche & Fillmore, 1893).
• Dream songs. Tradition — as recorded: many songs in Densmore's volumes were said by their singers to have been received in dreams (Densmore, 1910; 1918; Pound, 1917) — recorded as attributed, neither affirmed nor disputed.

The Collecting Era

• 1890 — the first cylinders. Documented fact: Jesse Walter Fewkes's 1890 Maine trip, recording Passamaquoddy songs and stories on an Edison cylinder machine, produced "the first ethnographic recordings extant," now in the Archive of Folk Culture (Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, n.d.); the cylinders passed from Harvard's Peabody Museum to the Library of Congress in the 1970s (Anderson, n.d.).
• 1907 — Densmore for the BAE. Documented fact: Frances Densmore began officially for the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907, recording about 2,500 songs over fifty years among Chippewa, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, northern Pawnee, Papago (Tohono O'odham), Winnebago, Menominee, Pueblo peoples, Seminole and others (Minnesota Historical Society, n.d.). Counts vary (the Library of Congress guide gives more than 2,500, from forty tribes) — only "about 2,500" is asserted; flagged below.
• Her published standard. Documented fact: fourteen book-length BAE bulletins, 1910–1957, including Chippewa Music (1910–13), Teton Sioux Music (1918) and Papago Music (1929); DeMallie called the Teton Sioux work "one of the most significant ethnographic works ever published on the Sioux" (Minnesota Historical Society, n.d.; Densmore bibliography). These published collections are the standard cited here.
• 1911 — Barbeau in Canada. Documented fact: Marius Barbeau (1883–1969) joined the Geological Survey of Canada in 1911 and that spring began cylinder recording at the Huron-Wyandot community of Lorette; in 1912 he recorded some sixty songs from chiefs come to Ottawa on territorial business; from December 1914 he worked among the Tsimshian at Lax Kw'alaams with William Beynon, Tsimshian hereditary chief, as collaborator (The Canadian Encyclopedia, n.d.; Canadian Museum of History, Barbeau Fonds, n.d.). His cylinders and papers rest with the Canadian Museum of History; a secondary summary gives ~3,000 cylinders — flagged below.
• 1913–18 — the Copper Inuit songs. Documented fact: Diamond Jenness, Southern Party, Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–18, recorded 137 Copper Inuit songs on cylinders, from men, women and children across the Copper Eskimo area (period term). Helen H. Roberts transcribed and analysed the music; Jenness prepared texts and translations. Songs of the Copper Eskimos (1925), Expedition Report Vol. XIV, 506 pp., was assessed as "the largest single collection of songs from any Eskimo area" (Roberts & Jenness, 1925; Arctic 23(2), 1970; eHRAF, n.d.). Cross-reference: this programme's register carries the same collection as its first new-language item for Inuinnaqtun, a published public-domain witness (Sacred Name Collection, Indigenous Recovery Register, 2026-10-27).
• The era, honestly framed. Collectors worked inside the assimilation era, framed as preservation before disappearance (Densmore Repatriation Project, n.d.). Singers chose what to sing; the recordings then sat a century in distant institutions, legally owned elsewhere (Anderson, n.d.).

Songs Already Recovered Inside This Programme

• Lakota Sursum Corda (1927), labelled exactly. Documented fact (programme record): recovered as a labelled language witness — front matter and printed pp. 1–16 of Sursum Corda — Lakota Wocekiye na Olowan Wowapi, Sioux Indian Prayer and Hymn Book, by the Jesuit fathers of St. Francis Mission, South Dakota (St. Louis, 1927; x + 386 pp.), transcribed from Cornell's copy, hunt0094 (Indigenous Recovery Register Phase 3, 2026-10-27).
• What it is — and is not: mission hymnody and prayer, the contact-era mission layer of Lakota song in print — Eugene Buechel, S.J. playing the major role in production on the standard biographical record (Register Phase 3). Not pre-contact tradition, not scripture; the recovered page carries "not scripture" labelling in every copy. It documents Lakota congregations singing in Lakota while older traditions were prohibited and carried underground.
• Cross-reference: the 137 Copper Inuit songs are the register's other song collection — an expedition's published record of a people's own repertoire, a different kind of witness, never conflated with the mission book.

Suppression and Survival

• Canada, 1885–1951. Documented fact: the potlatch ban — an Indian Act amendment passed 1884, in force 1885 — stood until 1951 (Library and Archives Canada, n.d.). It struck song directly: the potlatch was where owned songs were sung before witnesses. A parallel 1895 amendment banned the Plains Sun Dance, likewise until 1951 (published prohibition summaries). Under these sections "the songs and dances that were part of this ceremony might not be used or heard"; enforcement ran to fines and imprisonment (Hoefnagels, n.d., Indigenous Dance Canada).
• Cranmer potlatch, 1921. Documented fact: Dan Cranmer, 'Namgis chief, held a large potlatch at Village Island in December 1921; forty-five were arrested under s. 149, twenty-two jailed at Oakalla, others suspended-sentenced on surrendering 600-plus pieces of paraphernalia (U'mista Cultural Society, 2011; Canadian Museum for Human Rights, n.d.).
• United States. Documented fact: the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses, enforced by Courts of Indian Offenses, made the "sun-dance," "scalp-dance," "war-dance" and like feasts punishable by withheld rations or imprisonment, and medicine men's practices a further offence (Code, 1883, in Irwin, 1997). Anti-dance directives continued into the 1920s (Native Philanthropy timeline, n.d., citing Nies, 1996).
• The turn. Documented fact: Commissioner John Collier's Circular 2970 (1934), the first U.S. policy protecting Native spiritual practice — "no interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression will hereafter be tolerated" (Irwin, 1997; Garroutte et al., 2015); the American Indian Religious Freedom Act followed in 1978 (Public Law 95–341). Canada's bans stood until 1951.
• Survival, at the evidence level. Documented fact: Assu petitioned Ottawa for the "old custom of giving away" in 1919, mid-ban (Library and Archives Canada, n.d.); the 1921 Cranmer potlatch is itself continuation evidence. In the U.S., practices "were observed privately" under suppression, with documented resurgence from the 1960s (Garroutte et al., 2015). Densmore's Standing Rock singers deliberated as elders before agreeing to record — the archive is survival evidence too (Swenson, Engelman & Geist, 2023).
• Return of what was seized. Documented fact: after campaigning from 1958, the Cranmer collection was repatriated in 1979–80 to Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre, Cape Mudge (1979), and U'mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay (1980) — "the first facilities of their kind in Canada" (Canadian Museum for Human Rights, n.d.).

The Present

• Powwow song. Debated / Claim, in part: origins are argued — nineteenth-century intertribal dance societies, the Ghost Dance era, Wild West shows, boarding schools, veterans' homecomings (powwow literature citing Powers, 1990; Thomas, 1965). Documented fact is the modern form: intertribal gatherings where drum groups supply social and contest dance music, in Northern and Southern styles, family songs passed down orally, host drums leading (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Powwow, 2002–07).
• Recording in singers' hands. Documented fact: drum groups made recording central in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, an Aboriginal industry (notably Arbor Records, Winnipeg) grew around them, and competition powwows shaped repertoire (Scales, 2012).
• Repatriation programmes. Documented fact: the Library of Congress Federal Cylinder Project (from 1979) restored early cylinders so they could return to their communities (Jaakola & Powell, 2019). At Fond du Lac, Jaakola and Powell built from 2014 a digital repository of Densmore's Ojibwe recordings at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College — "'The Songs Are Alive'" (Jaakola & Powell, 2019, in Gunderson, ed., Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation). At Standing Rock, the Densmore Repatriation Project returns her 1911–14 Lakota recordings to new singers, with partners including Sitting Bull College (Swenson, Engelman & Geist, 2023).
• Passamaquoddy, heard again. Documented fact: Fewkes's 1890 cylinders, returned on tape in 1980 largely unidentifiable, were digitally restored by the Library's National Audiovisual Conservation Center from 2015; tribal members including language keeper Dwayne Tomah have since transcribed them (Maine Public, 2019; Anderson, n.d.).
• The standing rule. Clan and family rights remain administered today — in archive rules, school protocols, and repatriation review (Sealaska Heritage Institute, n.d.; MOA / Surrey, 2017–18). The songs are theirs.

Sources

• Anderson, Jane (n.d.). "The Passamaquoddy Connection." Postcolonial Digital Connections proceedings.
• Canadian Museum for Human Rights (n.d.). "Bringing the Potlatch Home."
• Canadian Museum of History (n.d.). Marius Barbeau Fonds finding aid.
• Dauenhauer, Nora & Richard (1990). Haa Tuwunáagu Yís: Tlingit Oratory. University of Washington Press.
• Densmore, Frances (1910) Chippewa Music; (1918) Teton Sioux Music; (1929) Papago Music. BAE Bulletins, Smithsonian.
• Densmore Repatriation Project (n.d.). lakotasongs.com.
• Driver, Harold (1961). Indians of North America. University of Chicago Press.
• Fletcher, Alice (1904). The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony. BAE 22nd Annual Report.
• Fletcher, Alice, La Flesche, Francis & Fillmore, John (1893). A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Peabody Museum.
• Garroutte, Eva et al. (2015). "Religiosity and Spiritual Engagement in Two American Indian Populations." J. Sci. Study of Religion (PMC).
• Hale, Horatio (1883). The Iroquois Book of Rites.
• Hessell, Nikki (2021). Sensitive Negotiations. SUNY Press.
• Hoefnagels, Anna (n.d.). "Prohibitions." Indigenous Dance Canada.
• Irwin, Lee (1997). "Freedom, Law, and Prophecy." American Indian Quarterly 21(1).
• Jaakola, Lyz & Powell, Timothy (2019). "'The Songs Are Alive.'" In Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation.
• Library and Archives Canada (n.d.). "Potlatch." Discover Blog.
• Library of Congress, American Folklife Center (n.d.). An Illustrated Guide.
• Maine Public (2019). "Historic Recordings Revitalize Language for Passamaquoddy Tribal Members."
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (n.d.). "Northwest Coast Indians Musical Instruments."
• Minnesota Historical Society (n.d.). "Frances Densmore." Minnesota Author Biographies.
• Pound, Louise (1917). "The Beginnings of Poetry."
• Roberts, Helen & Jenness, Diamond (1925). Songs of the Copper Eskimos. Canadian Arctic Expedition Report XIV.
• Sacred Name Collection (2026-10-27). Indigenous Recovery Register, Phases 2–4.
• Scales, Christopher (2012). Recording Culture. Duke University Press.
• Sealaska Heritage Institute (n.d.). Dauenhauer Collection finding aid.
• Smithsonian NMAI (2002–07). National Powwow descriptions.
• Swenson, David et al. (2023). "A Future from the Past." Journal of Folklore and Education 10(1).
• The Canadian Encyclopedia (n.d.). "Marius Barbeau."
• U'mista Cultural Society (2011). Cranmer potlatch account.
• UBC Museum of Anthropology (n.d.). Continuity and Change; (2017–18) Cultural Belongings Protocols, Surrey School District.

Weakest-sourced points (flagged): (1) Densmore totals vary between sources (30 vs. 40 tribes; ~2,500 asserted only). (2) Barbeau's ~3,000 cylinders rest on a secondary summary, not a Museum count. (3) Potlatch ban: statute dated 1884, in force and commonly dated 1885; Canada's 1895 Sun Dance ban rests on summaries, not quoted statute. (4) Fewkes cylinder counts differ (36 recorded / 31 surviving vs. 31 recorded); only "first ethnographic recordings extant" is relied on. (5) Powwow origins are contested — labelled Debated; only the modern form is asserted. (6) Hako content, condolence texts and all medicine/society songs are sourced no further than existence and published purpose, under the restriction rule.