Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/62

 50 The Indians of the Issd-Japiird Dishdet.

Then on the appointed day the guests assemble, in their best paint and ornaments. Set against the deep gloom of the forest, some two or three hundred Indians in full dress, — a shifting kaleidoscope of paint, feathers, beads, and dance rattles, with decorated dance staves and musical instruments, — the smouldering fires of the inaloka stirred to a blaze, and the hot flickering of torches adding to the glow of light, the scene is indescribably bizarre. Nor is the eye alone affected. Strange and wonderful sounds torment the ear ; the music of instruments never played for private amusement, only on such ceremonial occasions, (panpipes, flutes, and drums), adds volume to the stamp of the dancers' feet, the jangle of the leg-rattles, and the loud, shrill singing of the performers. The man appointed to lead the dance must be one who knows the old songs, mere striiigs of now unintelligible words handed down from some traditional and quite forgotten ancestors. The leader sings the solo, in a high falsetto, and the chorus, picking up their cue, repeat it with a simultaneously gradual crescendo of sound and speed.

The circumstance giving cause for the dance determines if men and women sing together or alone. All songs are sung in unison, with a drone accompaniment from those not actually articulating the words, to regular time, marked by stamping, but with no hand-clapping. The tunes are simple, and as a rule mereh- the repetition of a single phrase with no variations, repeated endlessly. What these mean no living Indian knows. They are the tribal songs that have always been sung, that are the only right things to sing ; nor could I detect any suggestion of change or correction ever attempted or desired. There are no love, sacred, or nursery songs, and war songs are merely the chants proper for a war dance, and depend for significance on the occasion and the spirit of the dancers.

There is in this region no regular harvest time. Crops grow and ripen all the year round, irrespective of season,