Page:Natalie Curtis - Songs of Ancient America.djvu/10

 The words are mostly archaic, not the common speech of to-day. The translations given by the Indians were accompanied by many explanations. For Indian poetry, like all branches of Indian art, is symbolic. Just as a few lines on jar or basket often stand for a thought instead of representing an object, so one word in a poem may be the symbol of a complete idea. Accordingly, a song often may be interpreted differently by different Indians. Thus in the first song the colors* mentioned were said by one Indian to allude to the different colored corn over which the butterflies should fly; for maize, in this region, is of many hues, and Laguna songs frequently refer to the com by color alone. But an old and authoritative Indian asserted positively that this song had nothing to do with corn; that it was all about butterflies, and that the butterflies were to fly to flower-blossoms, not to corn-fields. "At the end of the song," said she, "we say to the butterflies, 'Go, butterfly, now go, for that is all!'"

The second song is a series of yodeling refrains without words. This, too, is very old, and fragments of just such refrains can be heard echoing through many a pueblo village. Sometimes two or three women grind corn together; and the arrangement of this song seeks to give the answering voice of a second grinder.

The last song is of singular beauty, and has found its way far beyond Laguna to distant Zuni, a pueblo whose inhabitants speak a different tongue. It tells of the sweet, pure rainwater, "wonder-water," caught in those reservoirs of nature, hollows worn in the rocks by the erosion of wind and sand. Such water is highly prized by the Indians, for rain is the great need of the agricultural pueblo people whose villages dot the cliffs and levels of the desert. Even though the pueblos of New Mexico are near the Rio Grande and are further aided by an ancient native system of irrigation, in song and dance is still expressed the cry for rain.

In order fully to translate the meaning of the last song, English words had to be added in the phrase, "Look where southwest clouds are bringing rain." The Indian words are simply, "Yonder southwest, yonder southeast" But the Indians thus explain the passage: "In the song we say, 'Look to the southwest, look to the southeast! The clouds are coming toward the springs; the clouds will bring the water.' It is from the southwest and the southeast that we usually get our rains."

In making accompaniments to these songs, I have in nowise changed the melodies, nor have I sought to harmonize them in the usual sense, nor to make of them musical compositions. I have merely tried to reproduce the actual sound of the grinding, and to add enough harmony to give, as it were, a background to the picture. The millstone forms, indeed, a crude native accompaniment to every grinding-song, and without a suggestion of it the true character of the song would be lost in the choice of harmony, I have been governed alone by the character of Indian music, disregarding all thought of

* To fit the translation to the music, the word "wing" has been added. Otherwise, the translation is literal