Songs in Wax

In 1907, Frances Densmore and her sister Margaret hauled a phonograph into the Ojibwe country of Minnesota, intent on recording Indian songs before they disappeared.  Densmore had no training in anthropology, no institutional support for her expedition, and no clear idea of whether Native American singers would be willing to sing into the phonograph she’d borrowed from a music store.  But she was determined.  Densmore’s focus on Native American music was unusual.  Many of her contemporaries esteemed Indians for their eloquence in speech – the words attributed to Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce, “from where the sun now stands, I shall fight no more for ever,” resounded in the popular conscience.  Others of her contemporaries, taken with the old conception of the “noble savage,” idealized Indians as natural people uncorrupted by the evils of civilization.  Still others admired Indians for their historical prowess as hunters and warriors.  But few admired, or sought to preserve, Indian songs.  In Densmore’s own words, “when early settlers and explorers heard the Indians singing there was only one opinion – it was terrible.”

Densmore and others in a wagon.

Born in 1867, Densmore had grown up in a small Minnesota town along the Mississippi River across from in island on which Sioux Indians camped.  “I fell asleep night after night,” Densmore would later recall, “to the throb of the Indian drum.”  A musician herself, Densmore would later study music in Ohio, New York, and Boston.  She found the Indian songs captivating, and began her ethnographic work by taking notes as Indians sang.  She listened to native music at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893.  She took notes on the tune Geronimo hummed as he whittled arrows and sold autographs for a quarter.  But her real contribution to ethnography would begin when she hauled her phonograph into the prairie.  When they traveled in 1907 into Minnesota’s Ojibwe country, Frances and Margaret found an Indian named Big Bear to sing into their machine.  They preserved his song.  Big Bear was the first of many.  Densmore would travel across the United States, sometimes with her sister and sometimes alone, to record the music of the Mandans, Utes, Seminoles, Sioux, Ojibwe, Pawnee, Papago, Makah, and others.  She generally paid a quarter per song, and often had to cajole reluctant Indians who believed – or at least, professed to believe – that harm would come to them if they sang their spiritual songs at inappropriate times.  But she worked patiently.  Densmore displayed, at times, insightful cultural understanding.  For instance, she spoke in a lecture of Indian medicine men who might direct their patients, after analyzing the symptoms, to surround themselves with happy people or to fulfill a vow thus far neglected.  Densmore didn’t scoff at these prescriptions.  “We call this psychology,” she said, “but the Indian doctor did not have such a long word for it -- he just did it and knew that it worked.”

Yet for all her initiative, and the boldness of her mission, and the breadth of her travels, Densmore remained a culturally conservative Victorian.  Prim.  Before her death, she prepared a five-page autobiography that told of her work, but contained nothing of her personal life.  Densmore never married, and her autobiography betrayed not a single romantic interest.   She retyped her field notes and redrafted unpublished manuscripts, scrubbing all mention of the personal.  Her will instructed her relatives to burn the notes and unfinished work in her desk.  Throughout her extensive fieldwork, Densmore held herself, and her culture, above the Indians.  Though she wrote about Native Americans, and generalized about them, and in many cases carried her ethnography beyond their music to document their traditions and beliefs, she never lived among them.  When explaining how she gathered her songs, she said, “I do not do it by pretending to be one of them, and eating out of the same dishes. I have seen people who used this technique and did not find out very much. There is no use trying to be a social climber among Indians. If you begin at the bottom you will probably stay there. I start at the top and make friends with the professional men¬¬ the chiefs, doctors and tribal leaders. I stay at the Government agency and have some sort of an office to which the Indians come.”  She kept strict boundaries between her subjects and her own culture.  “I never let them criticize the government nor the white race, nor come across with any sob-stuff about the way they had been treated, as a race,” she said.  “That was simply out.”

 Frances Densmore.

Densmore recording a Blackfoot's song.

The boldness of Densmore’s mission, and the defiance of tradition it must have required for a single woman in her era to undertake it, are hard to square with Densmore’s primness.  It seems like someone so willing to dispense with traditional social roles in her professional life would have occasionally broken them in her personal life.  From someone of Densmore’s breadth of experience, one would expect at least one story about joining in some of the native dances she chronicled, or a tale of taking too many puffs on a peace pipe, or a story of romantic intrigue.  But Densmore left none of these.  This strong disconnect between the professional and personal seems strange, but maybe there is a cause.  Maybe the criticism that Densmore received for violating the norms of Victorian society in her work led her to cling to those social norms ever more tightly in her personal life.  We’ll never know; it’s too late to ask.  But whatever Densmore’s inner struggles, she has left behind a volume of work that we ought to appreciate: thanks to her work, the Library of Congress holds 2,500 wax recordings of original Native American songs.


To hear some, click here.  I recommend listening to "Moccasin Game Song."

 Frances Densmore with an Indian rattle and drum.