supplication to the Messiah. They then commence the dance, singing, Ina he kuye, ina he kuye, The ghost songs--Wanagi Olowan Kin,-as sung by the tribes of the Sioux, were composed of a number of separate stanzas, each usually ending with the refrain, Ate heye lo, ate heye lo. Saith my father, saith my father. Some of the stanzas concluded with the words, Others terminated with the phrase, Unci heye ce, unci heye ce. Saith my grandmother, saith my grandmother, And occasionally was heard the closing melody of Tuwa heye ce, tuwa heye ce. Saith somebody, saith somebody. Some of the stanzas were chanted by the women, and others by the men. Again stanzas were divided, and the parts sung alternately by those of each sex. Both men and women, however, usually joined in the refrain. The terminal words lo and ye seem to be added for the purposes of euphony rather than for any change of meaning. These words are given a gender, the former being masculine and the latter feminine, as regards the speaker or singer; and this characteristic appears in the language generally. Another peculiarity of the Dakota tongue, which is noticed in these songs, is the use of words having entirely distinct and different roots to indicate the first, second and third persons, and especially in the gender of nouns. To illustrate: my mother is ina, thy mother, nihum, and his mother, hunku. My father is ate, thy father, niyate, and his or her father, athuku. Brother is hunkawanjitku; my older brother, cinye; my younger brother, misunka; and a brother-in-law, tahanka. The diminutive is found by adding the syllable na or la to the noun; as zitkana, a little bird, misunkala, my little brother. The song was in the nature of a chant, with some variations of the general melodious monotone. An accent, or emphasis, was given at about every second beat of common time. The refrain was at times a musical wail, whose plaintive melody seemed to come from a sorrowladen heart, the memory of which will remain for years. The following song of the ghost dance, iwahuni, was arranged by Mrs. Mary Parmerlee and Mr. R. C. Bower, through the assistance of Short Bull, a Brule Sioux, of the Rosebud agency, South Dakota. Short Bull was one of the Dakota delegates who twice visited the sacred place in the mountains where the Messiah was said to be, and who brought back the report that the Indian Christ had surely come. The language and music can be regarded as but a distant echo of the wild, incoherent words and pathetic melody heard across the broken canyons of White River, in the Mauvaises Terres, or by the crimson waters of the Wounded Knee. The conversation indicated in the song is supposed to take place between the Great Spirit and the ghost dancer after the latter, having fainted from exhaustion and mental excitement, has mounted upon wings like a bird, met and talked with the spirits of his departed friends, and finally entered the realm of the sun. Who is yon fleet-wing-ed ghost? Who is yon fleet-wing-ed ghost? Toki - ya e- tan ya u? Whence come you, ye wand'ring shade? Whence come you, ye wand'ring shade? It was a task of some difficulty to have these unwritten. songs reduced to such form as was necessary for their permanent preservation. Most of those engaged in the religious ceremonies as well as those in sympathy therewith, were either unable to write, or were averse to doing so; and those sufficiently educated generally did not know, and hence where unable to put in writing the entire song, and at best could give but disconnected meaningless fragments. The writer considers himself fortunate in being able to present in addition to the foregoing words and music, the thirty nearly complete stanzas composing the two typical ghost songs, which with their translations are given hereafter. They were obtained largely by the kindness of Miss Sickels, whose faith in the future development and high civilization of the native American races is very encouraging to those whose labors are directed to such objects. The stanzas from one to nineteen which follow were written down by Major Sword of the Pine Ridge agency, and imperfectly translated by one of the young men of the Indian school. These constitute the wanagi olowan as sung on Wolf Creek, on White Clay Creek, and at Pine Ridge. The last eleven stanzas hereafter given constitute the ghost song of the Indians who were assembled under the chief Spotted Elk, or Big Foot, as he was commonly called. The members of the band of this unfortunate chief were mostly Brules, burnt thighs, some of them from the Rosebud, and others from the Cheyenne River agency. To these, however, had been added a number from the tribe of Unca-papas, those who dwell by themselves -being remnants of the followers of Sitting Bull, that had escaped at the time of the death of their famous leader, and had attempted to reach the Bad Lands on the North of White River, but were prevented by the military forces of the Government, and so had attached themselves to those under the leadership of Spotted Elk who was then encamped on Porcupine Creek about forty miles eastward from Pine Ridge agency. These stanzas were obtained through the Indian woman, Lizzie Blackfox, the wife of Blackfox, a Cheyenne Sioux, who is said to have fired the first shot at the battle of Wounded Knee, December 29, 1890, where 109 dusky warriors fought the 500 well armed veterans of General Custer's old regiment, the 7th U. S. Cavalry. They were first written out in the Dakota tongue by the Indian wife of the Indian Episcopal Missionary at Wounded Knee. The writer of this paper, with the aid of a lexicon of the Dakota language and with the valued assistance of Henry M. Jones, an educated, full-blood Sioux of the Santee agency, in Nebraska, has gone over patiently and carefully each of the songs, for the purpose of eliminating any mistake in orthography, substance, or form, and it is believed that the original Indian text, as well as the English translation, is reasonably correct and accurate. There has been no attempt however to specially indicate, in the orthography of the text, those particular sounds of the Dakota language which have no equivalent in English, such as the rough gutteral, or second sounds of g and h, the peculiar nasal quality sometimes given to n, or the explosive, vocal characteristics of q, c, p, and t. To represent accurately such sounds would require the use of additional letters or characters, and this was not deemed necessary for the purpose of this paper. The following is the song of the ghost dancers as sung on White Clay and Wolf creeks near the Pine Ridge agency: |