2 e e? He tu we - che ya е e? Не tu we che ya Toki - ya e- tan va 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: |