 | Medicine Songs |  |
MEDICINE
SONGS
Transcribed from the Indian Originals
by
MARY AUSTIN
DECORATIONS BY FRANKLIN BOOTH
IT IS the peculiarity of American Indian poetry that its full meaning is never expressed in the words it utters. These are, in fact, only a sort of shorthand note to what the Indians themselves call the "Inside Song." This "Inside Song" may be a long story, actual or mythical, a dramatic episode, or the progressive emotional phases going on in the mind of the poet—any one of these giving rise to the music, dance, and phrase that inseparable constitute the Indian song. An experience involving the greater part of a man's life may thus be sung in a single sentence. Since this is the case, it is impossible that these should be adequately transcribed except by one familiar with the Indians' paths of thought, incidents of daily life, and figures of speech, and by one possessing some knowledge of the cadences natural to the expression of aboriginal emotion.
As far as my acquaintance with these things goes, I have attempted to render the "Inside Song" of some Indian poems that seem to afford common ground with sophisticated understanding.
M.A.
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