Overview

To our knowledge, although Native peoples have always valued music highly, its significance was largely overlooked by most early writers—the travelers, missionaries, and soldiers who thought it quaint, comical, savage, or hard on the ears. After these very early accounts we proceed to the era of the curiosity seekers. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, authors transcribed Indian songs from memory and published them in various reports and journals in Europe and the United States. In the last...