Menominee Music; Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 102

Washington DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1932. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. Good. xxii, 230 pages. Illustrations. List of Songs (140), Tables. Footnotes. Musical notes/scores. Authorities Cited. Index. Ex-library with withdrawn stamp on front cover. No other library markings noted. Cover has some wear, edge tears, chips and soiling. Frances Theresa Densmore (May 21, 1867 - June 5, 1957) was an American anthropologist and ethnographer. Densmore is known for her studies of Native American music and culture; she may be described as an ethnomusicologist. During the early part of the twentieth century, she worked as a music teacher with Native Americans nationwide, while also learning, recording, and transcribing their music, and documenting its use in their culture. She helped preserve their culture. Densmore began recording music officially for the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907. In her fifty-plus years of studying and preserving American Indian music, she collected thousands of recordings. Some of the tribes she worked with include the Chippewa, the Mandan, Hidatsa, the Sioux, the Pawnee of Oklahoma, the Papago, Indians of Washington and British Columbia, Winnebago and Menominee, Pueblo Indians of the southwest, the Seminoles of Florida, and even the Kuna Indians of Panama. Densmore frequently was published in the journal American Anthropologist, contributing consistently throughout her career. She wrote The Indians and Their Music in 1926. Between 1910 and 1957, she published fourteen book-length bulletins for the Smithsonian, each describing the musical practices and repertories of a different Native American group. The material comprised in this paper was collected among the Menominee Indians of Wisconsin in 1925, 1928, and 1929, the recording of songs being done at Keshena, Neopit, and Zoar. The old customs are followed by the Menominee in a marked degree, thus affording a favorable field for research in music and customs, as well as for comparison with previous work. The writer visited the Menominee in 1910 in connection with a study of the drum-presentation ceremony of the Chippewa, witnessing that dance on the Menominee Reservation. Numerous songs used by the Chippewa in that ceremony were recorded. In the recent work, the same ceremony was studied among the Menominee and its songs recorded, according to the usage of that tribe. The Midewiwin (Grand Medicine) of the Chippewa had previously been studied and its songs collected. During the work among the Menominee a meeting of the Medicine Society was attended and its songs were found to resemble the Chippewa Grand Medicine songs so closely that the Menominee songs of the Medicine Society were not recorded. One purpose of the present work was to determine the resemblance, or lack of resemblance, between Menominee and Chippewa songs. The result of the work shows that such a resemblance exists in a majority of the songs. A similar resemblance to Sioux songs was not observed. The environment of the Menominee resembles that of the Chippewa in its lakes and pine trees; but the forests are more extensive than in the Chippewa country and there are rushing rivers and streams with rapids and waterfalls. Acknowledgment is made of the services of John Valentine Satterlee (pl. 2, a), who acted as interpreter in 1925. His wide acquaintance among the Indians and his experience as an interpreter added to his value in that capacity. The Menominee (also spelled Menomin) are a federally recognized nation of Native Americans, with a reservation in Wisconsin. Their historic territory originally included an estimated 10 million acres in present-day Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.