The Pseudo-Indian Folksongs of the Anglo-American and French-Canadian

Abstract

ALTHOUGH not as abundant or as truly as the Bad cycle there exists nevertheless a significant repertoire of folksongs in which the is admired, praised, and pitied. Songs in this cycle have persisted in AngloAmerican oral tradition from colonial times to the present. Much has been written about the cult of the Noble Savage in European and American literature, and the role of the American Noble Savage has been traced in the works of known literary figures; but the penetration of this humanitarian tradition among the AngloAmerican folk, at least as expressed in their favorite songs, has been neglected by literary historians and folklorists. In 1787 a Death Song of a Cherokee Indian, later ascribed to Philip Freneau although the authorship still remains in doubt, was published. It captured the imagination of readers and listeners in Great Britain and the United States.2 Often reprinted, it was set to music by Hans Gram in I791. Sufficient research has not yet been done to state whether this song was the seedling of the cycle of the Noble Savage or whether, as is more probable, it was the literary adaptation of a folk genre. From the end of the eighteenth century to the present, persecuted and exiled Indians have wailed the loss of their hunting grounds and have died heroically in literature and in folk song. In the early years of our country's history a remarkable song was used in the congregational singing of Protestant groups which may well be one of the earliest attempts, at least in verse, to improvise the pidgin Indian dialect which has become the Indian's principal tag in popular literature-the western novel, the comics, the cinema, etc. Also it is a uniquely folklike example of that literature of the return to nature in which Christian truths are discovered in the wonders of the natural environment and in the virtues of natural man. Here, if anywhere, the young Emile might have discovered God and Christ at their primeval source! In Southern Harmony3 the origin of the song is illuminated: The first three verses of this song were taken almost verbatim, by a Missionary, from an Indian's