The Sounds of "Civilization"

Indian Blues: American Indians and the Politics of Music, 1879–1934 by John William Troutman. ISBN 978-0-8061-4019-

The supplied PDF is only for Chapter 3, “The Sounds of ‘Civilization’”. will attempt further research in future?

• “the lines between “civilized” and “savage” expressive culture were stark for Burgess and Pratt, and both did what they could to burn those lines into the minds of their students”
• “The administrators who oversaw the schools viewed the practice of music in much the same way that most reservation superintendents did-in very stark, culturally and politically loaded terms. They believed that music lessons in the schools would combat the insidious influences of performative practices that predominated on reservations.”
• “The whole object of the school was to turn out loyal Americans. That was the object of the whole thing.”
• “edify local communities that the Native students who lived nearby were safely contained, free of any […] dangerous activities”
• “doubtless it [vocal ability] will come in time, as it has with the Hawaiians and other peoples who have had longer contact with white influences;”
• “agreement with white codes of right and wrong and of mortality”

boarding schools

• OIA off-reservation boarding schools: high control over music; shape meaning of the practice of music
  • male: military brass band practice; performed as PR
• schools post-1879
  • Chilocco Indian School, Chilocco, OK
  • Haskell Institute, Lawrence, KS
  • Flandreau Indian School, SD
  • Chemawa Indian School, Salem, OR;
  • Sherman Institute, Riverside, CA
  • 1900: 18k in 153 schools, 25 off-reservation; 4k day schools
    • 50 missionary schools

Carslisle, Pratt, and Music

• January 1891: Ghost Dancer massacre news reached Carslisle (tension known since Dec 90)
• Marianna Burgess: superintendent and editor; assimilationist zealot
  • 12/5: ghost dance antithetical
  • Dear boys and girls, if you were there you could not help them. Be content that you are where you can get the education that will save you from such a fearful mistake in the future.
  • manipulation and fabrication of student views (Amelia Katanski)
    • Edgar Fire Thunder, “W”
• 57/63 former students near Pine Ridge alive; 6/57 involved in Wounded Knee
• fear over tribal dances on reservations and fairgrounds, “going back to the blanket”
  • 1891: Stiya: A Carslisle Indian Girl at Home
    • fictional account
• 1914, Claude Stauffer, bandmaster: “softening” through music could be used to uplift European immigrants and poor whites’ character
  • “Here lies a splendid social uplift idea for the masses of the supposedly more cultured and civilized white race. Would little slum dwellers, if thoroughly versed in music in the settlement houses and other uplift agencies around or among them, develop into strong-arm men and thugs?”
  • Carlisle band in 1880
• Euro-American music and dance
  • Victorian proper; “the cultural palate of a very specific whiteness”
  • Grieg, Mozart, Rossini, Schubert, Wagner
  • hymnals, orchestral, songbooks, school anthems: standardized in 1923
    • Gloria by Shephard (sacred), Song of the Nation, Revised, by Johnson (Patriotic, secular and sacred) and Golden Book of Favorite Songs, Revised and Enlarged (Miscellaneous well known secular, sacred and patriotic)
    • art music and popular Tin Pan Alley songs
• bands and musical organizations, literary society recitations
  • Sherman Mandolin Club (1909, 20 students + 14 beginners)
  • Flandreau harmonica band, mandolin orchestra, operetta, glee clubs
  • Chemawa touring string quartet
• constant music; loudest brass/marching bands
  • 7:30 Mon–Sat
  • Carlisle performance for formal functions, football, parade, dance
  • discipline and regimentation
  • bugle calls and whistles 29/day for waking, eating, working, class, studying, and sleeping
    • bugling performed by a student
  • military uniforms and rifle drills for men
• public performances
  • Carslisle: inaugural parades (McKinley, Roosevelt, Wilson), 1893 Columbian Exposition, 1892 Columbian quadricentennial parades, national tours
  • OIA 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition band w/ 35 students from multiple schools; 2x daily performance through fair
    • Chilocco Indian Girls’ Quarteette
  • Sherman 1908: presidential campaign 2x, Riverside Driving Park Association, charity, Senator Flint “serenade”; 1913 Sunday concert (1500 viewers); 1914 exhibition baseball game parade lead for Chicago and LA; 1917 State Fair
    • “band members probably felt “livened up” by the experience as well: they had their expenses paid and earned a daily wage of one dollar for spending money, performed twice daily, at 1 P.M. and 7 P.M., slept in tents on the fairgrounds, formed a “conspicuous” part of the downtown parade, and won first place in the class B band contest.”
  • Bismarck 1931 gained reputation via girls’ performances
  • Phoenix 1914 East coast tour
  • Sunday performances in parks and venues
    • 1930 Phoenix: cornet soloes, trombonists
• “fringe benefits”; escaped chores, training; traveled across state and region
• gender-roled music; men: brass bands, women: parlor (piano, guitar, mandolin), unisex: orchestra, vocal, choir, glee
  • fewer opportunities for women

reception and resistance

• “actually too good” → jealousy and contempt
• high competition
• complaints from musicians and associations: American Federation of Musicians (AFM) “unfairly losing jobs”, “defeat organized labor”
• student resistance: “War Whoop” and breaking boundaries
• Francis Chapman, Oscar Pratt, James Ussrey, Elizabeth Penny, Alice Frazier Braves, Ruby Falleaf Jeunesse, Mary Ellison, Ethleen Pappan, Dora Armstrong, Kenneth Mills, Minnie McKenzie, Palmer Byrd, Van Horn Flying Man,, Louis Brueninger, John Johnson, Tawaquaptewa
  • church choirs, opera, music teachers and instructors, orchestras
  • otoe quartet: bert brown, francis pipestem, amos black, joe young

student dances

• restricted social dances on Saturdays
• school orchestra performances
• round dances, waltz, fox-trot, boogie-woogie, swiing, jazz
• Victorian culture and dress
• some schools banned dancing outright (Rapid City, SD; Shiprock, NM)
• “Dance of any form was charged with racial and cultural meaning”