Chapter Ten
Music and Culture History

It is not uncommon to find in the possession of a single group a number of styles, represented in different categories of songs; specific styles that do not seem to have any organic reason for co-existing. . . . In order to characterize the music of an ethnic group, it is necessary to separate the strains that are obviously due to the intrusion of foreign elements or to the survival of old forms from those which make up the bulk of the musical lore. The latter will be more apt to range themselves readily into the picture of a prevalent "style."
Herzog 1935b:24

Musical Analysis

When taking a broad view of the world's music, there is a temptation to assume that each culture has a single style. This presumption is very prevalent in ethnomusicology, particularly in studies relating to the music of indigenous or tribal peoples, but in most cases the idea is overly simplistic. Far from being unusual, a multiplicity of styles usually becomes apparent once the music of a given people becomes known in some detail. As applied to North American Indian music, Herzog's model of the musical tradition as a composite has particular validity for culture areas such as the Plains or the Eastern Woodlands, where centuries of cultural interaction led to the formation of truly "international" repertories, but even in northwestern California, where Indian cultures were considerably more isolated before the white invasion, the musical corpus is found to be a complex amalgam comprised of several distinct elements or substyles.

For present purposes, the following styles can be distinguished in the total corpus of recordings collected among the Yuroks and

neighboring tribes in the years since 1900: (1) a predominating style of ensemble singing in modern ritual music performed by men, (2) a related but distinct style of female singing in songs for the Brush Dance, (3) an unrelated style of ensemble singing by males or females in the Flower Dance, (4) a type of personal song that seems closely related to the predominant style of male ensemble singing, (5) a type of personal song that borders on actual crying, and (6) a style used in personal songs that imitate the speech or singing of animals or spirit-persons.^[1]

Musical transcriptions of examples representing each of these styles have been discussed in previous chapters, where various song types were described in relation to their function or performance context. This chapter characterizes each of the styles in more abstract terms and makes some preliminary assertions about their significance for local culture history and within the broad sphere of North American Indian music. For comparative purposes, cantometrics coding for each of the styles have been provided in appendix 3.

Ensemble Singing by Males in Modern Ritual

The three main dances in modern ceremonial life are the Deerskin Dance, the Jump Dance, and the Brush Dance, and male singers dominate in each of these contexts. The musical style for each dance is immediately recognizable because each has relatively distinctive vocable patterns, characteristic musical textures, and certain other aspects of melody and rhythm that serve as markers. Despite these differences, however, the various genres can also be viewed as variants of one basic style. This is what Herzog calls the "prevalent" style (1935b :24) or what Lomax more precisely labels "the core public performance style" (1976:160). The same basic style is also heard in gambling songs and in archival recordings of Kick Dance songs, and there is no significant differentiation between Yurok, Hupa, or Karok versions of it. The following are its basic characteristics (though subject to many exceptions):

1. The vocal delivery often resembles "sobbing," and there is much tension, tremolo, nasality, and glissando.

2. Song texts generally consist of vocables rather than words.

3. The musical texture involves a solo part plus some type of bass part sung by the group.

4. The melodic ambitus is extremely wide (always more than an octave, and often as much as a twelfth).

5. Melodic phrases are typically descending in contour.

6. The solo part typically includes melodic motives of the bass part, especially at the end of phrases, and there is a general tendency for the solo part to begin in a high register, then descend gradually so as to merge with the bass part at the end of phrases.

7. The soloist may chant motives of the bass part ad libitum, and the melodic phrasing of the solo part is generally asymmetric.

8. The melodic form may be strophic or through-composed, but in either case the song typically includes a contrasting (B) phrase or phrase-group sung at a higher pitch level than the (A) section at the beginning.^[2]

9. Scales are predominantly anhemitonic and pentatonic.

10. The overall impression is that of an emotional and unrestrained style, often with a strong element of improvisation in the solo part.

While I have focused mainly on vocal quality as the hallmark of this style, the musical texture is probably its most remarkable characteristic from a comparative perspective, as this is perhaps the only style ever documented among North American tribes that can truly be described as polyphonic and contrapuntal. The rarity or nonoccurrence of polyphony in Indian music was the subject of an essay by Bruno Nettl, who reviewed the published literature and concluded that "Indian polyphony, if indeed it exists or existed at one time, has been an extremely elusive phenomenon" (1961:354). Shortly thereafter, Lomax reported that polyphony clearly did occur among the tribes of California (1968:168), but it should also be noted that part singing among Indians of the region was previously mentioned in less well-known sources such as Angulo and d'Harcourt (1931:210-211) and Kroeber and Gifford (1949:68-69).

Different styles of multipart singing have been documented among other California Indians, and to this extent polyphony represents a general characteristic of the region as a whole. In other

traditions, however, the multipart texture seems to be more sporadic or inconsistent,^[3] but here the use of counterpoint is absolutely integral and occurs in virtually every genre of ensemble singing by males. The bass part can and does stand alone, musically speaking, in each of the dances, and it is on this basis that the music is considered true counterpoint by contrast to drone polyphony or other forms of multipart singing in which the parts are not so independent.^[4]

Nettl assumed that polyphony was most likely to occur in more highly developed societies, and scattered evidence of drone polyphony among tribes of the Pacific Northwest prompted him to speculate that these cultures were on the verge of developing true polyphony before they were disrupted by whites (Nettl 1961:361-362). By contrast, Lomax found that counterpoint is typically an archaic coding that occurred mainly among gathering peoples, particularly those in which females shared equally in food production (Lomax 1968:166-168). In the western hemisphere, for instance, he showed that counterpoint was far more prevalent among the root-gardening tribes of South America than among the hunters and maize cultivators of North America, and similar findings emerged from Asia and Oceania, where counterpoint was noted among tribal peoples but not in more complex societies (Lomax 1968:168).

Generally speaking, the present study confirms Lomax's theory about polyphony, both in regard to the female contribution in traditional economy and because the counterpoint seems to derive from a relatively ancient layer of North American culture rather than a modern one. There is more to be said about the significance of polyphony in local culture history, but this is best reserved for a separate discussion to follow.

Female Singing in the Brush Dance

While males tend to dominate in public performance of ritual music, young unmarried women may perform "light songs" in the Brush Dance, and this is the main context for public singing by females nowadays. A girl performs only as a soloist in the Brush Dance, while men sing the bass part much as they would if a man were the soloist. This style is closely related to the previous one;

despite the connection, however, it differs from the male performance style in the following ways:

1. There is no trace of the "sobbing" delivery, but rather the voice is clear and more focused in pitch.

2. The girl sings more softly.

3. She performs only as a soloist, and her song does not include motives of the bass part at phrase endings.

4. The melodic range is narrower (an octave or less).

5. The melodic form is less complex, typically consisting of a single phrase-group repeated several times with slight variations.

6. The song often has words, and humorous texts are common.

7. The tempo is more strict.

8. Compared to the more emotional men's songs, the female style gives the impression of being more controlled and more artful or clever; the songs typically include syncopations that gently contradict the emphatic rhythm of the bass part.

Like the predominant male style, this one is shared equally by Indians of Yurok, Hupa, and Karok descent, and its basic characteristics are not differentiated by tribe.^[5]

Singing of Males and Females in the Flower Dance

The style of Flower Dance songs is strikingly different and comprises a "foreign" element when viewed in relation to the predominant style. The Yuroks do not have a public ceremony for girls' puberty; thus, their public vocalizing is always in the predominant style or its feminine counterpart. The following composite is based principally on recordings of Hupa singers,^[6] but a similar style is heard in Karok recordings^[7] and in other girls' puberty dance songs collected among the nearby Nongatl Indians.^[8] By comparison with the predominant male style, this one has the following characteristics:

1. The vocal delivery is relaxed, but there is still much nasality and glottalization.^[9]

2. The volume is rather soft.

3. The songs are often wordless, but many songs do have words.

4. The musical texture is heterophonic, consisting of a solo part and ancillary parts which are sung more softly and "trail" the lead of the soloist.

5. The singing is always accompanied by a pair of stick rattles which are struck in unison and mark each beat of the music.

6. The melodic contours are undulating rather than descending.

7. The range of the melodies are quite narrow, generally less than a fifth and always within the octave.

8. Pentatonic scales are noted, but three-tone scales are equally common.

9. Both simple meters and complex meters are found, and tempo is rather strict.

10. The enunciation is rather slurred.

11. The songs usually consist only of one or two short phrases, but strophic forms do sometimes occur.

12. There seems to be a preference for symmetrical melodic designs in the Hupa Flower Dance songs; this may include sequential movement, mirror-image relationships, pendular motion, or antecedent-consequent relationships.

Because of their melodic symmetries, the Hupa Flower Dance songs are easy to distinguish from the (more impulsive and irregular) predominant male style and from the simpler "animal songs" to be described later. This tendency toward melodic symmetry is also noted in some of the personal medicine songs that were collected from Hupa persons^[10] and from other nearby Athapaskan speakers such as the Tolowa.^[11] It is much less evident in Yurok medicine songs^[12] or in those collected from Karok speakers.

Personal Songs in a Style Resembling That of Ritual Music

These personal songs are monophonic, but the melodies are otherwise quite similar to those of the solo part in male ensemble singing. The general profile could be summarized as follows:

1. The voice has much glottalization and nasality, whether the singer is male or female, and men's songs often have a "sobbing" delivery.

2. Song texts consist mainly of vocables but may include words.

3. The musical texture is monophonic.

4. The melodic ambitus is extremely wide (always more than an octave, and often as much as a twelfth).

5. Melodic phrases are typically descending in contour.

6. The melodic form may be strophic or through-composed.

7. Scales are predominantly anhemitonic and pentatonic.

8. In contrast to the predominant ensemble style, tempo is usually very slow, and songs in free rhythm are common.

In some cases, these songs have phrase-endings or cadential figures identical to those heard in ensemble singing, and then it seems likely that the personal song was simply conceived in the mode of a ceremonial song or directly influenced by the ensemble style. Thus, for example, a deer medicine song sung by Domingo of Weitchpec in 1906 (example 27) has a cadential figure which is identical to the bass part in a Brush Dance song. Songs in this category were sung by men and women both, which seems particularly significant because this is not a style that females would use in public ensemble singing. Among the examples transcribed here are eight men's medicine songs of this type, and all but two were collected from Yurok singers.^[13] Similarly, the present study includes five examples of women's songs which fit into this category, and four of them were sung by Yuroks.^[14] This distribution reflects that of the corpus as a whole (see appendix 1), though it must be noted that very few recordings of Hupa personal songs were ever collected. Among the medicine songs collected by Helen Roberts among the Karoks in 1926 there are many examples in the "animal song" style, but virtually none in this style.

Personal Songs That Border on Actual Crying

These songs are primarily associated with wealth medicine and related sweathouse practices, but they were also used in medicine

for love, for deer hunting, for safety in rough water, and for making bullets more lethal. Nearly all of the recorded examples were collected from men, but a few recordings performed by a woman named Weitchpec Susie (Yurok) make it clear that the style was also used by women.

Several recordings seem to consist of true crying rather than singing with a "sobbing" delivery. This pertains to recordings collected from Johnny Cooper (Yurok),^[15] Jim of Pekwan (Yurok),^[16] Julius Marshall (Hupa),^[17] Weitchpec Susie (Yurok), and Blind Bill (Yurok). None of these could be effectively transcribed using standard musical notations. Others which could be transcribed, though never quite accurately, include songs collected from Hawley of Meta (example 29), Umiits of Kepel (example 35), Tom Hill (example 36), Weitchpec Susie (examples 37 and 38), and a man called Stone (example 53). These have the following basic characteristics:

1. The vocal delivery clearly resembles "sobbing," with much tremolo, nasality, and glissando.

2. The songs are sung in (unstructured) vocables rather than

words.

3. The melodic range is wide (typically an octave).^[18]

4. The melodic contour is descending.

5. Although pitches are unfocused and intonation is inconsistent, most songs have scales that are anhemitonic and pentatonic.

6. The tempo is very slow.

7. A sense of meter is quite vague (some songs have changing meters and others border on free rhythm).

8. Phrases are very short.

9. Melodic forms are classified as strophic, through-composed, or litany.

10. The songs give a general impression of being highly emotional and very unstructured or inconsistent from a musical perspective.

Our first observation is that, like the solo songs discussed previously, these crying songs also have a close relationship to the predominant (male) ensemble style. Except for two recordings—those collected from Tom Hill (Chilula) and Julius Marshall (Hupa)—all

were collected from Yurok persons. There is little doubt that "sobbing" songs were used in sweathouse training by all tribes of the area, but it may be significant that other types of medicine songs in this style were only collected from Yuroks, even though this may be merely coincidental or an accident of sampling.

Personal Songs That Imitate the Speech of Animals or Spirit-Persons

These songs have been described in chapters 3 and 8, where they are loosely referred to as "animal songs." Most of the recorded examples were collected from Karok speakers,^[19] but the corpus also includes Yurok examples^[20] and others from persons of Hupa,^[21] Tolowa,^[22] and Wiyot^[23] descent. The basic characteristics of the style are as follows:

1. The vocal delivery is speechlike, but besides having more pitch inflection it often differs from normal speech through presence of nasality, glottalization, or other special mannerisms intended to signify the speech of spirit-persons or animals.

2. In some cases, this "masked" voice is so speechlike that it cannot be transcribed effectively in musical notations.^[24]

3. The songs usually have words rather than vocables, though the enunciation is typically rather slurred.

4. The song typically consists of one or two short (symmetrical) phrases that are repeated several times (ten or more on most recordings).

5. The melodic range is very narrow (a fifth or less).

6. The melodic contour is undulating.

7. Songs in which pitches can be discerned usually have very simple scales with only two, three, or four notes (though exceptions occur).

8. Duple meters tend to be most common, and the tempo is usually moderate or slow.

9. The songs have a simple and repetitive character, giving the clear impression of an incantation rather than a "song" as such.

Although songs of this general type were used by every tribe in the region, those with exaggerated raspiness and glottalization were mainly collected from persons identified as Yurok or Wiyot. Those of other tribes typically employed a more "clear" vocal delivery, but were basically similar in purpose and character.

By contrast with the unique polyphonic style discussed previously, these "animal songs" were used throughout much of northern California. In published sources they have been noted among the Yuki (Herzog 1935b ), Modoc (Hall and Nettl 1955), Yahi (Nettl 1965), and various other tribes of northeastern California (Angulo and d'Harcourt 1931), but there seems to be little doubt that their actual distribution was much wider.

In northwestern California, these songs were eclipsed in the repertory by songs in the predominant ceremonial style, and a similar subordination occurred in areas where the Kuksu religion became important (that is, among various divisions of the Maidu, Miwok, Wintun and Pomo). Thus, these "animal songs" have mainly been noticed and collected among the Sierran groups and among other tribes whose ceremonial life was considerably less specialized.

Fortunately, the musical tradition described here was documented quite thoroughly, and it is mainly due to this that we know so much about these "animal songs" and their use. In other areas, "survivals" such as these were not collected in great numbers, but they probably existed quite late among all the tribes of northern and central California, and from this perspective they might be regarded as the most characteristic type of song in the California region as a whole.

Historical Interpretations

Now and then it seems permissible for the student to leave off his daily association with specific facts and rise above them on the gyroscope of his imagination to discover if a broader view may not give him insights into their relations or alter his conception of their setting in the larger landscape of nature as a whole. . . . The present essay is such a soaring of hypothesis. While it starts from the solid ground of twenty years

of inquiry into the culture and speech of the California aborigines, it pretends no greater validity than any summary, undocumented, historical reconstruction may claim .
Kroeber 1923:125

Kroeber's Reconstruction of Local Culture History

This is the introduction to an early essay in which Alfred Kroeber tries to produce a summary of California Indian history mainly through interpreting the geographical distributions of ethnographic and linguistic data. He relies largely on guesswork, seeking a level of detail which seems overly ambitious today, and he made several assertions that we now consider incorrect. Nonetheless, the paper provides a very useful background for separating comparatively modern and ancient elements in the musical tradition described here.

After discussing some of the specific problems involved in this sort of reconstruction (1923:126-130), Kroeber presents a model of California Indian history in four stages, summarized here mainly as they apply to the northwestern part of the state.

In the First Period (2000-15000 B.C. to 500 B.C. ),^[25] Kroeber envisioned a relatively simple and uniform culture throughout the California region as a whole (1923:130-131). The people of this era were presumed to be ancestors of the modern Hokan-speaking tribes (including the Karok), and they subsisted primarily on the gathering of seeds, especially the acorn, and to a lesser extent on fish and small game. Besides the war dance (of triumph), the principal dance throughout the whole California region during this era was the girls' puberty ceremony. Kroeber judges that the sweat-house was probably known during this era, and that religion was "influenced largely by shamans who derived their power from actual or fabulous animals or celestial phenomena" (1923:131).

The Second Period (500 B.C. to A.D. 500) brought populations and important cultural influences from areas to the north. Kroeber estimates that the proto-Algonkian ancestors of the Yuroks and Wiyots probably appeared in northwestern California during this era, as did the early Athapaskan speakers whose modern counter-

parts include the Hupa, Tolowa, and Chilula. Shamanism and society were acquiring a different character during this period as is described by Kroeber.

The shaman's power was no longer derived so much from animals as from intangible spirits of localities. The novice in the art was aided by older men in a shaman-making dance. Shamanistic food-supply rites were slowly being elaborated, especially in connection with the salmon run. Society remained unorganized as before, but possession of property and public influence were beginning to be correlated, and marriage was by purchase. (Kroeber 1923:132).

Most important, Kroeber felt that the new populations entering northern and northwestern California did not bring dramatic changes in culture but rather had much in common with the various Hokan-speaking peoples they encountered, particularly because their migrations were conceived as being very gradual and intermittent processes (1923:132).

It was during the Third Period (A.D. 500 to A.D. 1200), in Kroeber's view, that Indian cultures of various subregions of the California area began to become sharply differentiated or specialized. There were continuing influences from the cultures to the north during this period, and Kroeber summarizes local developments in these words:

In the northwest this local differentiation seems to have been most rapidly consummated, and to have become quickly established and correspondingly limited in geography. Consequently it is difficult to distinguish this period and the next in northwest California. The pure type of plank house, the high esteem of property, exact valuations and laws connected with property, the use of compulsive formulas in religion, the attachment of rites to particular spots, the belief in a prehuman race in place of a creator, all must have evolved to an appreciable degree during the third period. (Kroeber 1923:134)

Finally, Kroeber describes a Fourth Period (A.D. 1200 to recent times) in which Indian cultures in various parts of the California region were consummated or acquired the basic character that they had when first encountered by whites. In northwestern California, there were continuing influences from the north Pacific, but in Kroeber's view the developments during this era were mainly local

in character rather than mere reflections of northern prototypes. This was the era during which the carving of redwood canoes and other technologies were perfected, and various aspects of society and religion were attaining their finished character. As Kroeber writes,

Treasures or money as such assumed a larger part in life, as compared with merely useful things: dentalium shells from the north, obsidian from the east, ornaments of woodpecker crests obtained at home. The dances, whose esoteric portion remained formulistic, afforded opportunities for the display of much of this wealth, thus rendering unnecessary a potlatch or credit system and perhaps even preventing an introduction of this northern institution which might otherwise have taken place. The wealth in turn gave an added dignity to the festivals and enabled them to take on more definitely their ultimate character of world renewing or new years rites. The intensive localization of ritual, myth, magic, and custom was no doubt fostered in some measure by assignment of economic and legal values to fishing places and nearly all tracts or spots that were specially productive. . . . The idea of spirits as guardians diminished to the vanishing point; disease and cure were thought to be concerned mainly with self-animate pain objects; and shamans of importance were now always women. (Kroeber 1923:137)

This sort of highly detailed analysis of trait distributions has not been prominent in anthropology since the 1930s, and indeed the approach taken in this paper seems more intuitive and much less systematic than Kroeber's later culture element studies as described by Stanislaus Klimek (1935). Nonetheless, the larger outlines of this history are confirmed by more recent research in archeology and comparative linguistics as summarized by Albert Elsasser (1978), though certain corrections or qualifications need to be mentioned.

The archeological evidence deals only with elements of culture that can be surmised from relatively imperishable material remains, and it contradicts Kroeber's reconstruction only to the extent that it seems to imply that the superimposition of northern cultural patterns was more dramatic and not so gradual as Kroeber suggests (1923:132). Excavations conducted during the past fifty years at more than ten different sites revealed ample remains of a marine-adapted culture not so different from that of ethnographic

Yuroks and Tolowas, and radiocarbon analysis suggests that the same basic culture existed continuously in the region since at least A.D. 900. This tends to suggest that the bearers of this culture arrived in northwestern California with their subsistence patterns more or less established. It should be noted, however, that these assemblages yielded certain objects that did not survive into historical times, and Elsasser describes them as follows:

Some aspects of this culture, so far as it is known without excavation in pertinent cemeteries, did not survive into historic times: animal-form clubs and other ground slate artifacts; baked clay objects such as female (fertility?) figurines; and a type of olivella disc beads. For the rest, there is no mistaking a continuity, dating probably from about A.D. 900. (Elsasser 1978:52)

Evidence of an earlier culture was discovered by Richard Gould (1966) in a lower level at Point St. George in modern Tolowa territory. These deposits contained crudely chipped tools markedly different from those found in upper levels at the same site, and they did not include fishing equipment and other woodworking implements that were typical of later assemblages. This earlier toolkit apparently reflects a more ancient, nonmarine-adapted culture and was dated by carbon 14 analysis at 300 B.C. (Elsasser 1978:50). Presumably, these objects might well belong to one of the seed-gathering, Hokan-speaking peoples who populated California during the earliest period in Kroeber's history. To this extent, archeology confirms his speculations, though (as noted) the evidence as a whole tends to suggest that northern populations arrived somewhat later than Kroeber had estimated.

Evidence of comparative linguistics also contradicts Kroeber's notion that the Algonkian- and Athapaskan-speaking peoples both entered the region between 500 B.C. and A.D. 500 (Kroeber 1923:132). Elsasser seems to allow that the ancestors of the Yuroks and Wiyots may have entered the area toward the end of this period, but he strongly denies that Athapaskans could have come so early. Citing Harry Hoijer's lexicostatistical analysis of the Athapaskan languages (1956), he states that this group was probably not present in California or southern Oregon before A.D. 900 and perhaps did not arrive until several hundred years later (Elsasser 1978:50).

The Religious Complex of the Northern Hunters

The Indian, whatever his origins, was not one single people. It can be said that the beginnings lie in a twofold ecological adaptation—a sub-Arctic and Arctic hunting pattern, and a temperate, tropical, and subtropical seedgathering adjustment. There are those groups which retained the hunting base, and there were those seed-gatherers who found their way into agriculture, controlling nature instead of being controlled by it .
(Spencer, Jennings, et al. 1965:2 )

In order to best interpret the northern elements in music and culture of northwest California—and to describe the special place of this civilization in the overall sphere of Native American studies—it seems necessary to take an even broader perspective on North American prehistory. This requires a summarized chronological framework that recognizes at least the following basic periods or divisions:

Paleo-Indian Period (30,000 B.C. through 1500 B.C. )^[26] This is the period during which the Americas were populated by immigrants who originally came across a land bridge that existed between Siberia and Alaska during later phases of the last (Wisconsin) glacial period. These paleolithic nomads spread southward over the American land masses, and two basic ecological patterns gradually became distinguishable in North America during this phase: (1) an Arctic and sub-Arctic pattern based primarily on hunting and (2) a southern adaptation based on seed gathering. In many instances, the northern hunters retained much of their Asian heritage, and this was passed on to later cultures, so that not only the Eskimos but also many Indian tribal groups of the northwest coast, the Plateau, and even northwestern California show some dramatic parallels with indigenous cultures of northeastern Asia.^[27]

The Aboriginal Period (1500 B.C. through A.D. 1540) The invention of agriculture, perhaps by seed-gathering Paleoindians in the Valley of Mexico, marks the advent of a new period, one that saw the emergence of distinctly American cultural patterns as opposed

to older Asian ones.^[28] Gradually, the cultivation of maize spread northward, so that the Anasazi of northern Arizona had probably developed a settled economy based on maize cultivation as early as the second century A.D. The new lifestyle reached Indians of the southeastern and Woodlands areas at approximately the same time.

Maize cultivation supported the development of the Mayan and Aztec civilizations in Mesoamerica, and these radiated a continuing progressive influence on Indian cultures to the north until around A.D. 1300 (Spencer, Jennings, et al. 1965:286). Meanwhile, a great many Indian tribal groups, particularly those of the northern and western regions, retained a basically paleolithic hunting pattern and associated religious concepts throughout the entire Aboriginal Period.

Historical Period (A.D. 1540 through A.D. 1870) During this period, Indian cultures in nearly every region of North America were much altered through contact with Euro-Americans. For Indians north of Mexico, the beginning of the period occurred when Coronado and de Soto marched into the southwestern and eastern regions of North America. The presence of whites in North America not only displaced and destroyed aboriginal societies but also stimulated culture growth in various ways. Thus, to give one example, the presence of Europeans and later Americans on the Atlantic seaboard during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries tended to foster indigenous sociopolitical adaptations such as the creation of large tribes and confederacies (Spicer 1969:11-44).

Similarly, the Spanish introduction of the horse during the 1500s proved to be an important element in the subsequent development of Plains Indian cultures. Before the advent of this technology, the region was barely habitable, and only because of the horse did it become feasible for larger groups of people (many of which had been agriculturalists) to move out onto the Plains and survive there through buffalo hunting. Without the horse (and other more destructive influences), the Plains Indian lifestyles might never have come into existence, and from this perspective one might regard many elements of Plains civilization as relatively recent innovations, even though a distinct connection to the northern hunter complex seems apparent.

Indians of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest were also greatly affected by external contacts that first occurred during the latter half of the eighteenth century (Drucker 1965:189-204), but the Yuroks and other tribes of the northern California region remained isolated for another one hundred years and were among the last in all of North America to be affected by contact with whites.

The Ethnographic Period ( A.D. 1870 through A.D. 1950) Our image of North American Indian culture is based largely on information collected during this period. Indians had certainly been described in earlier literature, but some very important sources begin to appear during the 1870s, mainly in the form of diaries and other writings by government agents, travelers, journalists, and other amateurs.

Systematic anthropological research began in the 1890s, stimulated in large measure by a general belief that Indian cultures were disappearing and needed to be documented before they were completely extinct. The Edison phonograph had been patented in 1877, and this not only marked the beginning of research on Indian music but also revolutionized the study of ethnography and linguistics. In many cases, the anthropologists used information gathered during this period to construct images of "traditional" Indian cultures as they existed somewhat earlier in time, but the cultures portrayed in such studies had already been greatly transformed by historical events.

From this chronology it becomes clear that our whole knowledge of North American Indian cultures is biased by historical parallax to an extent that cannot be overemphasized. When we compare the musical traditions of different culture areas, we are actually considering expressions which reflect different historical layers as much as geographical divisions per se. Wax cylinder recordings collected circa 1900 among Indians of the southwest or eastern Woodlands reflect cultures which had received progressive influences throughout the Aboriginal Period and had also been affected by three hundred years of contact with European and American presence. On the other hand, the songs that Kroeber collected from elderly Yuroks around the same date emerged from a culture that had remained relatively isolated throughout the Aboriginal Period and had only recently been disturbed by whites.

It is for this reason that there is such a clear connection between Yurok religious practices and those of other indigenous peoples to the north. Similar beliefs and customs are documented among Eskimos; in various Indian cultures of the sub-Arctic, the northwest coast, and Plateau regions; and even among tribal cultures of northeastern Asia. I refer to a distinctive set of customs and ideas relating to hunting and use of game animals for food. While it takes different forms, a listing of its basic elements from a cross-cultural perspective might include the following:^[29]

First salmon ceremony (or seasonal ritual for other game animal)

Propitiation of game (including spoken prayers or other offerings)

Concept that animals are immortal and only lend flesh for humans

Concept that animals are conscious of human intentions

Ritual disposition of unused parts and offal

Sexual and other restrictions to avoid offending game animals

Fear of menstruation and ambivalence toward female sexuality

Institution of the sweathouse for purification

The elements listed above (along with other traits such as facial tattooing of women, the semisubterranean house design, the sinew-backed bow, and shamanism involving extraction of "pains") seem to comprise a relatively unified trait-complex, and from its geographic distribution we can probably state with some confidence that this first emerged among northern hunters of the Paleo-Indian period.

This is not to assert that the music or culture described in the present study dates back to Paleo-Indian times. Rather, influences from the north or northeast probably did not reach northwestern California much earlier than A.D. 500, when ancestors of the Yuroks and possibly the Wiyots arrived in the area. While elements of the northern hunting complex as outlined above have a huge Amerasian distribution, Yurok religion has its most dramatic parallels in much nearer cultures such as those of the Sanpoil and Nespelem tribes of the middle Columbia River as described by V. F. Ray (1932).

Despite these important influences from the north, it is important to recognize that the civilization that took shape in northwestern California during the period between A.D. 500 and A.D. 1500 was also in many respects a local development. It was decidedly Californian in character, and a strong imprint from the early popu-

lation of Hokan-speaking seed gatherers has persisted to the present day. This local element is very apparent in the musical corpus, and having established this basic historical context there is much to say about each of the vocal styles represented here.

Modern Ritual Music and Related Monophonic Styles

The locally specialized character of Indian civilization in northwestern California is nowhere more apparent than in the predominant style of ritual singing. This highly evolved use of counterpoint is not heard in other styles of California Indian music (though polyphony seems to be an ancient tendency in the region as a whole), and to the extent that it is associated with a distinctive ceremonial system we can probably surmise that it developed rather late. According to Kroeber's chronology, specific elements of the World Renewal complex did not take shape until after A.D. 1200 (Kroeber 1923:137), and there is not much reason to believe that this specialized brand of polyphony developed before that time.

Other elements of the predominant vocal style (wide melodic range, descending contours, nasal delivery, and heavy glottalization) are found in other vocal traditions of the Plateau and northern Plains regions. This style is related to the very forceful vocalizing that would later become dominant in Plains singing as defined for example by Nettl (1954:24-33), and it survives as a subordinate strain in many of the northern repertories. The style can be heard in (for example) some of the Flathead Indian songs collected by Alan Merriam^[30] and it may once have been widespread among northern hunters on this side of the Pacific Ocean.

Monophonic songs in this general style and the more exaggerated "sobbing" version were mainly collected from Yurok individuals, and this is especially significant because of the strong likelihood that the ancestors of the Yuroks may have entered northwestern California from the northeast (Elsasser 1978:50). As noted previously, there is a close resemblance between Yurok religious practices and that of some middle Columbia River tribes as described in Ray (1932), and thus it is tempting to speculate that proto-Algonkian ancestors of the Yurok may have migrated along the

Columbia River to its mouth and then proceeded southward along the coast until they came to reside on the lower reaches of the Klamath.

This may have been one of the styles that ancestors of the modern Yuroks brought to the region with them, though the specific symbology of crying in Yurok spiritual life was almost certainly a local development that took shape much later.^[31] This was not the only style connected with the northern hunting complex, however, nor was it the oldest.

Songs of Animals and Spirit-Persons

This [animal song] style represents no doubt one of the oldest layers that survive in present-day Indian music. Cycles of animal stories are common and old in the entire Old World; they must be old in North America too, to judge from their wide spread in the Western hemisphere. The extreme simplicity of songs in such stories suggests that the songs are old also, at least as old as the stories themselves. The technique of singing these songs is, with most of them, startlingly different from that commonly employed in [other types of] American Indian music .
Herzog 1935b:30-31

The ancient character of these songs was first noted in print by Herzog (1935b ), and his comments are in general agreement with the conclusions of cantometrics analysis as stated by Lomax (1968: 82-85, and 102-105) and elaborated upon in Erickson (1970:105-117). These later writers move closer than Herzog toward the dramatic assertion that these may have been the type of songs that the ancient Paleo-Indians brought with them from northeast Asia when they originally populated North and South America.

Commenting on the cantometrics coding for Arctic Asia, Lomax writes:

This style is remarkably consistent all the way across Siberia to the camps of the Norwegian Lapps. In most respects it can be viewed as an ancient, worn-down prototype from which Amerindian style could have de-

veloped. It is certainly closer to the South American profile than to that of (ethnographic) North America. (Lomax 1968:107)

It is interesting to compare the cantometrics profile for animal songs collected in northwestern California (see appendix 3) with the Arctic Asian profile given by Lomax (1968:107). Generally speaking, the correspondence is very close, but Yurok animal songs are distinctly closer to the Arctic Asian profile than Karok ones. As a group, the Yurok animal songs were found to be more glottalized, lower in vocal pitch, wider in vocal width, and somewhat raspier than their Karok counterparts. The presence of much glottalization strikes me as the most important point of contrast, and it confirms the remote but unmistakable connection between Yurok singing (or heightened speech) and that of other northern hunters.

The Karok animal songs more closely approximate the South American profile as given in Lomax (1968:83). This profile is not only less glottalized than the Arctic Asian one, but it also allows for the presence of polyphony, which we know to be a general tendency in California Indian music. In other respects, the Arctic Asian and South American profiles are rather similar, and they may be interpreted as comprising two different aspects of a single expressive style whose distribution reaches (though not continuously) over the entire New World.

The distinction between these two profiles may well correspond to the ancient split that divided northern hunting cultures from more southerly seed-gathering ones in Paleo-Indian times. From this viewpoint, glottalization can be understood as the single most important signifier of the northern hunting complex. Taking a more local perspective, it seems reasonable to hypothesize that the Karok profile reflects a vocal style that ultimately derives from the seed-gathering, Hokan-speaking Indians who populated California in the earliest period of Kroeber's history (1923).

Finally, it is important to note the mimetic character of the animal songs wherever they occur in the Americas or in northeastern Asia.^[32] The northern hunters relied mainly on glottalization in producing different types of masked voice, but various southern styles also serve to signify the speech of an animal, spirit-person, or deity in a similar way. Thus, the different animal songs that survive in

many modern repertories provide a glimpse—however partial and obscure—of the earliest religion in the New World.

Hupa Flower Dance Songs and Personal Songs in a Similar Style

We have already noted that these songs comprise a "foreign" element when viewed from the perspective of the predominant style, and it may also be useful to remind the reader that the Flower Dance is performed among the Hupa and Karok, but not by Yuroks, though the latter do have rigorous private rituals that the adolescent girl must observe.

While Flower Dance songs have been collected from Hupa and Karok singers, the following discussion focuses mainly on recordings that were collected from Hupa individuals. Personal medicine songs in a very similar style were collected from Hupa persons and among other Athapaskan speakers such as the Tolowa. The distinctive style heard in these songs is much less evident in medicine songs used by Yurok or Karok persons.

There is a certain disagreement over the history of the girls' puberty ceremony in northwestern California and the Far West, and it seems useful to discuss this style in relation to that issue, particularly insofar as it applies to the local culture described in our study. As mentioned previously, Kroeber considered the girls' puberty ceremony (and the War Dance) to be quite ancient in California. Indeed, he called it "the principal dance" celebrated by the Hokan-speaking seed gatherers who occupied the region as a whole before the ancestors of the Yuroks and Hupas arrived in northwestern California (Kroeber 1923:131).

Driver examined the literature on this subject from a much broader geographical perspective and produced a more detailed, though still admittedly speculative, history of the customs surrounding girls' adolescence in various Indian cultures of western North America (1941). He concludes that some of these observances (food and drink restrictions, scratching taboo, seclusion, and a belief that the girl is unclean) must indeed be extremely ancient and were probably brought to North America by the first immigrants (Driver 1941:60).

Despite the archaic nature of some of these customs, Driver ar-

gues that the public recognition of girls' puberty was a relatively late development and one that originated among tribes of the north Pacific coast. Going on the presumption that tribes of that region placed relatively great emphasis on publicization of individual crises or changes of status, Driver hypothesizes that the public girls' puberty ritual originated there and then spread southward. His concluding statement on the subject reads as follows:

The predominant type of public puberty ceremony originated on the Northwest Coast and proceeded southward mainly by migration, perhaps entirely in the custody of Athapascans. Subsequent diffusion took place in both Northern California and the Southwest. Although the intruders seemed to have been rather successful in imposing their new ideas on the earlier occupants of these areas, they also seem to have absorbed a great deal from the latter. (Driver 1941:62)

The musicological evidence is hardly conclusive, but there is little to suggest that the Flower Dance style is an import from the north. Without attempting a broad comparison of Athapaskan vocal styles, it is worth noting that public songs associated with girls' puberty rituals among the Navajo and Apache are indeed performed in a wide-ranging style that the present study generally identifies with northern hunting peoples. This is perhaps a clue to the comparative recentness of the Athapaskan migration into the southwest region.

By contrast, the Hupa Flower Dance songs (and personal songs in this style) have none of the northern characteristics and indeed closely resemble the animal songs described previously, except for a distinct tendency toward melodic symmetry. This type of singing is probably best viewed as a rather recent Athapaskan elaboration of a style that was present in California since the earliest period.