material. She found two special insights in this Native Amer-
ican music. One was influenced by the evolutionary theories
of her time: "these songs take us back to a stage of develop-
ment antecedent to that in which culture music appeared
among the ancients, and reveal to us something of the foun-
dations upon which rests the art of music as we know it to-
day" (p. xxx). The other regarded the origins of music:
these songs show, she says with pioneering insight, "that mu-
sical form was not developed, as has sometimes been stated,
by the use of instruments, but that it took its rise in a mental
necessity similar to that which gave structure to language"
(p. 125). Fletcher compared music with language, pointing
out that, as the speech of so-called savage tribes is certainly
organized and cultivated, so was the music.

The present book, Indian Story and Song from North America
( 1900), was inspired by enthusiasm for Native American
music generated at the Congress of Musicians held in con-
nection with the Trans-Mississippi Exposition, Omaha, July
1898. "Several essays upon the songs of the North American
Indians were read, in illustration of which a number of
Omaha Indians, for the first time, sang their native melodies
to an audience largely composed of trained musicians" (p.
xxix). Fletcher continues: "This unique presentation not
only demonstrated the scientific value of these aboriginal
songs in the study of the development of music, but sug-
gested their availability as themes, novel and characteristic
for the American composer. It was felt that this availability
would be greater if the story, or the ceremony which gave
rise to the song, could be known, so that, in developing the
theme, all the movements might be consonant with the cir-
cumstances that had inspired the motive" (p. xxix).

Fletcher was gratified that some of her Native American

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