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9. After-Words
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[279] 9. After-Words In the early twentieth century Nez Perces supplemented their performances with the technology of voice recording as a way of preserving their histories and transmitting the old ways to generations to follow. At the Fourth of July celebration in Lapwai in 1911, for example, Sam Morris (shown in fig. 49) was a featured speaker, as well as a participant in the singing. Using a wax-cylinder recorder, or graphophone, Morris recorded himself and a group of singers performing “Serenade Song, K’ilowawia,” likely in connection with the traditional war parade, for Qillóowawya are departure songs, part of the “send-off for warriors.”1 Morris eventually recorded a total of sixty-nine wax cylinders, sixty-one of which have now been digitally remastered as a part of the Nez Perce Music Archive compiled by Loran Olsen. While it is not clear how Morris acquired his graphophone, his use of it recalls Alice Fletcher’s earlier ethnographic work on the reservation. In 1890, as she began gathering linguistic data from Susan McBeth, she had planned to support her investigations with wax-cylinder recordings of verbal performances. She wrote in great excitement to F. W. Putnam that she had “found from the language that the people know of the tides of the ocean, also that they had a word for the earth quake—I am trying . . . to get at some hints as to their mygration. I told Miss McB. I must have skulls, etc. . . . I have two of the songs-words from Miss McB. & fig. 49. Left to right: Sam Morris (Sik-Um-Chets-Kun-In), Paul Eneas, and Billy Carter, Nez Perce Indians in blanket leggings and beaded moccasins, by Bowman Studio, Pendleton or. Stephen Shawley Collection, Historical Photograph Collection, University of Idaho Special Collections and Archives, Moscow id, 38-0428. [13.58.82.79] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 05:45 GMT) [281] shall try & get the music. I am going to try & get a graphophone to use here.”2 This letter is an early indication of the anthropologist’s intent to pursue ethnomusicological studies among the Nez Perces, another project she left unfinished when she departed the reservation in 1892.3 Fletcher’s records yield no indication that she succeeded in bringing a graphophone to the reservation, although she and Jane Gay had experimented with one in Washington dc.4 In 1897, however, when Chief Joseph visited Washington accompanied by Levi Jonas, James Hayes, Harry Hayes, and others, Fletcher entertained the delegation at her home and on two occasions recorded these men singing Qillóowawya.5 Upon their departure she “[g]ave Levi Jonas 12 graphophone rolls with music requested on them for concert work at Nez Perce Res.”6 The next year Fletcher wrote to Kate McBeth and inquired, “Where is Jas. Hayes? Did you ever hear what became of the graphophone cylinders I gave Levi Jonas & those on which he obtained records for me?”7 Like so many of the other stories associated with Fletcher’s relations with the Nez Perces following her departure from the reservation, this one has no resolution. No evidence exists to suggest that Jonas returned the cylinders to Fletcher. “every Nez Perce Indian, if the chance was given him, would register his complaint”: John McConville In July 1911, at the same celebration at which Sam Morris recorded “Serenade Song” using the graphophone to preserve an aural record of Nimiipuu culture and survivance, another archival activity was also under way (see fig. 63 for a photograph likely taken at the 1911 gathering). At this celebration Starr J. Maxwell (fig. 50), a Nimiipuu attorney and notary public, assisted by tribal council member Silas D. Whitman (fig. 45), gathered, translated, and transcribed sworn testimony from more than one hundred Nimiipuu about the difficulties allotment had brought into their lives.8 Several of these respondents testified that everyone would register a complaint if given the chance.9 Like Morris’s recordings, Maxwell’s interviews, collected in a document titled Memorial of the Nez Perce Indians Residing after-words [282] in the State of Idaho to the Congress of the United States, exempli- fied the spirit of the occasion. And like the singing, the testimonies in the Memorial (M) preserved the people’s histories as “a strong and powerful tribe” (Stot-Ka-i, M, 111). As I have demonstrated throughout this book, the Fourth was an occasion upon which citizens of the United States celebrated their constitutionally guaranteed rights. In 1911 this holiday might have...