The Arapaho

Arapaho

The Arapaho are a tribe of Native Americans historically living on the eastern plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Sioux. Arapaho is an Algonquian language closely related to Gros Ventre, whose people are seen as an early...

 are a tribe of Native Americans

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

 from the western Great Plains

Great Plains

The Great Plains are a broad expanse of flat land, much of it covered in prairie, steppe and grassland, which lies west of the Mississippi River and east of the Rocky Mountains in the United States and Canada. This area covers parts of the U.S...

, in the area of eastern Colorado

Colorado

Colorado is a U.S. state that encompasses much of the Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains...

 and Wyoming

Wyoming

Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High...

. Traditional Arapaho music, described by Bruno Nettl

Bruno Nettl

Bruno Nettl is an active ethnomusicologist and musicologist.Bruno Nettl was born in Czechoslovakia in 1930, moved to United States in 1939, studied at Indiana University and the University of Michigan, and has taught since 1964 at the University of Illinois, where he is Professor Emeritus of...

 (1965, p. 150), includes sacred and secular songs. Traditional music uses terraced descent type melodic motion

Melodic motion

Complex melodic motion is the quality of movement of a melody, including nearness or farness of successive pitches or notes in a melody. This may be described as conjunct or disjunct, stepwise or skipwise, respectively and involves the use of the complex number, i, in its calculation.Bruno Nettl ...

, with songs consisting of two sections, each with a range of more than an octave

Octave

In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

 and scales of four to six tones.

Sun Dance

The Arapaho Sun Dance, performed in the summer when the Arapaho bands come together for the occasion, is a ceremony performed in order to guide warriors on a vision

Vision (religion)

In spirituality, a vision is something seen in a dream, trance, or ecstasy, especially a supernatural appearance that conveys a revelation.Visions generally have more clarity than dreams, but traditionally fewer psychological connotations...

, receiving a guardian spirit. The vision is inspired by intense self-torture.

There are also Arapaho folk

Folk music

Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 songs taught by guardian spirits, which are only supposed to be sung when the recipient is near death.

Secular music

Secular Arapaho songs include a wide variety of round dance

Round dance

There are two distinct dance categories called round dance. The specific dances belonging to the first of these categories are often considered to be ethnic, folk or country dances...

s in triple meter

Metre (music)

Meter or metre is a term that music has inherited from the rhythmic element of poetry where it means the number of lines in a verse, the number of syllables in each line and the arrangement of those syllables as long or short, accented or unaccented...

, the snake dance

Snake dance

Snake dance is a term used to refer to a parade before or during a high school or college homecoming event. The parade includes floats built by each high school class, marching bands, students, and alumni. Snake dance may also be more narrowly used to describe the student parade or a celebratory...

, the rabbit dance (a partner dance

Partner dance

Partner dances are dances whose basic choreography involves coordinated dancing of two partners, as opposed to individuals dancing alone or individually in a non-coordinated manner, and as opposed to groups of people dancing simultaneously in a coordinated manner.In the year 1023 the German poet...

 introduced after European contact) and a turtle dance, along with lullabies

Lullaby

A lullaby is a soothing song, usually sung to young children before they go to sleep, with the intention of speeding that process. As a result they are often simple and repetitive. Lullabies can be found in every culture and since the ancient period....

, children's

Children's song

Children's song may be a nursery rhyme set to music, a song that young children invent and share among themselves, or a modern creation intended for entertainment, use in the home, or education...

, war

War song

A war song is a musical composition that relates to war, or a society's attitudes towards war. They may be pro-war, anti-war, or simply a description of everyday life during war times....

, historical, and courtship

Courtship

Courtship is the period in a couple's relationship which precedes their engagement and marriage, or establishment of an agreed relationship of a more enduring kind. In courtship, a couple get to know each other and decide if there will be an engagement or other such agreement...

 songs.

Ghost Dance

The Ghost Dance was a religion

Religion

Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...

, introduced from tribes further west than the Arapaho in the 1880s. In 1891, the religion was outlawed by the United States, leading to a rebellion among the adherents and culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre

Wounded Knee Massacre

The Wounded Knee Massacre happened on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, USA. On the day before, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M...

. Music was an integral part of the Ghost Dance, and included folk songs that were retained long after the movement ended (ibid, 151).

Peyote songs

Peyote

Peyote

Lophophora williamsii , better known by its common name Peyote , is a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.It is native to southwestern Texas and Mexico...

 is a cactus

Cactus

A cactus is a member of the plant family Cactaceae. Their distinctive appearance is a result of adaptations to conserve water in dry and/or hot environments. In most species, the stem has evolved to become photosynthetic and succulent, while the leaves have evolved into spines...

 found natively in Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

. The buttons of the cactus, when chewed, act as a hallucinogen

Psychedelic drug

A psychedelic substance is a psychoactive drug whose primary action is to alter cognition and perception. Psychedelics are part of a wider class of psychoactive drugs known as hallucinogens, a class that also includes related substances such as dissociatives and deliriants...

 used in the ancient Aztec

Aztec

The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...

 religion and continued by area tribes to the present. Peyote ceremonies spread north and east, reaching the Apache

Apache

Apache is the collective term for several culturally related groups of Native Americans in the United States originally from the Southwest United States. These indigenous peoples of North America speak a Southern Athabaskan language, which is related linguistically to the languages of Athabaskan...

 tribes in the 18th century and then spreading to most every tribe in North America, along with some Apache music and Plains-Pueblo

Pueblo music

Pueblo music includes the music of the Hopi, Zuni, Taos Pueblo, San Ildefonso, Santo Domingo, and many other Puebloan peoples, and according to Bruno Nettl features one of the most complex Native American musical styles on the continent...

 characteristics. Peyote songs accompany the peyote ceremonies, and are mostly the same throughout the area of peyote's entheogen

Entheogen

An entheogen , in the strict sense, is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context. Historically, entheogens were mostly derived from plant sources and have been used in a variety of traditional religious contexts...

ic use. These songs are most similar to traditional songs of the Plains area, but are characterzed by a rapid rhythm composed of two note values, transcribed as quarter and eighth notes. Vocable

Vocable

In speech, a vocable is an utterance, term, or word that is capable of being spoken and recognized. A non-lexical vocable is used without semantic role or meaning, while structure of vocables is often considered apart from any meaning...

s, or non-lexical syllables are used, as are cadential and closing formulas.

Sample

• Download recording Ghost Dance
  Ghost Dance
  The Ghost Dance was a new religious movement which was incorporated into numerous Native American belief systems. The traditional ritual used in the Ghost Dance, the circle dance, has been used by many Native Americans since prehistoric times...
  
   and gambling
  Gambling
  Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
  
   song from the Piute and Arapaho
  Arapaho
  The Arapaho are a tribe of Native Americans historically living on the eastern plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Sioux. Arapaho is an Algonquian language closely related to Gros Ventre, whose people are seen as an early...
  
   Native Americans from the Library of Congress' Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry Collection; performed by James Mooney (possibly along with Charles Mooney; neither are believed to be Native Americans
  Indigenous peoples of the Americas
  The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
  
  ) on July 5, 1894