Old Indian Hymn

[Haruo (Leland)]

Speaking of African origins of Aunt Rhody's goose, this Thursday I'm planning on getting "Old Indian Hymn" sung by the Meridian Playground singing in Seattle, and I'm wondering if there are any expansions upon or additions to the anecdote Commuck gives about the Narragansett hearing the tune decades before the arrival of the whites.

[Fulton, Erin]

As per usual, I am not answering your question, but a couple of other questions that you didn't ask! I have not encountered any other version of this anecdote. I have, however, happened across relatives of the tune in two other places:

1. As IN EVIL LONG I TOOK DELIGHT in Mansfield's American Vocalist;
   
2. As CONFIDENCE in a New York manuscript collection from the late 1850s (p. 41 of PDF).

Although (to my mind) certainly connected, they are fairly "shapeless" variants of one another. CONFIDENCE is half as long as the other two tunes. IN EVIL LONG I TOOK DELIGHT has a different first half than INDIAN HYMN, while their second halves are related to one another. This could point to a few different possibilities. Length and form tend to matter in metrical hymnody because they can work either with or against the meter and rhyme scheme of the text. (See, e.g., the notable muck-up the Methodists made of trying to separate 6l 6s tunes by form in the Harmonist.) Ergo, the formal laxity in this group of related tunes could point to some origin point other than the metrical hymn-tune repertoire. The wide degree of variation could also suggest the use of that third phrase as a kind of a centonization element that could be recombined with various tunes, or all three variants representing equal steps down the "stemma" from a shared ancestor tune. It is noteworthy that the Caster MS comes from a community close by where Commuck grew up.

I think I may have come across minor evidence of Indian Melodies being known outside of its target community in the form of John Ellis's autobiography. Ellis wrote the well-known text "I came to the spot where the white pilgrim lay" to memorialize his fellow preacher Joseph Thomas. In Autobiography and Poems of Eld. John Ellis, Traveling Minister of the Lord Jesus Christ for Over Sixty-One Years (Springfield, OH: Press of the New Era Company, 1895), he writes: "Many times in my travels I have found people singing this piece, and sometimes they have told me of this one, or that one, who was its author. [. . .] Once while coming down the lakes, on a steamer with my wife and children, and an old lady was in our party, who knew that I was the author, we met a gentleman, who was singing this song, and he told my wife that it was an Indian missionary who wrote it"--and so on with other mistaken identities (pp. 21-22). Could this be confusion between hymn and tune, and the singing gentleman legitimately had Commuck's authorship of the music in mind, rather than Ellis's of the text?

Best,

E. Fulton.

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Sent: Monday, September 20, 2021 11:30 PM
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Subject: [fasola-discussions] Old Indian Hymn

 

CAUTION: External Sender

Speaking of African origins of Aunt Rhody's goose, this Thursday I'm planning on getting "Old Indian Hymn" sung by the Meridian Playground singing in Seattle, and I'm wondering if there are any expansions upon or additions to the anecdote Commuck gives about the Narragansett hearing the tune decades before the arrival of the whites.

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[Gabriel Kastelle]

Greetings, Fasola list --

No goose, nothing African, no conflation of texts and tunes-- I'll strive to be clear here.

I don't know of any further elaboration than Commuck's own published 1845 footnote about origins of the tune OLD INDIAN HYMN,

although the tune itself feels distinctive enough to me that it makes something of its own argument. 

A few bits related to the text make me believe with Commuck that the tune IS very old and long in wider Ninnuock oral tradition (not only Narragansett, as he also observes), even if maybe I don't go ALL the way with him in his many assertions (what a wonderful rich footnote from Commuck!).

One detail is obvious on the page: 

in the second half or chorus "Hosanna - hallelujah"s, the 'hosanna's I feel are revealing in that alternate singings of the word have opposite varied syllable emphases at cross purposes--  the King James faux-Hebrew "hosannas" do not fit the tune; the tune doesn't fit the English words in the chorus. Proves nothing, but is consistent with Commuck's claim that the tune was [already] known independently of the English... 

...but then, quite odd that this tune happens to turn up as an example of the very English C.M.D. hymnody meter. I can't explain these things--just observing some telling details.

Then, this is one of only three or four tunes in Commuck's entire tunebook for which the text is NOT cited by hymn number from the leading standard Methodist hymnal of the day (OSCEOLA and MISSIONARY or WHITE PILGRIM [stolen as "The Lone Pilgrim"] are the other two I recall at the moment).

Further searching reveals that the text is a combination of a doxology in common meter, plus a matching meter magnificat paraphrased in English verse, both by the English hymnist John Mason (fl. late 1600s).

Interestingly, a few generations before Commuck (Narragansett/ Brothertown, 1804-1855), the Rev. Samson Occom (Mohegan/ Brothertown, 1723-1792) published these Mason magnificat verses in his [words-only] hymnal of 1774. He also mentioned John Mason and his works by name in a letter to an English patron in 1771, asking for hymnals, observing that Mason's works are "very pleasing to the Indians." 

I believe that the Brothertown Indians retained all these verses in their memory (orature people are good at that), and Commuck published those "words here set" which he remembered well enough, but Occom didn't supply author attributions, so that detail was lacking. 

Then, one more hint of support for Commuck's footnote claims is found in journals of Rev. Azariah Horton, who was the settled minister in Southold, on north fork of East End of Long Island, in mid-late 1700s. Besides the English town of Southold, Horton covered more of the island (he mentions Quogue and the Moriches, besides Montauk and Shinnecock and other places), and gave some special service to the Montaukett and Shinnecock Indians (who are and have been very much inter-related, almost same, throughout historic period and an unknown time before) in the 1740s, before Rev. Occom took over, living among the Montaukett, from 1749-62. Horton's journals include the years 1741-1744. He makes a half dozen+ references to Indian singing of psalms or hymns. One case is the 23rd of January 1744, when he specifies after preaching in the evening that "After public Exercise was ended, several . . . sung part of a Divine Hymn, which contained Ascriptions of Praise to God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost . . . "  

There is no music notated nor described, but the text described sounds like a Doxology, and is consistent with first verse and chorus of the tune OLD INDIAN HYMN as we have it from Commuck and "other tribes bordering on the Atlantic coast", as Commuck says. Horton was in the Moriches that night, and commented further: "It may be noted, that a great Part of my Hearers this Evening came from Quaog, which is twelve MIles, and the the Indians of this Place go frequently there to Meeting."  Interesting to note the Native travels, Native networks, Native knowledge, before Wheelock school influence, before Rev. Occom and other Wheelock students. Singing = widespread Native practice forever as far as we can tell--I don't think we'll find a beginning. These Ninnuock of Southern New England + East End of Long Island were NOT a part of the John Eliot and Mayhews and Cottons works in 1600s. They were a little separate and apart already. And yet, all evidence we find is just as Commuck says century/ies later in 1845. 

Music does permeate and move mysteriously and seem to fly in the air.

Horton gives another singing observation which perhaps shows something of the process part-way along:

"they kept the tune along" -- I like that phrase --

[["converted" -- whatever that means -- different things to different people -- this idea is REALLY well explored in Linford Fisher's The Indian Great Awakening (2012: Oxford U P)]] 

Horton:  August 27th, 1741:  "Three Indian Girls converted in the Evening, who seemed to be ravished with a Sense of the Love of Christ, and their Mouths filled with Praise, that the Lord Jesus Christ had eased them of the distressed Burden they felt, and brought them, as they expressed it, into a new World.  I had the Pleasure, and it was a great Pleasure to me, to hear these new-born Girls sing a Hymn of Dr. Watt's, entitled, The blessed Society in Heaven, which Hymn they had got partly by Heart, having heard some English People often sing it, and when they could not remember the Words, the kept the Tune along."

!!!  :-)   --tantalizing... 

[Horton diaries reproduced in The History and Archaeology of the Montauk, 2nd ed, Ed. Gaynell Stone, pp. 195-222 (1993. Stony Brook: Suffolk County Archaeological Association)].

[Occom info, Mason hymnody quote by memory and other places I've written them down before-- findable in Complete Writings of Samson Occom (2006: Oxford U P) ed. Joanna Brooks -- look in letters, 1771. ] 

Fragments of the tune can be discerned in early-mid-1800s in the burned-out district of New York in music manuscript and in publication.

Erin Fulton may have better details to share on that-- I see that she's sent a message into this thread while I type, but I haven't read that yet.

LA ! 

-- A. Gabriel Kastelle --

Chafan, Kalapuya ilihi

(d.b.a. Eugene, Oregon)

On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 11:55 PM Haruo (Leland) <rosh...@gmail.com> wrote:

Speaking of African origins of Aunt Rhody's goose, this Thursday I'm planning on getting "Old Indian Hymn" sung by the Meridian Playground singing in Seattle, and I'm wondering if there are any expansions upon or additions to the anecdote Commuck gives about the Narragansett hearing the tune decades before the arrival of the whites.

--

[Gabriel Kastelle]

Hi again --

Thanks all for topic and interest --

Thanks, Erin!! 

The Mansfield, and the Caster ms. from only 40 or 60 miles away from Brothertown in New York where Commuck moved to join his community as an adult -- yes!!!  These are instances I was thinking of, of identifiable OLD INDIAN HYMN tune fragments continuing to rove with singers north and west, thank you! 

About authorship of music to MISSIONARY or WHITE PILGRIM,

Commuck is clear in his only other, second, footnote, in his tunebook, which appears on the page of MISSIONARY,

"A tradition of the New York Indians." 

Commuck is the first to publish this tune later to be stolen by both B.F. White and William Walker for later editions of their most famous early tunebooks, but Commuck is more honest than they and admits on his page that the tune is not his in origin, but is "a tradition of the New York Indians".

As often in these cases, we don't know just how many voice parts were traditional for the tune before Commuck wrote it down.

Commuck's first proposed title in copyright deposit notices of 1843 for his tunebook was "The Indian Harmonist", not "Indian Melodies" as the Methodists in NYC eventually put it out.

Did Commuck write harmony parts for an existing main air? Only one or two added to traditional harmony which he set down from hearing?

We haven't been able to find sufficient detail in notes or memories from Commuck or Hastings to resolve such questions yet.

The whole saga of Elder Joseph Thomas, the real White Missionary, and the incredibly far-traveling poetry telling of his diseased demise, is awesome. I don't tire of it.

There is a copy, I believe unique, of a broadside of the White Pilgrim text, pinned in to a copy of Methodist hymnal owned by Brothertown Anna Fowler in Wisconsin. I've wanted for some time to get in touch with Brothertown's THPO about getting a photo of this great item in "The Brothertown Collection" (I think still in custodianship of the Oneida, but expected to be on the way to Brothertown museum in Fond du Lac before too long...  ...move and preparations may complicate access for a while). This thread reminds me....  

-- A. Gabriel K. --

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[Haruo (Leland)]

Thanks, all of you, for your interest and interesting input. With your permission, Erin and Gabriel, I'll print out at least portions of your comments for singing on Thursday who may find this fascinating but not be in this group.

[Haruo (Leland)]

I just added note on the subject to John Mason's talk page at Wikipedia. Anybody who'd like to chip in feel free.

On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 11:05:58 AM UTC-7 gabrie...@gmail.com wrote: