Songs of the Salish Indians of British Columbia

Extract

In 1912 some sixty songs of the Salish tribe of British Columbia Indians, living on the Upper Thompson and Lillooet Rivers, were recorded on Edison cylinders for the National Museum of Canada, under the direction of Dr. Marius Barbeau. Fifteen of these, which I transcribed five years ago at Dr. Barbeau's request, are here used to demonstrate some of the characteristics of Salish songs.

The aspects of the songs concerning which it has proved worth while to compile statistics are their phrase-structure, scale-structure, interval-structure, use of percussion, start- and end-exclamations and extraneous cries; of these the first three, concerning aspects of structure, are the most important.