The Indian composes music for every emotion of his soul. He has a song
for the Great Mystery; for the animals of the chase; for the maiden he
woos; for the rippling river. His prayers are breathed in song. His
whole life is an expression in music. These songs are treasured down
through the ages, and old age teaches youth the import of the melody so
that nothing is lost, nothing forgotten. Haydn wrote his “Creation,”
Beethoven his “Symphonies,” Mendelssohn his “Songs Without Words,” Handel
gave the world his “Dead March in Saul,” Mozart was commissioned by Count
Walsegg to pour his great soul into a requiem; during its composition he
felt that he was writing the dead march of his soul. For generations it
has been sung in the little church at St. Mark’s, where the great composer
lies in an unknown grave. Had the Indian the combined soul of these
masters in music, could he cull from symphony and oratorio and requiem and
dirge the master notes that have thrilled and inspired the ages, he then
would falter at the edge of his task in an attempt to register the burden
of his lament, and utter for the generations of men the requiem wrought
out during these moments of passion—a passion of sorrow so sad that the
voice of it must ride through the width of the sky, and conquer the
thunder of the fiercest tempest. The orchestral grandeur of the world’s
great composers is the child of genius. They reached the far heights of
inspiration in a few isolated instances and for the delight of men. The
Indian composing his own requiem must encompass the eternal pathos of a
whole race of mankind riding forth beyond the challenge of death. It is
well that the Indian does not compose this death march, for the sorrow of
it would hush all lullabies, and banish the laughter of children.
Napoleon said to his soldiers, drawn up in battle line on the plains of
Egypt, in sight of the solemn Sphinx and the eternal pyramids: “Forty
centuries look down upon your actions to-day!” Four hundred and a score
years ago Columbus looked first upon the red man. These solemn centuries
look down upon this day; look down upon the sheathed sword, the broken
coup stick, the shattered battle-axe, the deserted wigwams, the last red
men mobilized on the plains of death. Ninety millions, with suffused
eyes, watch this vanishing remnant of a race, whose regnant majesty
inspires at the very moment it succumbs to the iconoclasm of civilization.
It is the imposing triumph of solitary grandeur sweeping beyond the reach
of militant crimes, their muffled footfalls reaching beyond the margin of
an echo.
[The Empty Saddle]