ANISHINABEK [CHIPPEWA / OJIBWE]: SONGS & SONG PICTURES Recorded by Frances Densmore circa 1907, the "song pictures"

(as she called them ) are pictographs recorded on birch bark, representing individual songs & extend ed series of songs that can be read-out from them. According to Densmore the pic tures use certain "established" (but apparently very open) symbols common to Mid drawing (see below) & rearranged & elaborated for each particular occasion. But W.J. Hoffman s earlier readings show departures from the mere representation of th e songs contents to the presentation of new information not supplied by the words . The songs so depicted are almost all from the Midwiwin (Society of the Mid or "sha mans"), the basic organizational form of the tribal religion. The artists Odenig un (numbers 82-87), Debwawendunk (number 17), Becigwizans (numbers 66-69), & Naw ajibigokwe (all the rest) had all been initiated through the various grades or d egrees of the society, toward a gradual opening-up of sense perception, powers t o heal, etc. Again & again Densmore tells us that even in the recording of songs for her information, singers & artists treated the events, i.e. the singing & d rawing, as an experience of some intensity, an occasion for prayer, tobacco offe ring & (sometimes) meditative withdrawal. Thus Debwawendunk ("an old man and a m ost devout adherent of the Mid") smoked in silence, then made a speech as follows : I am not doing this for the sake of curiosity, but I have smoked a pipe to the M id manido from whom these songs came, and I ask them not to be offended with me f or singing these songs which belong to them. The numbering of the song pictures follows from Densmore s numbering of 107 poems in her original collection. The wording was modified for publication in Jerome R othenberg (ed.), Shaking the Pumpkin, while her original translations can be fou nd, along with ample descriptions, in Frances Densmore, Chippewa Music, Bureau o f American Ethnology, Bulletin 45, 1910.