A letter:

10 Sept 64

Arrived in Schefferville 28th evening of August, We sat in the iron-red mud under drizzling skies eating our cold Campbell's and bread supper, then reported in to the Mounty station for a place to sleep. Arrive: our first benefactor, George Hackwell, a mineworker who offered his shack near the Indian reservation. The following morning George's friend and foreman, Monsieur George Falardeau, asked if we'd like to pass some time at his fishing camp some forty miles north in the bush. There we had wonderful fishing - a gross of Brook Trout in one day - and found a few cold Indian camps with bleached bones of animals scattered about. After a week of this frustration of no flesh and blood Indians, we arrived back in town, saw Father Sear - the Catholic potentate on the Indian settlement - who introduced us to one Sebastian McKenzie, a 78 year old Montagnais Indian. In 1911 he left Sept-Iles (on the St. Lawrence) for the interior and, for a number of years, was manager of the Hudson Bay Company trading post at Fort McKenzie. (The Indians apparently change their names after they've done something bad, or when they're sick so that the evil spirits can't find them.) McKenzie sang a couple of hunting songs, a couple of "remembering people" songs, and related some episodes from his very colorful life. All these songs (sung by one individual) derive their words from a dream the individual had. These dreams they believe to be true, as well they might, because they do come true. The tunes are inborn, naturally. McKenzie's English is only occasionally intelligible (though he does speak passable French), thus the few stories he told are not commercially usable. There are a few other Indians - mostly Nascopee - who speak better English, but these people are shy, and it will take time before we can get them on tape. In many instances they feign ignorance of English. McKenzie gave me one important fact: all Indian songs (dream songs) except those sung at weddings are sung in the bush before and after the hunt. I've asked him if we might go along with a hunting party into the bush, but he's sceptical: "One, only one of you, maybe," But when we get to know them better this attitude may change. Also gifts may help. They're very poor.

We intend to stay until the-weather forces us southward, According to reliable local sources this weather will occur with determination in three weeks to a month.

Sincerely yours,
Owen Jones

Notes:

The Cree, Montagnais, and Naskapi songs in this album were recorded September, 1964 at an Indian settlement in Schefferville, P,Q., Canada.

They are not ordinarily sung for general amusement except when they accompany a dance. Even then it is more the drumbeat and not the song itself which is important to the dance. Rather they are sung by a hunter to assure good fortune in his hunting, which, in the past, was the Ungava Peninsula Indian's only means of subsistance. These songs are 'personal' songs in that they are verbalized sleep-dreams of the singer. One man does not sing the dreams of another.

Today, under the influence of white man's culture young Indians in the settlement mock, ridicule these songs and dances which were so important to survival.

There are two types of drum beats that accompany these songs, The difference is explained by a Nascapi hunter at the beginning of band side two, The two-beat accompanies the dance; the steady, non-accentuated beat accompanies the hunting song. In both cases the words originate in or describe a dream.

A single skin wooden drum is played by the singer. Stretched equatorially across the face of the drum is a thin length of gut on which is threaded 3 or 4 one inch long ptarmigan quill tips. The quill tips are spaced about two inches apart and lie flat on the face of the drum. A second such snare lies on the opposite side of the skin in a longitudinal direction. These snares (meequais) produce the buzzing sound which at first gives one the impression that the reproduction he hears is somehow distorted.

Recorded and Edited by Owen R. Jones, Jr.