She Always Said, “I Heard an Indian Drum”

Unsurprisingly for a woman who devoted more than fifty years of her life to the study of Native American music, Frances Densmore was often asked how and why she was drawn to the study of Indian music and cultures. Her reply, given to journalists, fellow scholars, and used in her own unpublished autobiographies, was nearly always the same: “I heard an Indian drum.” Densmore would then relate the story of how as a young girl she often fell asleep to the distant sound of the drumming of her Dakota neighbors on an island near her hometown of Red Wing, Minnesota.