The narrowness of melodies characteristic of the canoe-faring tribes is still clearly noticeable with the Selk'nam, but no longer quite so extreme. It recedes even more with the Tehuelche, where motives with a range of a fourth are the rule and the range of the whole melody through downward shifts may increase to an octave and more. Parallel with the amplifying range we find the accentuation of the descending trend of movement, the ending upon the lowest tone, the emergence of fourths and fifths (and even octaves) as structural intervals, frame-tones, transposition bases and melodic steps, while the seconds as specific melodic steps preferably are arranged in festoons; a downward movement takes place from step to step, the second tone is always repeated as first tone in the following step, with a similar kind of dragging chass‚ step as the Indians use in their dances -and our children when walking down stairs. These "stair-pattern" melodies are typical for the majority of all American Indians, although some tribes have preserved a small percentage of narrow melodies as a survival from an older stratum of culture. Thus with the Araucanians, the Uitoto (example no. 46) and especially the (South-) Californians and the Yuma group in Southwest Arizona. Here narrow melodies are found especially in the songs accompanying the girls initiation rites (example no. 48) which it can be proved that these tribes brought with them to California from their earlier home land. A proof of the high age of these songs is the fact that many of the texts - as with the Fuegians (and the Tehuelche)-no longer can be understood. A particular characteristic of many Yuma songs is the deviation from the general downward trend caused by the fact that in the second part of a song a motive will either be amplified upwards or the entire level of the motive raised (Even the singers themselves are conscious of this feature of their melodic style). We have repeatedly found this same "rise" in the songs of the Fuegian canoe faring tribes (s. a.: Melodic movement). The musical style with all its characteristics -narrowness, rise- is handed from lip to lip, from generation to generation together with the melodies; there are transitions - as the less narrow character at the Selk'nam -and overlayers of more recent strata -as the clear Pueblo influence at the Yuma. In this respect songs behave the same way as other cultural phenomena. (Yet there seems to be one difference, especially as compared with less mental cultural elements: according to more recent researches musical styles never seem to wander without their bearers). The manner of singing shows an entirely different aspect: the absence of the "Indian emphatic manner" makes the Yamana and Halakwulup radically different from the Selk'nam, and the South Californians and Yuma and some other related tribes (Pima a. o.) from the Pueblo and all other Indians. Now the intensity of this manner of delivery suits the magic practices of the shamans excellently and thus the conjecture is tempting that it originated with shamanism and spread all over Northern Asia and the whole American continent with the same. Yet there are a number of objections to be raised against such a hypothesis. The tribes which practise this emphatic manner of singing do so not only in magic songs but always and with all kinds of songs and not only the shamans, but everybody, even women and children, sing the same way. This would have to imply that the shamanistic manner of singing had become general, which even if it is not entirely impossible, yet seems rather unlikely. And the Fuegians furnish decisive proof against the connection between the emphatic singing manner and shamanism. According to Gusinde's researches it is very probable that the Yamana did not originally possess their system of shamanism and their plays, but have taken them over from the Selk'nam. Now it is an often observed and psychologically quite comprehensible fact that foreign cultural elements are taken over as an entity, just as they are, if at all, and are imitated with painful exactitude in every detail, even in those that are not understood. This is particularly true of all magic devices -the one taken over can never be sure which details are most essential to obtain the desired result. Therefore one would expect that the Yamana together with shamanism and its most important means, song, would have taken over the characteristical "shamanistic" manner of singing, which makes the magic act so impressive even to our feelings; and one would assume that this would cause them no greater difficulties, considering their great talents of imitation. But we find to our surprise that with the Yamana the shaman songs (examples nos. I7ð20) show as little of the emphatic manner of singing as any of the other songs. This seems to point to the fact that the technique of delivery as well as the timbre of voice and the general motor behaviour fall beyond the realm of cultural facts transplanted by tradition and handed on from tribe to tribe, but must be rather deeply anchored in the psychological field and thus follow lines of inheritance. That is to say they are characteristics of the family or in tracts with little mixing, the "race". This seems to be proved by the fact that the canoe-faring tribes even somatically very clearly differ from the Selk'nam. Anthropologists classify the short-statured Yamana with the older Lagoa-Santa race, while the extremely tall Selk'nam are closely related to the Tehuelche and with them belong to the Indians proper, who form a relatively very homogeneous race. Judging from the manner of singing by far the most of the tribes of the American continent should belong to these -including the Eskimo -but even the Palaeasiatics and (probably) even the Tungus. On the other hand besides the canoe-faring Fuegians - as far as can be ascertained at the present time- even a few Californian and other related tribes (Yuma, Pima) would have to be counted out. It will have to be assumed that in these cases not only the remains of a very old culture -the narrowness of melody, the "rise"- but even its bearers have been preserved, at least as a lower stratum. In the Old World the songs of Yamana and Halakwulup are closely paralleled by those of the Vedda (example no. 49) and the Andaman Islanders ; narrowness of melody, frequent rise at the ends of verses or stanzas, regular tempo, the number of time units varying arbitrarily (with the Vedda according to the text), in almost every repetition of one single phrase, parallel fifths (Andaman Islanders); a lack of sound instruments (the Vedda do not have them at all, the Andaman Islanders have nothing but a board, which they stamp with their feet) ; predominant use of dance and song to achieve shamanistic trance conditions in which the singer believes to be possessed by the spirit - or rather its witchcraft - like the shaman of the Selk'nam by his
wayuwen. It seems practically unavoidable to range these parallels within that circle of relations of cultural history which P. W. Schmidt has revealed between the Northern Californians and the Fuegians and then extended to the earliest Old World cultures like the Southeast Australians and the Andaman Islanders, relations made probable by a very great number of very detailed homologous features. Thus -only to mention one such convincing detail- the novices at the youth initiation are not allowed to scratch themselves with their hands, only with a small stick; this holds good for Yamana, Californians and Southeast Australians as well. The above mentioned parallels -stamping sticks of the women, rolled-up hides as stroke devices etc. - are all the more remarkable as they exhaust the earliest sound instruments of the Fuegians and of the Southeast Australians as well, if one disregards the bull-roarer, of which of course they make very great use. Like the Yamana and the Halakwulup the Southeast Australians in their initiation ceremonies perform animal dances and pantomimes in which the behaviour and cries of the animals are realistically imitated, while performers and onlookers enjoy the fun and many of the representations nowadays principaIly seem to serve entertainment. With both peoples the shamans (but even other people) learn songs, dances and spells in dreams from one of their deceased ancestors. (The parallel goes so far that the Selk'nam as well as the Kurnai say that the shamans of the good old days used to give exact information on when and where a whale had stranded). The deceased who enters into the shaman talks through his mouth "with curious voices". Unfortunately no phonographic records were made of Southeast Australian songs while they were still sung. From the few examples noted by Torrance from the lips of a Wurunjerri we may at least feel sure that even this melody was of the narrow type. Every verse begins with a downward glide through a whole tone (or less) and then remains on the lower tone thus reached until the next verse where the level is again shifted one step downward. If the two-verse stanza is repeated, the result is a three-tone melody with a range of about a third. In other songs with every repetition of a single verse the level is shifted one step downwards; the result is the same variant of the "stair-pattern" which the Papua of Torres Straits use in their ancient ceremonial songs. This form probably is not original with the Southeast Australians but an importation from the North and Northwest. Another parallel which might help to give further explanation to the cultural historian has to be added to those mentioned so far: the songs of the Central and Western Australians so closely resemble the "stair-pattern" type of the Indians, that even an expert might find it difficult to distinguish between a Corroboree of the Arunta and a song of some Plains Indian tribe, judging only from the musical notation. (There is also a very remarkable similarity between the masks and the body painting at the
kloketen of the Selk'nam and at the Central Australian ceremonies. The Selk'nam tradition, according to which the mask secret originally belonged to women and only later was revealed and taken over by men, also comes back with the Papua tribes at Papua Gulf.) Colour of voice and manner of performance are of course distinctly different, which again speaks for their being rooted in racial characteristics. These facts lead to the hypothesis that the bearers of the same primitive culture originally were neighbours -perhaps somewhere in Central or Northern Asia- then migrating from there under pressure of more advanced tribes until they gradually reached the southernmost regions of the continents and the islands outside of these: some to Tasmania, Southeast Australia, the Andaman Islands, Ceylon through the Australians of the present time, Papua etc., others to Tierra del Fuego and California through Indian tribes which pressed after them over the Bering Strait.
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