Frances Theresa Densmore (May 21, 1867 – June 5, 1957) was an American anthropologist and ethnographer born in Red Wing, Minnesota. Densmore studied Native American music and culture, and in modern terms, she may be described as an ethnomusicologist.

Life and Works

As a child Densmore developed an appreciation of music by listening to the nearby Dakota Indians. She studied music at Oberlin College for three years. During the early part of the twentieth century, she worked as a music teacher with Native Americans nationwide, while also learning, recording, and transcribing their music, and documenting its use in their culture. She helped preserve their culture in a time when government policy was to encourage Native Americans to adopt Western customs. Densmore began recording music officially for the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in 1907. In her fifty-plus years of studying and preserving American Indian music, she collected thousands of recordings. Many of the recordings she made on behalf of the BAE now are held in the Library of Congress. While her original recordings often were on wax cylinders, many of them have been reproduced using other media and are included in other archives. The recordings may be accessed by researchers as well as Tribal delegations. Some of the Tribes she worked with include the Ojibwe, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, northern Pawnee in present day Oklahoma, Tohono O'odham in present day Arizona, Indians of Washington and British Columbia, Ho-Chunk and Menominee of Wisconsin, Pueblo Indigenous peoples of the southwest, including Acoma, Isleta, Cochiti, and Zuni, Seminole in present day Florida, and Kuna in Panama. Densmore frequently was published in the journal American Anthropologist, contributing consistently throughout her career. Her manuscript A Study of Some Michigan Indians (1949) was the first publication in the University of Michigan Press American Anthropologist monograph series. She wrote The Indians and Their Music in 1926. Between 1910 and 1957, she published fourteen book-length bulletins for the Smithsonian, each describing the musical practices and repertories of a different Native American group. These were reprinted as a series by DaCapo Press in 1972. Raymond DeMallie describes Densmore's Teton Sioux Music and Culture as "one of the most significant ethnographic works ever published on the Sioux." She also was a part of "A Ventriloquy of Anthros" in the American Indian Quarterly along with James Owen Dorsey and Eugene Buechel.

Awards

Oberlin College awarded Densmore an honorary M.A. degree in 1924. Macalester College followed suit in 1950, awarding her an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. In 1954, the Minnesota Historical Society recognized her with its first-ever "Citation for Distinguished Service in the Field of Minnesota History." The National Association for American Composers and Conductors recognized Densmore in its 1940–1941 awards for her musicological work.

Publications

Discography

Smithsonian-Densmore Cylinder Collection (1910–1930) Includes: Songs of the Chippewa Songs of the Sioux Songs of the Yuma, Cocopa, and Yaqui Songs of the Pawnee and Northern Ute Songs of the Papago Songs of the Nootka and Quileute Songs of the Menominee, Mandan and Hidatsa