A native of Pennsylvania, Cadman was educated in Pittsburgh, where he spent time as a church organist and music critic; in 1904, he began publishing organ pieces and ballads.

But it was an interest in American Indian lore than really launched his composing career.

Inspired by the various ethnological inquiries then in vogue in America's ill-fated quest to preserve the dwindling Native American culture, Cadman spent the summer of 1909 collecting and recording Omaha and Winnebago tribal melodies and studying American Indian music.

With a Native American princess, the mezzo-soprano Tsianina Redfeather, he toured the country between 1909 and 1916, giving music-talks on Amerindian music.

Any reputation left to Charles Wakefield Cadman is based on a pseudo-Indian song popular in the 1920s, "From the Land of the Sky-Blue Water."