The 1890s were years of good fortune and hard work for Edward MacDowell: he had recently returned to the United States, and from his home base in Boston, he soon earned himself a reputation as one of the nation's brightest musical stars. His concert tours as a pianist took him around the country, but he still found plenty of time to compose his own music—which, after all, is what he was really interested in (he never planned on a virtuoso piano career)—and most of his best-known pieces, including the Suite No. 2 for orchestra, Op. 48, were written around this time.

The Suite No. 2, which was very famous in its day but has, like the rest of MacDowell's music, faded almost completely from the collective musical memory, carries the subtitle "Indian" on account of the composer's use of Native American folk tunes throughout its five movements. (In his preface to the score, MacDowell remarks upon the "occasional similarity" of these themes to Northern European themes, which he takes as evidence in favor of a shared cultural heritage—an interesting, if not entirely anthropologically sound, belief.)

Although the five movements properly bear no individual titles, MacDowell allows that concert programmers might desire such titles and offers the following suggestions: 1. "Legend," 2. "Love Song," 3. "In War-time," 4. "Dirge," 5. "Village Festival." The entire suite lasts about a half-hour.

The E minor first movement begins "Not fast; with much dignity and character" and opens with a firm, fortissimo call from the horns, unaccompanied. As one might expect, quicker music arrives momentarily to carry the movement through to its end. "Love Song" is a tender 6/8 meter thing in which the woodwinds sing a tune that is saturated by the so-called Scottish snap, which, despite its name is a rhythmic gesture common in North American folk music. The quick third movement is "rough" and "savage," to quote the composer, while the fourth movement "Dirge" is appropriately slow and mournful. For the finale, MacDowell created a fleet-footed movement—almost Mendelssohnian in its quick-paced, leggiero sweetness—that turns back to the E of the first movement, now, however, in the major.

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