Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
The Early Musical Instruments of America.
PREHISTORIC
AFFAIRS
ON EXHIBITION AT THE UNITED STATES
WASHINGTON.
The United States National Museum in
Washington, D. C , possesses several prim-
itive, if not entirely prehistoric, musical
instruments, gathered by divers persons
from different parts of the country, some
of them found buried in the ruins of the
civilization that antedated the Indians;
others collected from among the most
primitive of these aboriginal tribes. The
collection offers an interesting field for
study of the beginning and progress of
musical development in the western world
now embraced in the United States.
There is no more primitive civilization
than that of the Point Barrow Eskimos,
in Alaska. The only musical instrument
found there is the tambourine-like drum,
consisting of a piece of sealskin stretched
over a hoop, sometimes having a rudely
carved handle. The Indians of Southern
Alaska possess drums, whistles and rattles.
The drums are but little improvement over
those of the Point Barrow Eskimos.
The whistles are of wood, some having
a bladder-like attachment capable of being
distended, and then emitting a noise more
hideous than the similar, but somewhat
more civilized, toy of the modern boy;
others a bellows attachment to operate a
double reed mouthpiece, while still others
are blown like a fife and others like a
flageolet, having several holes to be mani-
pulated with the fingers to change the
tone. The rattles consisted of bird beaks,
tortoise shells and deer hoofs, strung on
strings or sticks.
Among the Hupe Indians of Oregon
were found rattles of similar construction,
but of more artistic workmanship; whistles
of bone, single and double in construction,
and drums like a covered box.
These primitive instruments, still in use
among those rude people, and certainly the
only musical devices they have ever known,
are very similar to the prehistoric instru-
ments found in the ancient graves of South-
ern California and the islands contiguous
to the coast, indicating some sort of in-
fluencing communication between the two
people. The National Museum has a large
number of bone whistles or flageolets taken
from the ancient graves on the California
coast and the adjacent islands. The ma-
jority are made of the long, hollow bones
of birds, some having one end closed with
asphaltum, others having oval or square
holes out near one end, and often with a
transverse ridge of asphaltum inside the
tube to deflect the air as the hole is blown
into, thus producing various tones.
Some of these whistles consist of two
or more bones tied together, each having
a different tone. Development is shown
by numerous whistles having four holes
to be manipulated like the modern fife.
Many of them show remarkable neatness
of workmanship, being regularly cut and
highly polished.
A double flute found along McCloud
river in Shasta county, Cal., is of elder
NATIONAL
MUStUM IN
stalks, with four holes in each tube, and,
except for the absence of a mouthpiece,
presents a remarkable resemblance to one
found in Palestine, which is known to
antiquarians as "David's pipe," and con-
sists of two parallel tubes of cane bound
together by cords. Both these instru-
ments, so similar in construction, but so
widely separated by locality, are presented
in the collection. The Palestine find
may well be taken for a simple improve-
ment on the primitive California instru-
ment, the latter having no mouthpiece.
The Kiowa Indians have preserved a
similar instrument of a single tube, but
greatly improved over the prehistoric
California flute. It is of cedar, has six
holes and a mouthpiece, and is quite
modern, compared with the California
instrument.
There is but one example of the North
American Indian having any knowledge of
stringed instruments, and that is "the
Apache fiddle," which consists of a hollow
reed a foot long, over which is stretched a
strand composed of six or eight horsehairs,
with a movable bar to tighten the strand,
which is played upon by a bow with a
horsehair string. The genuineness of this
instrument as an aboriginal invention is
doubted.
So far as known no tribe of Indians has
been without its rattles, and there are a
great variety of them in the museum. A
Sioux rattle is made of a mummified tor-
toise, with head and claws still attached.
Around the edge of the shell are suspended
numerous metal strips and diminutive cop-
per bells. This is worn suspended around
the neck in ceremonial dances. The Sem-
inole leg rattle consists of a bunch of tor-
toise shells attached to the leather leggin.
The Wolpi Indians, of Arizona, made
their rattles from ox hoofs. The Indians
of Silla, New Mexico, used tortoise shells
and deer hoofs, and the Zuni Indians the
whole turtle shell and the toenails of goats
and sheep. The Wolpi Indians also have
rattles made of the squash and gourd.
Drums were also favorites with Indians,
but they have seldom made much advance
over the Eskimo with this instrument, ex-
cept in the way of decoration.
In the line of wind instruments the Zuni
Indians seem to have been in advance of
other tribes. They had flutes and flageo-
lets made of reed and cane, with mouth-
pieces after the order of those of more
modern instruments, and one very ex-
cellent specimen has a trumpet-like flare
at the end, made of gayly decorated
gourd.
The earth monuments of the mound-
builders in the Mississippi Valley have
yielded many relics which seem to repre-
sent the efforts of those prehistoric people
at musical effect. They are entirely wind
instruments, the most primitive form of
whistles. They are of limonite concretions
which have been opened at one end, pre-
sumably where the crust was thinnest, the
clay nucleus removed so as to leave a
hollow interior, and the edge of the open-
ing ground to a bevel moderately sharp and
thin, so that, when blown agninst, a sound
was produced like blowing across the neck
of a bottle.
A collection of these whistles of dif-
ferent sizes and shapes, with various sized
openings, would make an orchestra of
great diversity of tones, but utterly de-
void of melody.
A stone tube, something the shape of a
baseball bat, was taken from a Tennessee
mound.
It has one end closed and an
oval opening near the middle, and responds
in ample volume of sound to the efforts of
a good pair of lungs. The mounds of Vir-
ginia, Ohio, Illinois and Missouri have
yielded a wonderful variety of stone tubes,
supposed to have been used as musical in-
struments, but amounting to nothing more
than trumpets.
The only evidence of an improvement of
the simple tube as a wind instrument
among prehistoric people is the remnant
of a flute found on one of the mesas of
Colorado, and similar fragments found in
the vacant homes of the cliff dwellers,
which show four and six holes in the tube
and a mouthpiece in the end or a hole
near one end. These are of stone, bone
and wood.
The moundbuilders have left no drums
or rattles, and whether their musical
knowledge began with wind instruments,
through communication with some other
people, or whether they once used drums
and rattles and abandoned them, as did the
people of Lapland and Iceland, and also
the Bushmen of Africa, is mere conjec-
ture.
There is one peculiar moundbuilder relic,
which suggests a connection between that
race and the ancient people of Central and
South America. This is the pottery whis-
tle, something like the familiar bird whis-
tle of the present day. One was found
several feet below the surface near Moline,
111., and is the only specimen of its kind
found in the Central or Eastern United
States possessed by the museum.
Its
shape is that of an animal head, much like
a cat. The mouthpiece is missing, but it
was evidently at the mouth of the animal,
and the eyes served as finger holes, produc-
ing different tones.
It has been impossible in this article to
go into minute details, the purpose being
to show that the prehistoric and aboriginal
people of the United States had a soul for
music, and that, however uncultivated their
taste and primitive their highest develop-
ment, at one stage they were on a par with
the ancient people of the Old World, and
that the similarity of instruments used
suggests with great emphasis that at some
time in the history of the world the people
of these two continents were in communi-
cation.
The Steinert Co. will be in evidence at
Bar Harbor, Me., during the summer
months, with a branch store, where every-
thing in music can be purchased.