CULTUEE OF PEOPLE OP SOUTHEASTERN PANAMA 119 



time, as the drum head requires tightening, these wedges are tapped 

 downward between the constricted side walls of the drum and the 

 anchor rope. This* mechanism is perfectly adapted to its purpose. 

 No modern mechanical device can secure greater efficiency than is 

 derived from this primitive conception. 



The African voodoo wooden drum, as represented by those sent 

 to the National Museum by Dr. W. L. Abbott, from Haiti, is simi- 

 lar in shape to the Choco drum except that instead of being pro- 

 vided with a solid wooden pedestal base, the constricted bottom 

 end is stuck into the ground as a support. The similarity between 

 the Choco and the voodoo drum of Haiti is strikingly indicated by 

 the hollow funnel-shaped drum shell walls. 



The single goatskin drumhead of the voodoo drum is pegged on; 

 it is sometimes reinforced with rope winding around the neck of the 

 shell. The employment, then, of the peg instead of the wedge, and 

 the lack of the wooden pedestal base, distinguish the African voo- 

 doo drum from the Chocoan. 



Columbus found shell drums in the possession of the Indian 

 natives. Again, later, during the middle of the seventeenth century, 

 the Caribs of the Antilles are recorded as making a drum from a hol- 

 low tree with a skin stretched over one end only. " In the early part 

 of last century, among the Arawak of the Corentyn, St. Clair re- 

 corded a drum made of part of a hollow tree, with a skin tied over it 

 at one end. The existence of such " one-sided " drums is indisputable 

 and their relationship to the hollow cylinders with skin-covered end 

 a closed one." 20 



Sapper narrates 21 how the aborigines of Costa Rica are accus- 

 tomed at their dances to accompany their songs with a long, narrow 

 hand drum covered only at one end with iguana {Iguana tubercu- 

 lata) skin. A similar hand-drum is employed by the Choco Indians 

 of the Sambu River valley, in south Darien, where such a drum was 

 collected by H. Pittier (Cat. No. 272595, U.S.N.M., pi. 7, No. 2). 

 The drum, however, has two skin drumheads and a wooden shell re- 

 sembling a doubly truncated cone or a small cask with tapered ends. 

 The shell length is 25.7 cm. (10.1 in.) and the sectional diameter 1-1 

 cm. (5.5 in.). 



The two skin heads are stretched smoothly over the ends of the 

 shell, extending toward the middle from 2 to 2.5 inches, and are each 

 held firmly in position by a three-ply lacing corn that passes like a 

 shoe lace completely around the pendent rim of the drum head and 

 extends from one to another of two parallel rows of holes drilled 

 through the hollowed shell of the drum. Attached to this lacing and 

 extending downward from each head toward the head opposite is a 



20 38th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1917, p. 460. 



21 Petermann's Mitteilungen, vol. 47, 1901, p. 39. 



