MUSIC. 



385 



They also amuse themselves in the winter by sliding on their knees 

 down the steepest snowdrifts under the cliffs. A good deal of the 

 time, however, they are following their parents or other grown people, 

 catching little tish or fetching twigs for firewood or helping drive the 

 dogs, though as a rule they are not made to do any regular work until 

 they are pretty well grown. 



MUSIC. 



Musical instruments. The only musical instrument in use among these 

 people is the universal drum 1 or tambourine (kelyau), consisting of a 

 membrane stretched over a hoop with a handle on one side, and used 

 from Greenland to Siberia. It is always accompanied by the voice 

 singing or chanting. The player holds the handle in his left hand with 

 the membrane away from him, and strikes alternately on each side of 

 the rim with a short heavy piece of ivory, or a long slender wand, ro 

 tating the drum slightly at the same time 

 to meet the stroke. This produces a loud, 

 resonant, and somewhat musical note. There 

 appears, however, to be no system of tuning 

 these drums, the pitch of the note depending 

 entirely on accident. 



We collected four of these drums, of which 

 every household possesses at least one. 

 They are all of essentially the same con 

 struction, but vary in size. No. 50741 [79], 

 Fig. 3S, $, has been selected as the type. The 

 frame is a flat strip of willow (!7 inches long, 

 1 inch wide, and 0-3 inch thick, bent till the 

 two ends meet, thus making a hoop 22-2 

 inches long and 19 inches wide. The ends 

 are fastened together by a strap of walrus 

 ivory on the inside of the hoop, secured to 

 the wood by neat stitches of black whalebone. The handle is of walrus 

 ivory 5-2 inches long. The larger end is rather rudely carved intx&amp;gt; a 

 human face. Back of this head and 1 inch from the large end of the 

 handle is a square transverse notch, deep and sufficiently wide to fit 

 over both rim and strap at the joint. It is held on by a lashing of sinew 

 braid passing through holes in rim and strap, one on each side of the 

 handle, and a large transverse hole in the latter, below and a little in 

 front of the notch. The membrane, which appears to be a sheet of the 

 peritoneum of a seal, is stretched over the other side of the hoop, which 

 is beveled on the outside edge, and its edge is brought down to a deep 



Fio. 3811. Drum. 



1 Xordenskiold calls this &quot; the drum, or more correctly, tambourine, so common among most of the 

 Polar peoples, European. Asiatic, and American ; among the Lapps, the Samoyeds, the Tunguses, and 

 the Eskimo.&quot; (Vega, vol. 2, p. 128). 



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