HINTS AND EXPLANATIONS. 45 
The names and import of festivals should be recorded. Plays, with 
their plans and characters, should be given. 
The chief musical instruments of the Indians are rattles, bells, drums, 
and whistles. The most common form of a rattle is a gourd shell, which is 
often highly ornamented. Bells are made of strings of deer claws, strings 
of bones, strings of shells, &c. A drum is sometimes a log beaten with a 
stick. Sometimes a section of a log is somewhat hollowed so as to form a 
ponderous bowl. Basket bowls covered within and without with pitch are 
also used. Sometimes this basket bowl is inverted over a hole dug in the 
ground. There is sometimes an addition to this last musical instrument. 
The player uses a stick two or three feet long, deeply notched, and places 
one end upon the inverted bowl and the other against his stomach, and 
with his hands plays another stick up and down over the notches. A 
variety of crude tambourines and drums are uséd. Whistles are made of 
reeds and hollow stems of wood. 
Every tribe has a great number of simple songs. Very little of value 
is known of the vocal music of the Indians, as their musical scale or scales 
are not yet determined. 
Every tribe has a number of dances. The time and movement of 
these dances should be studied. 
Dancing with music, instrumental and vocal, is the principal amuse- 
ment at the frequent festivals or feasts held by every tribe. As each 
phratry is charged with the maintenance of certain great medicine festivals, 
so each phratry is the custodian of certain songs and dances, which are usu- 
ally held sacred. 
Musical instruments should be described and their names recorded. 
Songs should be collected in the native tongue. Dances should be 
described, and the names of dances given. 
§ 24._NEW WORDS. 
The schedules corresponding with the preceding sections call for words 
which the Indian possessed prior to his association with the whiteman. But 
since the first settlement of this continent from Europe the mental life of 
the Indian has rapidly changed. His original home on shores, in valleys, 
