MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS MADE OF BONES. 



By 0. 0. Abbott. 



The production of measured sounds, both by means of the voice and 

 by a variety of instruments, principally as an accompaniment to certain 

 motions — often as violent and ungraceful as the sounds are shrill and cacoph- 

 onous — is common to all savage races. Such sounds we are led to call 

 "music," thinking we have in them the origin of the developed harmony 

 of civilized races; and such movements we call "dancing," as nearest re- 

 sembling that graceful amusement of modern times and of advanced 

 peoples. In thus tracing back the triumphs of modern civilization to the 

 customs of savages, we find, in certain of the rude productions of the Pacific 

 coast tribes, the primitive forms of our modern fife and flute. 



Musical instruments of this simple pattern are, or were, common, prob- 

 ably, to all the native tribes of America. Bartram,* in writing of the South- 

 ern Indians, remarks, "These people like all other nations, are fond of 

 music and dancing: their music is both vocal and instrumental ; but of the 

 latter they have scarcely anything worth the name; the tambour, rattle- 

 gourd, and a kind of flute, made of a joint of reed or the tibia of the deer's 

 leg ; on this instrument they perform badly, and at best it is rather a 

 hideous melancholy discord, than harmony. It is only young fellows who 

 amuse themselves on this howling instrument." It is probable that the 

 " music " obtained from the whistles and other instruments found in the 

 graves in California was of a similar character to that described by Bar- 

 tram. 



Fig. 115 represents a large example of what we must consider a bone 

 whistle, although, in its present condition, it would not be of use, even in 



* Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, Dublin, 1793. pp. £02-3. 

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