268 | Indian Music. [March, 
cured from the Indians themselves, is composed of pictorial de- 
vices painted on birch-bark, and was produced on certain occa 
sions to suggest to the mind of the performer the particular song 
which it represented. It is stated that some of “The North 
American Indians also use rude little pictures, rough writing we 
may call it, to help them to remember songs and charms, Each 
verse of a song is concentrated into a little picture, the sight of 
which recalls the words to one who has once learned it. y ae 
A picture of a circle, with a figure in the middle represents a 
verse of a love song, and says to the initiated, ‘ Were she ona 
distant island I could make her swim over.’ ” 
The musical instruments of the savage tribes of North Amer- 
ica, however, were, and still are, of the most primitive sort, com — 
sisting of rattles made of wood, gourds, tortoise shells and the 
hoofs of deer, of bone whistles and of square or cylindrical skin- | 
covered drums. Some of the savages of South America made — 
flutes of the bones of wild animals, some of wood carved in the 
semblance of human heads, drums covered with the skin of mot- — 
keys and nondescript instruments made of variously-colored sea 
shells. One of the latter, which was exhibited at the last meet- 
ing of the Congress of Americanistes in Madrid, in the summer of 
1881, was made of two parallel rods held together by eighteen 
shells, one end being ornamented with the jaw-bone of a man of 
monkey. The Indians inhabiting the interior of British Guiana: 
still use rattles to accompany. the music of the dance. In the 
Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia are a number : 
interesting things from that country, in the valuable collection s 
the late Professor S. S. Haldeman. Several rattles are 
matting with black and white decoration. A conjuror’s rattle 
consists of a large gourd with feather embellishments, and å | 
painted and ornamented drum is covered at one end with the SSP 
of a jaguar, the drum sticks resembling long lead pencils < : 
large balls attached at one end. . 
It is necessary to look elsewhere for a higher development of the : 
musical instinct in the Western continent. The ancient graves", 
the California coast have yielded a numberof primitive flageolets® 
bone, possessing, in some instances, four or five finger-h 7 
which, doubtless, were capable of producing a variety of ogee 
+The Dawn of History. Edited by C. F, Keary, M.A., of the British — 
London, 1878, p. 186. 
