| OCR Text |
Show 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 used. 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 amusement 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 usually 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 white man. 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, |
