Indigenous · History Classes · Grades 7–9

Their Songs, Drums and Flutes

History Class · Level band: Grades 7–9

English edition — the language editions of the history classes are outstanding and will follow the site’s translation pattern; none is fabricated here.

Their Songs: Music, Law and Memory

Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending

How to read this entry: Documented fact = land-claims text, census, or published scholarship (Sources). Tradition — the people's own account = Indigenous oral history / Indigenous-organisation teaching, labelled as such. Debated / Claim = disputed point. No ceremonial or restricted content is described. This is a history: song in law, healing, diplomacy and record-keeping north of Mexico; the collecting era; suppression; survival and return. Restriction rule, applied throughout: ceremonial, sacred or society songs that a people does not itself publish are recorded as existing only — never transcribed, never summarised, never dug out. Only published collections and the published record are described, at the level at which they are published.

Song as Law and Record

• A record system, not decoration. Documented fact: on the Northwest Coast, potlatches — feasts witnessing births, marriages, deaths, name-givings and transfers of privilege — served "as a method of recordkeeping in cultures which traditionally did not have a written language," guests receiving gifts to validate the host family's claims (University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology [MOA], n.d.).
• Songs tied to land and rights. Documented fact: among Northwest Coast peoples, "not only objects and property, but also names, songs, dances, and their associated stories are owned by families," use requiring community recognition (MOA, n.d.); potlatches maintain social order "by regulating the ownership of land, title, ancestral names, and music" (Metropolitan Museum of Art, n.d.). A potlatch song asserted a right before witnesses — closer to producing a deed than giving a concert.
• Haudenosaunee condolence and council song. Documented fact: Horatio Hale's The Iroquois Book of Rites (1883) prints the Condoling Council — a deceased chief lamented, his successor installed — including "the fundamental laws of the league, a list of their ancient towns, and the names of the chiefs who constituted their first council, chanted in a kind of litany"; in every important council "a song or chant is considered a proper and almost essential part of the proceedings" (Hale, 1883). No condolence song text is reproduced here; its published existence and constitutional function are the record.
• Tradition — the people's own account: Haudenosaunee teaching, in published Great Law accounts, places condolence at the Confederacy's foundation — the Peacemaker condoling the grieving Hiawatha, that requickening thereafter opening councils and raising chiefs (Hessell, 2021). The Confederacy's formation date is Debated / Claim in the scholarship.
• The Arctic repertoire. Documented fact: the Copper Inuit (Inuinnait) collection below is organised in print around dance songs and related public categories — song as shared repertoire and social record (Roberts & Jenness, 1925). Restricted Inuit ceremonial material is recorded as existing; it is not described here.

Song in Diplomacy

• The calumet. Documented fact: across the Prairies and Plains the calumet, a ceremonial pipe, served "by ambassadors and other travelers as a passport," "to ratify alliances," and "to make binding any sort of contract or treaty," chiefly "in peace ceremonies in which representatives of both sides smoked the pipe of peace amidst the singing and dancing of a formal character" (Driver, 1961, via Jordan, n.d., UC San Diego). Song was part of the binding instrument, not accompaniment.
• The Pawnee Hako, published level only. Documented fact: Alice C. Fletcher's The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony (1904, Bureau of American Ethnology [BAE], 22nd Annual Report), recorded with Pawnee leader Tahirussawichi and James R. Murie (Pawnee), is the most detailed published calumet account; its published conclusion is that it insured "friendship and peace" between clans and tribes and could adopt members of another tribe (Fletcher, 1904). Its songs are not transcribed or summarised here.
• Council song as diplomacy. Documented fact: Hale notes council songs appear in many French and English treaty reports (Hale, 1883).

Song in Healing — Published Record Only

• Caution: the historical record that songs were used in healing is not proof of clinical effectiveness. No song text, preparation, dosage or treatment instruction is given here.
• Documented fact — existence and place only: Densmore's Chippewa (Ojibwe/Anishinaabe) volumes record medicine-connected songs as a recognised, owned category (Densmore, 1910, Chippewa Music, BAE Bulletin 45); her Teton Sioux (Lakota) work records songs used in treating the sick among the categories she was permitted to document (Densmore, 1918, BAE Bulletin 61). Society and ceremonial healing songs, including the Chippewa Midewiwin songs named in her volumes, are recorded as existing only.
• Documented fact — protocol: a Chippewa singer prefaced a song with a speech naming what it was and whence it came, so "the facts concerning the song become strongly associated with the melody in the minds of the people" (Densmore, 1910, via Anishinaabe literature review, n.d.) — a statement about record and practice, not a clinical finding.

Ownership and Inheritance

• The general finding. Documented fact: across regions the early record shows songs owned — held by person, family or clan, transferred under rules, wrongfully used by others. Pound concluded song was of individual composition, with "a feeling of private ownership in his song" (Pound, 1917).
• Tlingit — at.óow. Documented fact: Tlingit songs, stories, designs and names are clan property under at.óow, "an owned or purchased thing," tangible and intangible alike, acquired by ancestors and held by descendants (Dauenhauer & Dauenhauer, 1990). The living rule stands in archive practice: clans "retain the intellectual property rights to clan stories or songs" (Sealaska Heritage Institute, n.d.); school protocols require a family's permission before its song is used (MOA / Surrey School District, 2017–18, quoting Silvey, Time Immemorial).
• Chippewa — a contrasting, individual system. Documented fact: "The Chippewa have no songs which are the exclusive property of families or clans. Any young man may learn his father's songs… by giving him the customary gift of tobacco, but he does not inherit the right to sing such songs" (Densmore, 1910). Medicine songs were stricter: no one might sing another's "unless he has purchased the right to sing it," the buyer receiving some of the medicine with it (Densmore, 1910, p. 26). Systems differed by nation; no single rule is asserted.
• Omaha — inheritance and initiation. Documented fact: the ninety-two Omaha songs of Fletcher and La Flesche include religious songs "to be sung by a certain class either through initiation or inheritance," beside group and individual songs (Fletcher, La Flesche & Fillmore, 1893).
• Dream songs. Tradition — as recorded: many songs in Densmore's volumes were said by their singers to have been received in dreams (Densmore, 1910; 1918; Pound, 1917) — recorded as attributed, neither affirmed nor disputed.

The Collecting Era

• 1890 — the first cylinders. Documented fact: Jesse Walter Fewkes's 1890 Maine trip, recording Passamaquoddy songs and stories on an Edison cylinder machine, produced "the first ethnographic recordings extant," now in the Archive of Folk Culture (Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, n.d.); the cylinders passed from Harvard's Peabody Museum to the Library of Congress in the 1970s (Anderson, n.d.).
• 1907 — Densmore for the BAE. Documented fact: Frances Densmore began officially for the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology in 1907, recording about 2,500 songs over fifty years among Chippewa, Mandan, Hidatsa, Sioux, northern Pawnee, Papago (Tohono O'odham), Winnebago, Menominee, Pueblo peoples, Seminole and others (Minnesota Historical Society, n.d.). Counts vary (the Library of Congress guide gives more than 2,500, from forty tribes) — only "about 2,500" is asserted; flagged below.
• Her published standard. Documented fact: fourteen book-length BAE bulletins, 1910–1957, including Chippewa Music (1910–13), Teton Sioux Music (1918) and Papago Music (1929); DeMallie called the Teton Sioux work "one of the most significant ethnographic works ever published on the Sioux" (Minnesota Historical Society, n.d.; Densmore bibliography). These published collections are the standard cited here.
• 1911 — Barbeau in Canada. Documented fact: Marius Barbeau (1883–1969) joined the Geological Survey of Canada in 1911 and that spring began cylinder recording at the Huron-Wyandot community of Lorette; in 1912 he recorded some sixty songs from chiefs come to Ottawa on territorial business; from December 1914 he worked among the Tsimshian at Lax Kw'alaams with William Beynon, Tsimshian hereditary chief, as collaborator (The Canadian Encyclopedia, n.d.; Canadian Museum of History, Barbeau Fonds, n.d.). His cylinders and papers rest with the Canadian Museum of History; a secondary summary gives ~3,000 cylinders — flagged below.
• 1913–18 — the Copper Inuit songs. Documented fact: Diamond Jenness, Southern Party, Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913–18, recorded 137 Copper Inuit songs on cylinders, from men, women and children across the Copper Eskimo area (period term). Helen H. Roberts transcribed and analysed the music; Jenness prepared texts and translations. Songs of the Copper Eskimos (1925), Expedition Report Vol. XIV, 506 pp., was assessed as "the largest single collection of songs from any Eskimo area" (Roberts & Jenness, 1925; Arctic 23(2), 1970; eHRAF, n.d.). Cross-reference: this programme's register carries the same collection as its first new-language item for Inuinnaqtun, a published public-domain witness (Sacred Name Collection, Indigenous Recovery Register, 2026-10-27).
• The era, honestly framed. Collectors worked inside the assimilation era, framed as preservation before disappearance (Densmore Repatriation Project, n.d.). Singers chose what to sing; the recordings then sat a century in distant institutions, legally owned elsewhere (Anderson, n.d.).

Songs Already Recovered Inside This Programme

• Lakota Sursum Corda (1927), labelled exactly. Documented fact (programme record): recovered as a labelled language witness — front matter and printed pp. 1–16 of Sursum Corda — Lakota Wocekiye na Olowan Wowapi, Sioux Indian Prayer and Hymn Book, by the Jesuit fathers of St. Francis Mission, South Dakota (St. Louis, 1927; x + 386 pp.), transcribed from Cornell's copy, hunt0094 (Indigenous Recovery Register Phase 3, 2026-10-27).
• What it is — and is not: mission hymnody and prayer, the contact-era mission layer of Lakota song in print — Eugene Buechel, S.J. playing the major role in production on the standard biographical record (Register Phase 3). Not pre-contact tradition, not scripture; the recovered page carries "not scripture" labelling in every copy. It documents Lakota congregations singing in Lakota while older traditions were prohibited and carried underground.
• Cross-reference: the 137 Copper Inuit songs are the register's other song collection — an expedition's published record of a people's own repertoire, a different kind of witness, never conflated with the mission book.

Suppression and Survival

• Canada, 1885–1951. Documented fact: the potlatch ban — an Indian Act amendment passed 1884, in force 1885 — stood until 1951 (Library and Archives Canada, n.d.). It struck song directly: the potlatch was where owned songs were sung before witnesses. A parallel 1895 amendment banned the Plains Sun Dance, likewise until 1951 (published prohibition summaries). Under these sections "the songs and dances that were part of this ceremony might not be used or heard"; enforcement ran to fines and imprisonment (Hoefnagels, n.d., Indigenous Dance Canada).
• Cranmer potlatch, 1921. Documented fact: Dan Cranmer, 'Namgis chief, held a large potlatch at Village Island in December 1921; forty-five were arrested under s. 149, twenty-two jailed at Oakalla, others suspended-sentenced on surrendering 600-plus pieces of paraphernalia (U'mista Cultural Society, 2011; Canadian Museum for Human Rights, n.d.).
• United States. Documented fact: the 1883 Code of Indian Offenses, enforced by Courts of Indian Offenses, made the "sun-dance," "scalp-dance," "war-dance" and like feasts punishable by withheld rations or imprisonment, and medicine men's practices a further offence (Code, 1883, in Irwin, 1997). Anti-dance directives continued into the 1920s (Native Philanthropy timeline, n.d., citing Nies, 1996).
• The turn. Documented fact: Commissioner John Collier's Circular 2970 (1934), the first U.S. policy protecting Native spiritual practice — "no interference with Indian religious life or ceremonial expression will hereafter be tolerated" (Irwin, 1997; Garroutte et al., 2015); the American Indian Religious Freedom Act followed in 1978 (Public Law 95–341). Canada's bans stood until 1951.
• Survival, at the evidence level. Documented fact: Assu petitioned Ottawa for the "old custom of giving away" in 1919, mid-ban (Library and Archives Canada, n.d.); the 1921 Cranmer potlatch is itself continuation evidence. In the U.S., practices "were observed privately" under suppression, with documented resurgence from the 1960s (Garroutte et al., 2015). Densmore's Standing Rock singers deliberated as elders before agreeing to record — the archive is survival evidence too (Swenson, Engelman & Geist, 2023).
• Return of what was seized. Documented fact: after campaigning from 1958, the Cranmer collection was repatriated in 1979–80 to Nuyumbalees Cultural Centre, Cape Mudge (1979), and U'mista Cultural Centre, Alert Bay (1980) — "the first facilities of their kind in Canada" (Canadian Museum for Human Rights, n.d.).

The Present

• Powwow song. Debated / Claim, in part: origins are argued — nineteenth-century intertribal dance societies, the Ghost Dance era, Wild West shows, boarding schools, veterans' homecomings (powwow literature citing Powers, 1990; Thomas, 1965). Documented fact is the modern form: intertribal gatherings where drum groups supply social and contest dance music, in Northern and Southern styles, family songs passed down orally, host drums leading (Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Powwow, 2002–07).
• Recording in singers' hands. Documented fact: drum groups made recording central in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, an Aboriginal industry (notably Arbor Records, Winnipeg) grew around them, and competition powwows shaped repertoire (Scales, 2012).
• Repatriation programmes. Documented fact: the Library of Congress Federal Cylinder Project (from 1979) restored early cylinders so they could return to their communities (Jaakola & Powell, 2019). At Fond du Lac, Jaakola and Powell built from 2014 a digital repository of Densmore's Ojibwe recordings at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College — "'The Songs Are Alive'" (Jaakola & Powell, 2019, in Gunderson, ed., Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation). At Standing Rock, the Densmore Repatriation Project returns her 1911–14 Lakota recordings to new singers, with partners including Sitting Bull College (Swenson, Engelman & Geist, 2023).
• Passamaquoddy, heard again. Documented fact: Fewkes's 1890 cylinders, returned on tape in 1980 largely unidentifiable, were digitally restored by the Library's National Audiovisual Conservation Center from 2015; tribal members including language keeper Dwayne Tomah have since transcribed them (Maine Public, 2019; Anderson, n.d.).
• The standing rule. Clan and family rights remain administered today — in archive rules, school protocols, and repatriation review (Sealaska Heritage Institute, n.d.; MOA / Surrey, 2017–18). The songs are theirs.

Sources

• Anderson, Jane (n.d.). "The Passamaquoddy Connection." Postcolonial Digital Connections proceedings.
• Canadian Museum for Human Rights (n.d.). "Bringing the Potlatch Home."
• Canadian Museum of History (n.d.). Marius Barbeau Fonds finding aid.
• Dauenhauer, Nora & Richard (1990). Haa Tuwunáagu Yís: Tlingit Oratory. University of Washington Press.
• Densmore, Frances (1910) Chippewa Music; (1918) Teton Sioux Music; (1929) Papago Music. BAE Bulletins, Smithsonian.
• Densmore Repatriation Project (n.d.). lakotasongs.com.
• Driver, Harold (1961). Indians of North America. University of Chicago Press.
• Fletcher, Alice (1904). The Hako: A Pawnee Ceremony. BAE 22nd Annual Report.
• Fletcher, Alice, La Flesche, Francis & Fillmore, John (1893). A Study of Omaha Indian Music. Peabody Museum.
• Garroutte, Eva et al. (2015). "Religiosity and Spiritual Engagement in Two American Indian Populations." J. Sci. Study of Religion (PMC).
• Hale, Horatio (1883). The Iroquois Book of Rites.
• Hessell, Nikki (2021). Sensitive Negotiations. SUNY Press.
• Hoefnagels, Anna (n.d.). "Prohibitions." Indigenous Dance Canada.
• Irwin, Lee (1997). "Freedom, Law, and Prophecy." American Indian Quarterly 21(1).
• Jaakola, Lyz & Powell, Timothy (2019). "'The Songs Are Alive.'" In Oxford Handbook of Musical Repatriation.
• Library and Archives Canada (n.d.). "Potlatch." Discover Blog.
• Library of Congress, American Folklife Center (n.d.). An Illustrated Guide.
• Maine Public (2019). "Historic Recordings Revitalize Language for Passamaquoddy Tribal Members."
• Metropolitan Museum of Art (n.d.). "Northwest Coast Indians Musical Instruments."
• Minnesota Historical Society (n.d.). "Frances Densmore." Minnesota Author Biographies.
• Pound, Louise (1917). "The Beginnings of Poetry."
• Roberts, Helen & Jenness, Diamond (1925). Songs of the Copper Eskimos. Canadian Arctic Expedition Report XIV.
• Sacred Name Collection (2026-10-27). Indigenous Recovery Register, Phases 2–4.
• Scales, Christopher (2012). Recording Culture. Duke University Press.
• Sealaska Heritage Institute (n.d.). Dauenhauer Collection finding aid.
• Smithsonian NMAI (2002–07). National Powwow descriptions.
• Swenson, David et al. (2023). "A Future from the Past." Journal of Folklore and Education 10(1).
• The Canadian Encyclopedia (n.d.). "Marius Barbeau."
• U'mista Cultural Society (2011). Cranmer potlatch account.
• UBC Museum of Anthropology (n.d.). Continuity and Change; (2017–18) Cultural Belongings Protocols, Surrey School District.

Weakest-sourced points (flagged): (1) Densmore totals vary between sources (30 vs. 40 tribes; ~2,500 asserted only). (2) Barbeau's ~3,000 cylinders rest on a secondary summary, not a Museum count. (3) Potlatch ban: statute dated 1884, in force and commonly dated 1885; Canada's 1895 Sun Dance ban rests on summaries, not quoted statute. (4) Fewkes cylinder counts differ (36 recorded / 31 surviving vs. 31 recorded); only "first ethnographic recordings extant" is relied on. (5) Powwow origins are contested — labelled Debated; only the modern form is asserted. (6) Hako content, condolence texts and all medicine/society songs are sourced no further than existence and published purpose, under the restriction rule.

Drums and Flutes: How They Made Them

Status: Researched draft — cultural review pending

How to read this entry: Documented fact = archaeological report, museum record, or published scholarship (Sources). Tradition — the people's own account = oral history or community teaching as published by or with the people concerned, labelled as such. Debated / Claim = disputed point or competing attribution. Ceremonial instruments: published construction level only. By region.

Drums: An Old and Varied Family

• No single origin. Documented fact: Surveys distinguish membranophones — skin head over a body — from idiophones such as slit-log, plank and box drums, whose wood vibrates; both occur across the Americas in independent forms (Britannica, n.d.).
• The record. Documented fact: Wood, cane and hide survive poorly, so much drum history rests on ethnography and museum specimens from the 19th century onward, notably Densmore's work among Ojibwe, Menominee, Mandan and Hidatsa peoples (Densmore, 1910–13; 1929; 1932). Terms: frame = shallow hoop; kettle = deeper vessel; log / slit = hollowed trunk; plank / box = struck wood, no head (Britannica, n.d.).

Frame and Hand Drums

• Construction. Documented fact: The hand drum in the Wisconsin record summarised by the Milwaukee Public Museum is a circular wooden frame about 18 in (c. 46 cm) across and 2½ in (c. 6 cm) deep, thin rawhide over it — in that description on both sides — held by a rawhide loop and struck with a wrapped-end stick (Milwaukee Public Museum, n.d.). Other examples are single-headed, lacing crossed over the back as a handhold; no pattern is universal (Densmore, 1929).
• Snares, heads, peoples. Documented fact: Two cords inside some double-headed drums carried short sticks vibrating against the heads — a snare (Milwaukee Public Museum, n.d.); an Innu drum's caribou tendon, sometimes interwoven with porcupine quills, did the same, on round or octagonal frames (Land InSights / Native Lynx, n.d.). Heads are rawhide — deer, elk, buffalo, modern cow — soaked, stretched wet, laced, dried tight, often painted (Densmore, 1929). Named, with local differences: Anishinaabe, Menominee, Mandan, Hidatsa, Lakota / Dakota, Innu (Densmore, 1910–13; 1923; 1932).

Water Drums: Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe

• Haudenosaunee. Documented fact: The Iroquoian water drum is small and cylindrical: a few centimetres of water inside a cedar (Thuja occidentalis) or linden / basswood barrel moisten the deerhide head from within; the head is held by a wooden ring (Land InSights, n.d.). Tipping wets the head and changes pitch, as does varying the water. A catalogued 19th-century example is about 7½ in (c. 19 cm) across, 4 in high, held in one palm, tapped with the other hand's stick (Hartenberger Collection, n.d., citing Vidler, 1976). It accompanies most Haudenosaunee social songs (Kurath, 1964).
• Shells. Documented fact: Published histories distinguish a tapered hollowed log, a coopered stave shell, and a modern glued-stave Haudenosaunee variant; older shells were sealed inside against leaking (Hartenberger Collection, n.d.)
• Anishinaabe mitigwakik. Documented fact: Densmore records this Ojibwe Midewiwin "wooden kettle" charred and scraped from a basswood section about 16 in (c. 41 cm) long, wooden disc at the base, plugged side hole for emptying water, wet deerskin head pressed down by a cloth-wound willow hoop and fire-tightened (Densmore, 1929). Ceremonial use: recorded as existing only.

Kettle, Log and Slit Drums

• Kettle / cylinder. Documented fact: Densmore obtained from Benjamin Parker a model of an older Ojibwe cylinder drum: charred oak or elm log body, lower head of buffalo neck hide, struck head of deer or elk hide, heads laced with buffalo thongs and tightened with wooden wedges (Hofmann, ed., 1968).
• Pueblo log drums. Documented fact: Cochiti and Taos makers, the names most often published, hollow cottonwood, aspen or pine trunk sections and lace rawhide heads over both ends, commonly in a continuous V pattern; sizes range from hand-held to large dance drums, with no standard (Britannica, n.d.).
• Mexica teponaztli and huehuetl. Documented fact: The teponaztli is a hollowed hardwood log, closed at both ends, an H-shaped slit in the top forming two tongues giving two pitches — reported at octaves, thirds, seconds or fifths — struck with rubber-tipped mallets (olmaitl); published lengths c. 25 cm–1 m (Britannica, n.d.; Hofstra University Museum, n.d., Mexica, 1325–1521; Mexicolore, n.d., flagged). Its pair, the upright huehuetl — log c. 2–4 ft high, open base, three legs cut from itself, skin head beaten by hand, pitch varied centre-to-edge and by heating — was kept with it in the cuicacalli, house of song (Curl, n.d.).

Northwest Coast: Plank, Box and House Drums

• Bentwood box drum. Documented fact: A single red-cedar plank is kerfed — sawn part-way through at measured points — steamed, bent into a rectangle, the open corner bound with nettle-fibre or split-cedar-root cord, with separate top and base (Horniman Museum, n.d., Hope Island, BC). A Tlingit example collected at Wrangell, Alaska, in 1904 is a steamed, bent red-cedar plank with separate top, painted with Killer Whale (Smithsonian NMNH, E233491-0, citing Hollinger et al., 2005; Crowell, n.d.).
• Use. Documented fact: Box drums were suspended from a lineage-house ceiling and struck from inside with fist or fingers, accompanying funerals and memorial ku.éex' singing (Smithsonian NMNH, E233491-0); a modern Kwakwaka'wakw example at the Musical Instrument Museum, from a 13-ft plank, is likewise rope-suspended (MIM, n.d.).
• Plank and great house drums. Documented fact: Surveys list hide hand drums, plank drums (struck boards), log drums, clappers and rattles, mostly in potlatch and winter ceremonial contexts (Britannica, n.d.). Large house instruments are described only at that general level here; none beyond the Wrangell box drum is named.

Sweat-House Drums — Published Level Only

• Documented fact, weakly sourced — flagged: Small double-headed Pueblo log drums are described in modern trade literature by a Cochiti maker expressly as sweat-lodge drums, because two heads hold tone longer in heat and moisture (Mission Del Rey, n.d. — commercial source). No ceremony is described. The supported point is physical: heat and moisture slacken hide; double heads and warming the head answer it (Densmore, 1918; 1929).

The Big Powwow Drum: 19th–20th Centuries

• Origins. Documented fact: The Smithsonian traces the modern powwow to two late-19th-century intertribal Plains movements under land seizure and forced removal: the Drum Religion (Drum / Dream Dance), fostering peace and friendship, and the Grass Dance, from warrior-society dances — both stressing generosity and gift exchange, their gatherings becoming homecomings, the powwow's precursors (Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, n.d.).
• Tradition — the people's own account: In the 1870s a Lakota woman received in vision a large drum and its dance, to bring peace to all Native peoples; the Lakota shared it with the Anishinaabe, whence it spread widely (Harvard Pluralism Project, n.d.).
• The drum. Documented fact: The Drum Dance drum in the Wisconsin record: a large washtub body, bottom removed, rawhide heads both ends, the top painted half blue, half red, divided by a yellow sun-path stripe, suspended from four stakes so it never touched ground, ornamented with beadwork, coins and fur (Milwaukee Public Museum, n.d.). Singers seated around it strike together; "the drum" now names instrument and singers together (Smithsonian Folklife, n.d.). Modern big drums are commonly wooden-shelled, roughly 2–3 ft across, cow or buffalo heads, standardised by no body (Smithsonian Folklife, n.d.; range flagged).

Drumsticks, Hides and Tuning

• Documented fact: Sticks: curved water-drum stick (Densmore's Ojibwe example said to represent a loon), straight wrapped-end stick, teponaztli mallet, Haudenosaunee sculpted stick (Densmore, 1929; Land InSights, n.d.). Hides: deer, elk, buffalo, caribou, jaguar in some Mesoamerican accounts, modern cow (Densmore, 1929; Curl, n.d.). Tuning is by tension — water, hoop, lacing, heat — in performance, never to concert pitch; the teponaztli's wood-cut pitches are the exception (Britannica, n.d.).

Flutes: Rim-Blown Antiquity in the Southwest

• Broken Flute Cave. Documented fact: Earl Morris's 1931 Prayer Rock excavations, northeastern Arizona, yielded four wooden flutes dated 620–670 CE, Basketmaker III — North America's oldest known wooden flutes — from the cave since named Broken Flute Cave; they passed to the Arizona State Museum in 1957 (Arizona State Museum, n.d.; Morris, E. A., 1959).
• The flutes themselves. Documented fact: Box elder (Acer negundo), six finger holes spaced 3-and-3; the two intact examples c. 72–74 cm long, 2.3–2.6 cm diameter, feather-decorated near the mouth (Steller's jay, flicker, pinyon jay, sapsucker, as identified in 1959), found tied together (Morris, 1959; Arizona State Museum, 2018, Report A-13994). They are rim-blown — no block or duct — the Anasazi / Ancestral Pueblo type; both intact flutes proved playable, in a shared tuning; their music is unrecorded (Bakkegard & Morris, 1961; Goss, n.d.).
• Later Pueblo flutes. Documented fact: Pueblo Bonito, Room 33 yielded eight flutes / fragments, c. 900–1150 CE, complete examples four-holed, one painted with circle and cloud designs, fragments carved with bear and mountain lion (Pepper, 1920, via Mesa Prieta Project, n.d.). Rim-blown fluting thus long predates the duct flute; do not conflate the families.

The Plains Two-Chamber Duct Flute

• How it works. Documented fact: Two chambers separated by an internal plug: a slow air chamber at the head, blown into, and a sound chamber with the sound hole (window) and usually five or six finger holes. Air exits the slow chamber, crosses a narrow flue, and strikes the window's splitting edge (Goss, 2015, arXiv:1501.00910).
• Block and making. Documented fact: The flue runs under a removable block tied over the flat "nest" — also called bird, saddle, fetish or totem, often bird- or animal-carved, untied to dry the flue. "Plains style": channel in the flute body; "Woodlands style": channel in the block's underside — a published distinction whose historical boundary is not clean (Goss, n.d.; Conlon, 1983). Bodies were split or bored softwood — cedar and juniper most named — hollowed, plugged, rejoined, holes enlarged to the maker's ear (Payne, 1999, via Goss, n.d.; Densmore, 1929).
• Body measure, debated origin. Documented fact: Sizing was by the player's body — length elbow-to-fingertip, chambers a fist-width, holes a thumb-width — so pitch was individual: modern "grandfather tuning" (Goss, n.d.). Debated / Claim: No collected wooden example predates the early 19th century (1820s–30s examples include a Mandan / Hidatsa flute in Maximilian's collection, now Berlin; Goss, n.d.). Payne's hypothesis — Northern Ute origin, spreading to Taos, Oklahoma and beyond — is presented as hypothesis in the literature, not settled fact (Payne, 1999, via Ancient Territories Flutes, n.d.).

Rivercane: Southeast and Southwest

• Documented fact: Cane is hollow, divided by solid nodes; a node left in place is a ready-made wall, so holes burned either side of it, joined by an external groove, make a two-chamber duct flute (Choctaw Nation, n.d., citing Byington, 2010).
• Choctaw form, as the Nation publishes it. Documented fact: Cut cane c. six inches above a node; burn a c. ¼-in hole either side of it, the node's interior left as wall; groove between them and tie a thin cane splint over it; cut c. eight inches below the node, burn out lower nodes, burn finger holes in the lower chamber. Most Choctaw flutes have two finger holes; other Southeastern peoples', none to three — against five or six on Plains wood (Choctaw Nation, n.d.).
• Cherokee; Southwest. Documented fact: Cherokee rivercane flutes, with water drums and rattles, served dance, courting, storytelling and welcome; Cherokee summaries commonly describe six holes — variation is the documented point (Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 2003). Rim-blown cane flutes also occur in the Southeast, distinct from duct forms. Cane duct flutes are also documented among Tohono O'odham and Yuman peoples, proposed — as hypothesis — as a Plains ancestor (Payne, 1999, via Ancient Territories Flutes, n.d.).

The Courting-Flute Tradition — As Published

• Names. Documented fact: Kiowa do'mba', Lakota šiyótȟaŋka, Dakota ćetaŋke, Cheyenne tâhpeno, Ojibwe bibigwun (spellings as printed; Hail, 1983, in courting-flute scholarship, 2025). Jemez Pueblo maker Marlon Magdalena prefers "block flute" to the generic label (Magdalena, 2021, cited ibid.).
• Lakota / Dakota. Tradition — as published: Flute playing was a culturally acceptable courtship: acceptance turned on persuading the woman and her family of the player's worth, not the song alone; the songs are a named repertoire (Densmore, 1918; Herndon, 1980). Richard Fool Bull (Lakota) is documented making and selling flutes on Pine Ridge in the reservation period (Goss, n.d.).
• Kiowa. Documented fact: Belo Cozad (Kiowa, 1864–1950), recorded at Anadarko, Oklahoma, in 1941 by Willard Rhodes, sang a love song to his wife Ema, then played it on the flute; the archive notes call the flute "a courting instrument" (Rhodes, 1954, AFS L39; 1982 notes). A Kiowa account published by the Smithsonian adds courting by flute, then by offering a blanket / robe, whose acceptance signified the relationship (Zotigh, 2022, Smithsonian Magazine / NMAI).
• Decline. Documented fact: The practice declined sharply as reservation-era policy suppressed its courtship customs; Fool Bull, Cozad (who toured Bureau of Indian Affairs schools) and others carried it into the mid-20th century (Goss, n.d.; scholarship, 2025). Community practice beyond print is undocumented there.

Andes and Mesoamerica

• Quena. Documented fact: The Andean quena / kena is a notched rim-blown flute of cane, wood, ceramic or bone, modern form six finger holes plus thumb hole, open both ends (Olsen, n.d., "Pre-Columbian Music of South America," Encyclopedia.com). Its survey's "c. 5000 BCE" appearance is flagged — no named excavation; pre-Columbian bone / ceramic examples and continuous use are the secure points; it flourished in Moche (100–800 CE) and Inca times in that survey (Olsen, n.d.).
• Recorder family. Documented fact: Pinkillu and tarka are fipple duct flutes like recorders — pinkillu in graduated consorts, tarka shorter, angular, hardwood (Stobart, 1996, Early Music 24(3)). Stobart shows the colonial recorder's Christianising use, consort intervals matching recorder consorts, and duct flutes illustrated in Guaman Poma (1616). Descent from the recorder, reshaping of an older duct flute, or both is Debated / Claim (Stobart, 1996). Quenas are placed in the dry season, pinkillus / tarkas in the wet (Stobart, 1996).
• Mesoamerican ceramics. Documented fact: Ceramic flutes and vessel flutes (ocarinas) were made at scale, beside bone and cane: Nahua tlapitzalli with deity imagery, Maya and West Mexican flutes and figure ocarinas (typically four holes, projecting mouthpiece in published examples), Nahua double and triple flutes (Teter, n.d., in Geo-Mexico; Hartenberger Collection, n.d., Tairona ocarina, c. 1000–1500 CE; Curl, n.d.). Excavated ocarinas' ritual function is not fully documented, in the sources' own caution. The Andean siku and antara are not finger-hole flutes (Olsen, n.d.).

Revival and Standardisation — Modern History

• Documented fact: From the late 1970s, Indigenous-led revival — "Doc" Tate Nevaquaya (Comanche), Comanche Flute Music (1979), in a new programmatic style — returned the block flute to performance; Payne's collecting supplied makers' documentary base (scholarship, 2025; Goss, n.d.). R. Carlos Nakai's Changes (1982; 1983 in some discographies — flagged) opened a mass audience; his Nakai TABlature — staff plus fingering diagrams, in F-sharp minor whatever the key — serves flutes of any pitch (Goss, n.d.).
• Standardisation. Documented fact: In the 1970s–80s, as makers built for sale, body-measure and ear tuning gave way to templated bores, calculated hole placement, concert pitch (A4 = 440 Hz in most commercial making) and a standard minor-pentatonic scale; Lew Paxton Price's books, then the only manuals, guided many makers (Ancient Territories Flutes, n.d.).
• Both histories. The modern flute — concert-pitched, pentatonic, quantity-made — descends from ear-tuned block flutes documented in wood only from the early 1800s, behind which stand older cane duct flutes and Broken Flute Cave's rim-blown flutes (Goss, n.d.; Morris, 1959). "Ancient" tout court, and "invented in the 1970s," both misstate that chain.

Sources

Ancient Territories Flutes (n.d.), atflutes.com. Arizona State Museum (n.d.); (2018) Report A-13994. Bakkegard & Morris (1961), Ethnomusicology 5(3). Choctaw Nation (n.d.), Iti Fabvssa, citing Byington (2010). Conlon (1983), thesis. Curl (n.d.), FAMSI. Densmore (1910–13), BAE Bulls. 45, 53; (1918) Bull. 61; (1923) Bull. 80; (1929) Bull. 86; (1932) Bull. 102. Encyclopaedia Britannica (n.d.), "Native American Music." Goss (n.d.), Flutopedia; (2015), arXiv:1501.00910. Hartenberger Collection (n.d.), wmic.net. Harvard Pluralism Project (n.d.). Herndon (1980). Hofmann, ed. (1968). Hofstra University Museum (n.d.). Horniman Museum (n.d.). Kurath (1964), BAE Bull. 187. Land InSights / Native Lynx (n.d.). Milwaukee Public Museum (n.d.). Morris, E. A. (1959), American Antiquity 24(4). Musical Instrument Museum (n.d.). Olsen (n.d.), Encyclopedia.com. Payne (1999), via Flutopedia. Pepper (1920). Rhodes (1954; 1982), Library of Congress. Smithsonian Folklife (n.d.); Folklife Festival (2003). Smithsonian NMNH E233491-0, citing Hollinger et al. (2005). Stobart (1996), Early Music 24(3). Zotigh (2022), Smithsonian Magazine / NMAI. Courting-flute scholarship (2025), Music and Science, citing Hail (1983); Magdalena (2021).

Flagged / weakest-sourced: (1) Sweat-house drums — commercial maker literature only; no distinct type asserted. (2) Quena c. 5000 BCE — survey claim, no excavation named. (3) Payne's Ute route — hypothesis, via secondary summaries. (4) Teponaztli / huehuetl details — partly educational summaries. (5) Great house drums — survey level only. (6) Changes, 1982 vs 1983. (7) Flutopedia is an enthusiast-scholar archive (peer-reviewed only at Goss, 2015); verify Payne in Payne (1999) at publication. (8) Pueblo log drums — survey / maker records; seek a maker monograph at publication.

Back to the Grades 7–9 classes All History Classes