Page:The American Indian.djvu/193

Rh are the drum and the rattle. We refer to the calabash type of rattle. Its distribution is coincident with that of agriculture but extends somewhat farther in North America, where we find rawhide a substitute among the non-agricultural bison tribes, and beyond them the hollowed-out wooden rattle of the Northwest. It is a fair assumption that the type arose among a calabash-producing people and was thence diffused.

There are other types of minor rattling, rasping, and clapping instruments of restricted distribution. The only one approaching the calabash rattle in importance is the notched stick.

Drums seem to be of greater variety. One general tambourine type is found in the bison area and northward to the Eskimo and Siberia. In the eastern maize area the single-headed water-tuned drum prevailed, whose distribution seems to be continuous through the West Indies into South America. In southwestern United States and southward, a double-headed drum similar to our own was in use. The large wooden signal drums of the Amazon country we suspect to be of recent African origin.

As the case now stands, there were no stringed instruments in the New World before 1492. The only debatable case is that of the musical bow found in California and northern Mexico. Of wind instruments, the most complicated is the pan-pipe of Peru and Brazil. Yet, the aboriginal origin of this instrument has been made improbable by the discovery that it has the same arbitrary scale as the pan-pipe of Melanesia. Trumpets were used in Mexico and Peru and still survive in the Amazon area. Closely allied to this is a reed instrument of cane, sometimes called a cornet, used in Peru and still found along the Amazon. True flutes were used in Peru, but in North America, the flageolet. No more than with song music can we compare the types of composition for these instruments in the several geographical areas. This is truly unfortunate, for it seems that music offers one of the very best trait-complexes for the study of diffusion and invention. It is one of the weak points in the careful, painstaking study of ritualism now prosecuted by American anthropologists, for when a ritual passes from one tribe to another (of which