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.