Musical Instruments

As with most aspects of Plains Indian culture, music was closely bound-up with religious beliefs. Instruments were played individually and during public dances, and there was music for almost every occasion.

In public ceremonies singing was combined with dancing and with music from a variety of instruments. The dancers shook rattles or pounded hand-held drums to underscore their foot-beats. Rattles were made of gourds or of turtle shells filled with pebbles or seeds. Drums generally were made by soaking a strip of wood in hot water and bending it into a circle, then the drum skin was tightly strapped over the circle with rawhide laces. While some Plains Indian drums had a single drum skin, as a tambourine has, there were others, such as the drums of the Ute, that had skins lashed onto both sides.

The whistle and flute were the only Plains Indian wind instruments. Whistles were made from the wing bone of an eagle, the bird that symbolized courage. The recorder-like flutes with finger holes along the top, were carved from a length of soft, straight-grained wood, like willow or box elder, that was split in half and hollowed out; the halves were rejoined with glue made from boiled hide scrapings and bound together with rawhide lace to make them airtight.