_Musical instruments._--The only musical instrument in use among these
people is the universal drum[N505] or tambourine (kĕlyau), consisting
of a membrane stretched over a hoop with a handle on one side, and
used from Greenland to Siberia. It is always accompanied by the voice
singing or chanting. The player holds the handle in his left hand with
the membrane away from him, and strikes alternately on each side of
the rim with a short heavy piece of ivory, or a long slender wand,
rotating the drum slightly at the same time to meet the stroke. This
produces a loud, resonant, and somewhat musical note. There appears,
however, to be no system of tuning these drums, the pitch of the note
depending entirely on accident.
[Footnote N505: Nordenskiöld calls this “the drum, or more
correctly, tambourine, so common among most of the Polar peoples,
European, Asiatic, and American; among the Lapps, the Samoyeds,
the Tunguses, and the Eskimo.” (Vega, vol. 2, p. 128).]
[Illustration: FIG. 383.--Drum.]
We collected four of these drums, of which every household possesses
at least one. They are all of essentially the same construction, but
vary in size. No. 56741 [79], Fig. 383, has been selected as the type.
The frame is a flat strip of willow 67 inches long, 1 inch wide, and
0.3 inch thick, bent till the two ends meet, thus making a hoop 22.2
inches long and 19 inches wide. The ends are fastened together by a
strap of walrus ivory on the inside of the hoop, secured to the wood
by neat stitches of black whalebone. The handle is of walrus ivory 5.2
inches long. The larger end is rather rudely carved into a human face.
Back of this head and 1 inch from the large end of the handle is a
square transverse notch, deep and sufficiently wide to fit over both
rim and strap at the joint. It is held on by a lashing of sinew braid
passing through holes in rim and strap, one on each side of the
handle, and a large transverse hole in the latter, below and a little
in front of the notch. The membrane, which appears to be a sheet of
the peritoneum of a seal, is stretched over the other side of the
hoop, which is beveled on the outside edge, and its edge is brought
down to a deep groove 0.2 inch from the edge of the hoop and 0.3 inch
wide, running round the hoop, where it is secured by three or four
turns of sinew braid. The end of this string is crossed back and forth
four or five times round the handle, where it is fitted to the hoop
and then wrapped around it and finished off with a knot.
No. 56742 [514], from Utkiavwĭñ, is a similar drum, but somewhat
larger, the hoop being 24.6 inches long and 22 inches wide. It is of
the same materials, except that the strap at the joint is of reindeer
antler. Opposite the joint the hoop appears to have shown signs of
weakness, as it has been strengthened with two straps of walrus ivory,
one on the inside and one on the outside of the hoop, fastened
together by stitches of sinew which pass through the wood and through
both straps. The inside strap is 4.7 inches long, the outer 3.5 inches
long, and only half the width of the rim, and is let into the latter.
This strap appears to have been put on first, as at each end there is
a stitch which only runs through the wood. The handle is fastened on
as before, but has two transverse holes instead of one, and has four
deep rounded notches for the fingers. (See Fig. 384.) The joint is
tightened by driving a thin sliver of wood in at the bottom of the
notch.
[Illustration: FIG. 384.--Handle of drum secured to rim.]
No. 56743 [31], from Utkiavwĭñ, closely resembles the type, but has a
notch for the thumb as well as for the forefinger on the handle. The
hoop is 23.5 inches long and 21 wide. No. 56740 [80] from the same
village is rather smaller than the ordinary drums, having a hoop 16.2
inches long and 14.7 wide. The handle is of antler, but has the usual
face on the large end.
We also brought home eight handles for these drums, which exhibit but
slight variations. The commonest material for the handle is walrus
ivory. Only two out of the twelve are of antler. They are usually
about 5 inches long (the longest is 5.4 inches and the shortest 4.6).
Handles with grooves for the fingers and sometimes for the thumb seem
to be quite as common as the plain handles. Fig. 385_a_ represents an
ivory handle from Nuwŭk (No. 89267 [898]), which has a groove for each
finger and a shallow one on the right side for the thumb. It is 5
inches long.
With one exception all these handles have the large end more or less
neatly carved into a human face, with the mouth open as if singing,
probably from an idea similar to that which makes the decorative
artists of civilized countries ornament the pipes of a great organ
with singing faces. This face is usually in the position shown in the
specimens figured, but No. 89266 [784] (Fig. 385_b_), a handle of
antler from Utkiavwĭñ, has the axis of the face parallel to that of
the handle. Nos. 89269 [975] and 56515 [76], both from Utkiavwĭñ, are
peculiar in their ornamentation. They are both of walrus ivory. The
former has a well-carved face at the large end with small blue beads
inlaid for eyes. In addition to this the small end has been rather
freshly carved into a rather rude seal’s head, and an ornamental
pattern has been incised round the middle. This specimen exhibits the
grooves for the fingers very well. The latter is a plain handle, but
has a little sharp tusk inserted at each corner of the mouth. The only
handle without a human face on the large end (No. 56514 [65] Fig.
385_c_, from Utkiavwĭñ) is peculiar in many respects. It is the butt
end of a small walrus tusk, with a large pulp cavity, the edges of
which are much notched and irregularly broken. The notch for fitting
it to the handle is at the smaller end, which is neatly carved into a
very good figure of a walrus head, with the tusks bent back to the
under side of the handle. The head has oval bits of wood inlaid for
eyes. None of the drums or handles in the collection are newly made.
[Illustration: FIG. 385.--Drum handles. 1/2]
The stick employed for beating these drums is commonly a slender
elastic wand about 2½ feet long, but they also sometimes use a short
thick stick of ivory resembling that used by the eastern Eskimo.[N506]
We brought home two of these sticks, both of which belong with the
drum No. 56743 [31]. Fig. 386_a_ (No. 56540 [31]) is a roughly
cylindrical rod of ivory with a hole for a lanyard. The larger end is
ornamented by rudely incised and darkened lines which represent the
eyes and outline of the mouth of a “bow-head” whale. Fig. 386_b_
(No. 56540 [31_a_]) is a plain round stick of ivory 9.4 inches long.
It is rather roughly made and somewhat warped. The use of the long
stick is perhaps derived from Siberia, where the short thick stick
does not appear to be used.[N507]
[Footnote N506: See, for example, Bessell’s Naturalist, vol. 18,
pt. 9, p. 881. (The people of Smith Sound use the femur of a
walrus or seal. Cf. Capt. Lyon’s picture, Parry’s 2d Voyage, pl.
opposite p. 530, and Gilder, Schwatka’s Search, p. 43, where the
people of the west shore of Hudson Bay are described as using a
“wooden drumstick shaped like a potato-masher.”)]
[Footnote N507: See Hooper, Tents, etc., p. 51, and Nordenskiöld,
Vega, vol. 2, pp. 23 and 128; figure on p. 24.]
Holes in the membrane of the drum are sometimes mended with pieces of
the crop of the ptarmigan. At any rate, this is what I was told by a
native, who begged from me the crops of two of these birds that I was
skinning, saying that he wanted them to mend his drum. These drums are
always beaten as an accompaniment to invocations of spirits or
incantations. This practice is so common that some authors are in the
habit of always speaking of them as “shaman drums”. As I have already
stated, their most common use is purely as a musical instrument, and
they are used not only by the so-called “shamans” but by everybody.
[Illustration: FIG. 386.--Ivory drumsticks. 1/4]
_Character and frequency of music._--Their music consists of
monotonous chants, usually with very little perceptible air, and
pitched generally in a minor key. I could not perceive that they had
any idea of “tune,” in the musical sense, but when several sang
together each pitched the tune to suit himself. They, however, keep
excellent time. The ordinary songs are in “common” or 4/4 time.[N508]
The words are often extemporaneous, and at tolerably regular intervals
comes the refrain, “A yáña yáña, a yáña ya,” which takes the place of
the “ámna aja” of the eastern Eskimo. Sometimes, when they are humming
or singing to themselves, the words are nothing but this refrain.
Their voices, as a general thing, are musical.
[Footnote N508: Compare Crantz, vol. 1, p. 176.]
Like all Eskimo, they are very fond of music, and are constantly
singing and humming to themselves, sometimes, according to Capt.
Herendeen, waking up in the night to sing. Besides their regular
festivals they often amuse themselves in their houses by singing to
the drum. They are fond of civilized music, and, having usually very
quick and rather acute ears, readily catch the tunes, which they sing
with curiously mutilated words. We found “Shoo Fly” and “Little Brown
Jug” great favorites at the time of our arrival, and one old woman
from Nuwŭk, told us with great glee, how Magwa (Maguire) used to sing
“Tolderolderol.” Our two violins, the doctor’s and the cook’s, were a
constant source of delight to them.
Capt. Parry[N509] gives an excellent account of the music of the
people of Fury and Hecla Straits.[N510]
[Footnote N509: 2d Voyage, p. 541.]
[Footnote N510: See also the passage from Crantz, quoted above;
Dall, Alaska, p. 16; and Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, pp. 23 and
130.]
I regret extremely that I was not enough of a musician to write down
on the spot the different tunes sung by these people. The ordinary
monotonous chant is so devoid of air that I can not possibly recollect
it, and the same is true of the chant which accompanies the game of
pebble-tossing. I was able, however, to catch by ear the song sung by
the children when they dance to the aurora. I never had the whole of
this song, which we were told had a large number of stanzas. The first
three are as follows:
1. Kióya ke, kióya ke,
A, yáñɐ, yañɐ, ya,
Hwi, hwi, hwi, hwi!
2. Túdlĭmaná, túdlĭmaná,
A yáñɐ, yañɐ, ya,
Hwi, hwi, hwi, hwi!
3. Kálutaná, kalutaná,
A yáñɐ, yáñɐ, ya,
Hwi, hwi, hwi, hwi!
We did not succeed in learning the meaning of these words, except, of
course, that the first word, kióya, is aurora. When there is a bright
aurora, the children often keep on dancing and singing this song till
late into the night. A tune was introduced in the spring of 1883 by a
party of men from Kĭlauwĭtáwĭñ, who came up to take part in the
whale-fishing at Utkiavwĭñ. It became at once exceedingly popular, and
everybody was singing or humming it. It is peculiar in being in waltz
or 3/4 time, and has considerably more air than the ordinary tunes.
I heard no words sung to it except: “O hai hai yáña, O hai yáña,
O haíja he, haíja he.” Mr. Dall informs me that he recognizes this
tune as one sung by the Indians on the Yukon.