Besides those which have been noticed, other antique wind instruments of the Indians are mentioned by historians; but the descriptions given of them are too superficial to convey a distinct notion as to their form and purport. Several of these barbarous contrivances scarcely deserve to be classed with musical instruments. This may, for instance, be said of certain musical jars or earthen vessels producing sounds, which the Peruvians constructed for their amusement. These vessels were made double; and the sounds imitated the cries of animals or birds. A similar contrivance of the Indians in Chili, preserved in the museum at Santiago, is described by the traveller S. S. Hill as follows:—“It consists of two earthen vessels in the form of our india-rubber bottles, but somewhat larger, with a flat tube from four to six inches in length, uniting their necks near the top and slightly curved upwards, and with a small hole on the upper side one third of the length of the tube from one side of the necks. To produce the sounds the bottles were filled with water and suspended to the bough of a tree, or to a beam, by a string attached to the middle of the curved tube, and then swung backwards and forwards in such a manner as to cause each end to be alternately the highest and lowest, so that the water might pass backwards and forwards from one bottle to the other through the tube between them. By this means soothing sounds were produced which, it is said, were employed to lull to repose the drowsy chiefs who usually slept away the hottest hours of the day. In the meantime, as the bottles were porous, the water within them diminished by evaporation, and the sound died gradually away.”
As regards instruments of percussion, a kind of drum deserves special notice on account of the ingenuity evinced in its construction. The Mexicans called it teponaztli. They generally made it of a single block of very hard wood, somewhat oblong square in shape, which they hollowed, leaving at each end a solid piece about three or four inches in thickness, and at its upper side a kind of sound-board about a quarter of an inch in thickness. In this sound-board, if it may be called so, they made three incisions; namely, two running parallel some distance lengthwise of the drum, and a third running across from one of these to the other just in the centre. By this means they obtained two vibrating tongues of wood which, when beaten with a stick, produced sounds as clearly defined as are those of our kettle drums. By making one of the tongues thinner than the other they ensured two different sounds, the pitch of which they were enabled to regulate by shaving off more or less of the wood. The bottom of the drum they cut almost entirely open. The traveller, M. Nebel, was told by archæologists in Mexico that these instruments always contained the interval of a third, but on examining several specimens which he saw in museums he found some in which the two sounds stood towards each other in the relation of a fourth; while in others they constituted a fifth, in others a sixth, and in some even an octave. This is noteworthy in so far as it points to a conformity with our diatonic series of intervals, excepting the seventh.
The teponaztli (engraved above) was generally carved with various fanciful and ingenious designs. It was beaten with two drumsticks covered at the end with an elastic gum, called ule, which was obtained from the milky juice extracted from the ule-tree. Some of these drums were small enough to be carried on a string or strap suspended round the neck of the player; others, again, measured upwards of five feet in length, and their sound was so powerful that it could be heard at a distance of three miles. In some rare instances a specimen of the teponaztli is still preserved by the Indians in Mexico, especially among tribes who have been comparatively but little affected by intercourse with their European aggressors. Herr Heller saw such an instrument in the hands of the Indians of Huatusco—a village near Mirador in the Tierra templada, or temperate region, occupying the slopes of the Cordilleras. Its sound is described as so very loud as to be distinctly audible at an incredibly great distance. This circumstance, which has been noticed by several travellers, may perhaps be owing in some measure to the condition of the atmosphere in Mexico.
Instruments of percussion constructed on a principle more or less similar to the teponaztli were in use in several other parts of America, as well as in Mexico. Oviedo gives a drawing of a drum from San Domingo which, as it shows distinctly both the upper and under side of the instrument, is here inserted.
The largest kind of Mexican teponaztli appears to have been generally of a cylindrical shape. Clavigero gives a drawing of such an instrument. Drums, also, constructed of skin or parchment in combination with wood were not unknown to the Indians. Of this description was, for instance, the huehuetl of the Aztecs in Mexico, which consisted, according to Clavigero, of a wooden cylinder somewhat above three feet in height, curiously carved and painted and covered at the top with carefully prepared deer-skin. And, what appears the most remarkable, the parchment (we are told) could be tightened or slackened by means of cords in nearly the same way as with our own drum. The huehuetl was not beaten with drumsticks but merely struck with the fingers, and much dexterity was required to strike it in the proper manner. Oviedo states that the Indians in Cuba had drums which were stretched with human skin. And Bernal Diaz relates that when he was with Cortés in Mexico they ascended together the Teocalli (“House of God”), a large temple in which human sacrifices were offered by the aborigines; and there the Spanish visitors saw a large drum which was made, Diaz tells us, with skins of great serpents. This “hellish instrument,” as he calls it, produced, when struck, a doleful sound which was so loud that it could be heard at a distance of two leagues.
The name of the Peruvian drum was huanca: they had also an instrument of percussion, called chhilchiles, which appears to have been a sort of tambourine.
The rattle was likewise popular with the Indians before the discovery of America. The Mexicans called it ajacaxtli. In construction it was similar to the rattle at the present day commonly used by the Indians. It was oval or round in shape, and appears to have been usually made of a gourd into which holes were pierced, and to which a wooden handle was affixed. A number of little pebbles were enclosed in the hollowed gourd. They were also made of pottery. The little balls in the ajacaxtli of pottery, enclosed as they are, may at a first glance appear a puzzle. Probably, when the rattle was being formed they were attached to the inside as slightly as possible; and after the clay had been baked they were detached by means of an implement passed through the holes.
