Wisconsin Folklore

40 Wisconsin Indian Drums and Their Uses

40 Wisconsin Indian Drums and Their Uses Jordyce A. Kuhm Museums of "natural history" proliferated in the nineteenth century as a manifestation of western imperialism. 'Wild" lands and "savage" people were there to be colonized, developed, .and assimilated . European and American settlers, businessmen, bureaucrats, clergy, and even anthropologists typically subscribed to evolutionary theories of culture: it was inevitable, the argument went, that members of "lower" cultures abandon their traditions for the "higher" ways of the conquerors. As advancing civilization obliterated or altered old ways, residual cultural materials might nonetheless be "salvaged": gathered (sometimes pilfered), transported, preserved, and placed on display with dinosaur bones, stuffed passenger pigeons, dried prairie Rowers, chunks of sedimentary rock, and other curiosities of lost worlds. Hence the Milwaukee Public Museum organized expeditions , accumulated collections, produced dioramas, and helped establish publications like The Wisconsin Archeologist. Hence, Jordyce Kuhm's essay combines minute descriptions of drums on museum shelves with predictions of rapid cultural demise. Wisconsin's native peoples, however, have disproved evolutionary theories. Their drums still beat, their drummakers still fashion the full range of instruments, and they have even begun to reclaim some sacred drums long institutionalized as "specimens." What Kuhm calls the "washtub drum" remains central to the "drum religion," a pan-Indian spiritual movement with contemporary Menominee and Ojibwe adherents, but it is most evident within the vibrant powwow scene. In the late 1960s Tom Vennum, eventually the senior ethnomusicologist for the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Folklife Programs, began research on a series of publications, sound recordings , and audiovisual productions that testify to what Wisconsin's Indian peoples have known all along: the resilience of their drums and their uses (see Thomas Vennum, Jr., The Ojibwa Dance Drum: Its History and Construction [Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Folklife Studies, 1982], accompanied by a forty-two minute Rim, The Drummaker[1974] made on lac Courte Oreilles Reservation , with drummaker Bill Bineshi Baker; Honor the Earth Powwow: Songs of the Great Lakes Indians-a sound recording of Qjibwe, Menominee, and Winnebago drum groups performing at lac Courte Oreilles-on Rykodisk RACD 0199 [1991]; and a two-video cassette set from the Bad River Reservation, Wisconsin Powwow/Naamikaaged: Dancer for the People, Smithsonian Folkways [1997]). Reprinted from The Wisconsin Archeologist 27:4 (1946): 81-88. There are three varieties of drums still in use among the Wisconsin Indians; the water drum, the washtub drum, and the tambourine or hand drum. These drums vary in size and structure, and certain ceremonies have their particular types. The Chippewa word for drum is dewe igun, or "throb article," and as rhythm is 389 Part Five. Material Traditions and Folklife 40.1. Ken Funmaker, Sr., plays the big drum and sings a Ho-Chunk Hay Lu.sh Ka song for spectators gathered in the Mount Horeb High School gymnasium during the village's Fall Fest, 1992. Photo: James P. Leary, Wisconsin Folk Museum Collection. (For photographs of a hand drum and a water drum, see figures 12.1 and 20.1, respectively.) always associated by Indians with the supernatural, their drums are often used in religious ceremonies. The most important drum from the ceremonial point of view is the water drum. This ancient form of drum is used by all Wisconsin Indian tribes, and it appears time and again in the mythology of the Menomini tribe, where it is associated with all of the origin myths of the Medicine Dance ceremony. The cask-like water drum is made by hollowing out a basswood log about sixteen inches long, the wood being charred and scraped until a cylinder is formed. The average water drum is sixteen inches high, measuring twelve inches in diameter at the bottom and nine inches at the top. A small hole fitted with a wooden plug is drilled part way up on one side of the drum, making it possible to empty the drum of water without removing the head. The base of the drum is either fitted with a wooden disc, glued in with pitch to make it water tight, or it is covered by a piece of rawhide permanently attached across the bottom and secured by a hoop. The head of the drum is unlike those of other drums in that it is not made of rawhide, but is composed of a heavy piece of tanned deerskin cut from the neck of a buck, where the skin attains its greatest thickness. When the drum is used the head is thoroughly softened by soaking in water, wrung...