Drum
date: label: Accession Date
content: 30 Jun 1915
name: label: Collector
content: Mr. David I. Bushnell Jr.
label: Donor Name
content: Panama-California Exposition
notes: label: Notes
content: From Card: "Shell a cottonwood log, hollowed by decay. Head of skin stretched over a hoop and held on by a hoop fastened by thongs to four pegs driven in sides of shell. Decoration a band of circles and zigzags in red". This object appears to be the same drum illus. in Pl. 7a, after page 55 in Bushnell, David I. 1909. The Choctaw of Bayou Lacomb, St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana. Washington: Govt. Print. Off. (Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 48.) Plate caption identifies drum as having been made by Ahojeobe (a.k.a. Emil John; a photo of him is illus. as Plate 13). Ahojeobe drum is also discussed on p. 22: "... drum (the'ba) ... is 30 inches in height and 15 inches in diameter. It is made of a section of a black gum tree; the cylinder wall is less than 2 inches in thickness. The head consists of a piece of untanned goat skin. The skin is stretched over the open end, while wet and pliable, and is pass around a hoop made of hickory about half an inch thick. A similar hoop is placed above the first. To the second is hoop are attached four narrow strips of rawhide, each of which is fastened to a peg passing diagonally through the wall of the drum. To tighten the head of the drum it is necessary merely to drive the peg farther in." Note that as of 2008 the decoration on the drum appears to have faded and is hard to see. It is much easier to see in the old Bushnell publication plate (which also seems to have been retouched.)
label: Record Last Modified
content: 27 Feb 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Not Given, Bayou Lacombe, Louisiana, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Choctaw
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 058532
label: USNM Number
content: E287641-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Drum