Scan 405
Catalogue of the Crosby Brown Collection of musical instruments, 1914
12 lines. Read by computer on 13 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 265. See the scan on archive.org.
1his crossed legs, holding the bow in his left hand with one end pressed against his closed front teeth; in his right hand he holds a slightly polished bone, pierced with four or five holes which, after moistening with saliva, he gently rubs along the inner side of the string, the hollow bone tending to increase the volume of the tone. By raising the three middle fingers and pressing down on the string, "four different, tender, humming tones" may be produced when the bone is drawn across the strings. The native name of the whole instrument is kolo; the bow, tkcha; the strings t'ar; the bone t'kchoo. The general term for bow is kcha and for knocker, kchoo. The same author quotes Spegazzini's1 description of the kooll(a): "This musical instrument is one of the simplest and most remarkable I have seen. It consists of two separate bows; in the first place a little bow made of hard wood strung with a bunch of horsehair, and in the second place a hollow bone, of an ostrich, with four or five holes on one side. The instrument is played in this way: it is held firmly by one end in the left hand and the other end is pressed against the front teeth while with the right hand the ostrich bone is slid up and down over the strings."
3D'Orbigny2 writing in 1839 of the Araucanians, mentions the use of a five-holed flute which produced a monotonous nasal tone; also a bow strung with horsehair which they rubbed with a large bone of a bird, or with the same bone blew into a gourd.3
5Lehmann-Nitsche describes still another form of bow mentioned by Guinnard,4 who refers to it as a "violin" composed of two horse ribs formed like violin bows and strung with tightly stretched horsehair strings which were moistened with saliva when in use. In playing this instrument the performer rubs the two bows one against the other. They serve indifferently as they happen to be used for "violin" or for "bow." The one that serves as the instrument is placed between the closed teeth and held horizontally in the left hand of the player, who moves the bow quickly to and fro and obtains an indistinct note that is modulated by the unemployed fingers of the left hand. A bow of this type, differing only in that the bow placed in the mouth was made from the rib of a cow while the other was of wood, was shown in Genoa at the time of the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America and
71. Spegazzini. Costumbres de los Patagones. Anales de la Sociedad Científica Argentina, vol. 17, 1884, pp. 229, 234, 236. one of two readings
81. Spegazzini. Costumbres de los Patagones. Anales de la Sociedad Cientifica Argentina, vol. 17, 1884, pp. 229, 234, 236. one of two readings
92. D'Orbigny. Voyage dans l'Amérique meridionale, vol. 2, pp. 88-89. Quoted by Lehmann-Nitsche in Anthropos, vol. 3, 1908, pp. 934-935.
103. cf. Note to No. 2119 p. 236.
114. Guinnard. A Three Years' Slavery Among the Patagonians. London, 1871.
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