The Native American Culture

Native American culture has been slowly dying for a little over five centuries. It started in 1492 when Columbus sailed out on his historic voyage and it is still going on in present day America. Interactions between Native Americans and European settlers often resulted in the complete destruction of music considered “pagan” by the Europeans. Native people were continuously removed and relocated from their ancestral homelands, losing many of their mythologies and ancient music traditions in the process. The Native American people have tried to fight back numerous times but there numbers were decimated in the beginning with the introduction of diseases such as measles, typhus, and smallpox. How did the Native Americans culture survive five …show more content…
For example, not all tribes use drums. Some just don’t believe that the sound complements their music very well. In fact even of the countless tribes that do use drums. No two use the exact same type of because of the wide variety of different material’s each tribe has access to “the water drum is unique to North America” (“Native American music and musical instruments”). Although one key instrument that all tribes have in common would be the voice. “In Native American music the voice is the most important instrument” (“native American music and musical instruments”). Harmony is rarely ever incorporated, although sometimes many people sing at once, and other times the vocals are solo. Native American vocals are passionate they are used to invoke spirits, ask for rain, and even to heal the …show more content…
For example “The Northwest Coast culture area includes groups such as the Tlingit in present-day Alaska, the Coast Salish in British Columbia and Washington, the Chinook in Washington and Oregon, and various Athapaskan and Penutian-speaking tribes in Oregon. (“Native American Culture Areas of North America”) even though all these different tribes are classified under one regional name they share very little in common. They had their own languages, their own traditions, and most importantly their own unique ways of playing and vocalizing music. In fact the Inuit are known for their peculiar form of Throat Singing, in which the singers manipulate the resonances created as air travels from the lungs, past the vocal folds, and out the lips to produce melody. Normally, this is performed by two females, who sit or stand face to face and create rhythmic patterns using each other’s ' mouths as resonators. No other tribe in the world does it the same as them and yet they are grouped together in a category with numerous other tribes. Preservation of Native American music traditions has proved to be extremely difficult for a myriad of reasons. First and foremost, of course, this is due in large part to the needlessly cruel behavior of