(Cheyenne)
The flutes were played by single men of the Cheyenne Tribe. Through their interest of the music to test their manhood and to impress the young women of their dreams they played the music with the flutes.
The flutes were sung from the wolf songs. The wolves may have been heard singing some nights.
The songs had words in the Cheyenne Language like love call. One song had words that mentioned the Horse Creek to reminisce the place where the Cheyennes saw the horse for the first time. Some songs had words of encouragement for a warrior on a war journey. There were words for a happy return from a war journey.
The making of a flute calls for skill in finding the right gain straight of dried
cedar branch and the cutting of the wood and tying with dried buckskin thong. The five or six holes drilled in the stem of the flute in toning the varied blowing while it is played. The flute could be also made of the leg bone of an elk.
A Cheyenne whose name was Twin received it as a gift from a Bull Elk one night while returning from a hunting trip in the Powder River Country
He made a kill. When night caught him among the sand rocks he made a camp under a sand rock wall. He unloaded the meat from his horse to let it graze for the night.
Suddenly he heard a distance elk bugle and the bugling was coming closer.
Finally he did not hear the bugling for quite a while. Then he heard footsteps above him Someone spoke to him saying to look for an elk bone flute wrapped in a sage. He was told to take the flute as a gift from the elk and take it home. Soon there was silence and he heard the bugling once more from a distance in the night.
In the morning on getting ready to leave he found the sage wrapped elk bone flute on the ground, which he took home. He may have played the flute before he died.
When he died the flute was taken by one of his relatives, who placed it under a pile of rocks. It may still be there some where along a bluff east side of otter creek.
Herber Hollowbreast told this story to Ron FireCrow, who gave me permission to use it !
A Native Ameican Flute is a gift from Mother Nature.
It is told that the first flute came to us by way of a young Indian boy who was lost, wandering alone in the forest. It was there, deep in the forest, that the Great Spirit saw him.
Having pity on one so young, he decided to give him a gift so that he would not be alone. From the heavens he sent a small bird to sit upon a hollow branch of a large tree. Underneath the shade of the tree sat the young Indian boy.
As the brisk northern wind blew through the hollow branch, it produced a sound which he had never heard before. Looking up he saw a bird perched high in the tree. Soon the bird began to peck holes into the branch
and with each hole that the bird made, it changed the the pitch of each note as the wind continued to blow.
The young boy realized that the beautiful sound came from the hollow branch and that it was a gift to him from the Great Spirit.
He carefully climbed the tree to reach the branch and gently broke off the branch. He blew into it, imitating the northern wind, thereby making the beautiful sound.
Later he would find his people and tell them about his wonderful gift.
This is how the first flute was brought to us by the Great Spirit, and also why the small bird sits atop each flute"
