Song Stick - Native American Flutes and Music by Troy Good Medicine De Roche
Blackfeet Culture
The
ancestral territory of the Blackfeet extends from the Yellowstone River
in southern Montana along the east side of the Rocky Mountains to the
North Saskatchewan River in Canada.
Generation upon generation, the people moved across
this same landscape year after year, discovering, learning, naming,
encoding the geography and ecology into language, culture, and art. The
music of the landscape - Its winds, rivers, and other beings, as well as
that of the human heart - found expression in the song of the flute.
The traditional Blackfeet flute is carved from native woods such as red cedar. The flute maker would select a length of wood and split it down the middle. Each half would be hollowed out lengthwise. The split edges of the wood were then coated with beeswax. The mouthpiece was fitted, and then the flute reassembled and tied together with wet rawhide which, as it dried, would shrink and firmly hold the flute together. Holes were then drilled and the reed fixed n place. At right, an old Blackfeet flute (image from Library of Congress, Miller collection) which was made in this fashion. A bear carving adorns the reed.
Traditional clothing of the Blackfeet people is often made from brain-tanned buckskin which may be ornamented with beadwork, painting, and fringe. The background for this website is a photograph of a brain-tanned buckskin owned by Liz De Roche.
For more links on Blackfeet culture, please visit the NativeLanguages.org Blackfeet page.
Flutes by Troy De Roche