History
There are many stories about how different Native American peoples invented the flute. In one tale, woodpeckers pecked holes in hollow branches while searching for termites; when the wind blew along the holes, people nearby heard its music.
The oldest Extant Native American flute made of wood was collected by the Italian adventurer Giacomo Costantino Beltrami in 1823 on his search for the headwaters of the Mississippi River. It is now in the collection of the Museo Civico di Scienze Naturali in Bergamo, Italy.
Earlier flutes of river cane have been found, the earliest being a flute in the collection of the Museum Collections of the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. It was recovered in about 1931 by Samuel C. Dellinger and recently identified as a flute by James A. Rees, Jr. of the Arkansas Archeological Society. The artifact is known colloquially as “The Breckenridge Flute” and is likely to date in the range 750-1350 CE.
Read more about this topic: Native American Flute
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
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—Henry James (1843–1916)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)