Descriptions of these horns have come to us from our pioneer grandparents, and printed accounts can only be found by rummaging among old Western papers. The Frankfort (Kentucky) _Commonwealth_, in 1836, published some verses extolling the boatman’s music:
Oh, boatman, wind that horn again! For never did the joyous air Upon its lambent bosom bear So wild, so soft, so sweet a strain.
And this horn was made of the same material as the boat. They performed upon a wooden bugle of long conical shape, constructed of small wooden staves, which, according to all accounts, produced sounds of a wonderfully sweet tone. On a beautiful, clear and still morning the echoes of the boatmen’s trumpets, prolonged at a great distance through the neighboring woods and hills which bordered the river, are said to have possessed a charm and enchantment which none can realize but those who have heard them.
The Western boatmen were not the only ones who used
for there is an instrument of this kind still preserved in Kentucky, and is now, or was a few years ago, in the possession of Mrs. Annie Mayhall, a granddaughter of Captain Robert Collins.
Colonel Richard Johnson made a famous charge in the war of 1812, and Captain Bob Collins sounded the charge on his home-made cedar horn.
If there are any illustrations of this charge, the bugler will no doubt be represented as blowing on the regulation brass instrument; but you must remember, boys, that the artists were not in that fight. Artists have a way of doing things up fine, as may be seen by the pictures of our
all in regulation uniforms, when the truth is that there was scarcely a uniformed regiment in the army. The grand old fellows fought in their hunting garb, or the dress they wore on the farm, in the store, the church, or the tavern; and while they may not have used wooden horns, it is very probable that many a Continental bugler carried an old cow’s-horn, with which to sound the reveille.
But the bugle which sounded the death-knell of the great Indian chief Tecumseh was
The Old Wooden Horn of Captain Bob Collins.
It was made of two cedar slabs, three-sixteenths of an inch in thickness, and these were trimmed and bent so that when their edges were joined they formed a funnel-shaped instrument which was about four inches in diameter at the bell or larger end, and tapered down to a convenient size at the small end, or mouth-piece. The two cedar slabs were held in place by hoops made of cow’s-horn.