Keith Little Badger builds three styles of Native Hand Drums.
Please scroll down this page to learn more about:
River-recovered Cedar hand drums
Cottonwood hand drums
Plains style Pine hand drums
On this page, we explain our philosophy of using rawhide laces rather than sinew or rope. We explain why we use cowhide, and how we have it processed specially for our Native drums. We explain our lacing technique and its spiritual sigificance.
We welcome questions, so if we have not provided enough information to help you choose your personal hand drum, please call us at 256-538-0246. We will play some drums for you and answer all your questions.
We Sell Drums, Not Parts
Keith is a traditional drum maker, taught by his grandfather to make drums. If you want to make your own drum, we encourage you to search the internet for "native american hand drum kits." This will be a wonderful and powerful experience for you. If your own drum fails to come to life, then keep it forever as an important part of your spiritual journey. Later, you may find that you need to buy a drum from someone with a lifetime of experience. We hope you return to our web site and let us help you find a drum you can play.
Native American drum-making is a ceremony and an art, passed down through families. Drum-making is a calling, with a whole life devoted only to this one thing: making drums to help people pray and sing. It involves gifting drums to those who need them, showing up with drums to events where a drum is requested and donating drums to help people heal. Drum-making, in the tradition of North American indigenous People, is a life style.
Cedar Hand Drums
When Keith builds a native hand drum, NO TREES DIE. We refuse to build hand drums using the "cheese wheel" or mass-produced plywood "hoop," and kill more trees in the process." Plywood was not invented in the time of our ancestors, so it is not a traditional Native American drum. Instead, Keith Little Badger uses River-recovered Cedar. (Learn more about the spiritual significance of river-recovered cedar.) Keith constructs each hand drum frame from 16 pieces of cedar sanded into a circle. This is sometimes referred to as a "FRAME DRUM."
Keith cuts rawhide laces from the same hide as the head. He does not use string or imitation sinew. This is extremely important: drums laced with nylon cord, rope or sinew will eventually result in a loose drum head because they will not expand and contract at the same rate as the rawhide head. Different materials = different reactions to humidity and climate.
We provide a FREE drum stick with every drum. CLICK on the thumbnail photo of drum back at right to see detail of the lacing and back.
12" diameter: $100.00
14" diameter: $130.00
16" diameter: $160.00
18" diameter: $190.00
Front of hand drum
Hand Built Cedar Frames
Rawhide Lacing
Cottonwood Hulls - Super Lightweight, Very Sacred
Cottonwood Hand Drum
We have a limited number of boards remaining from our special lightening-struck cottonwood tree that had no business being in Alabama. Read more about that story here.
Since we took the whole cottonwood tree, we have decided to use bull hide on the cottonwood frame. Our bull hides provide a reliable sound and the cottonwood hull makes a lightweight native american style hand drum, perfect for women.
Once again, this will be a limited run. When the cottonwood is gone, it's gone. Call now to place your order.
14" hand drum: $160.00 16" hand drum: $190.00 18" hand drum: $210.00
All native drums come with a free drum stick.
Plains Style Pine Native American Hand Drum
Keith Little Badger wraps the Native American hand drum frame with rawhide completely. While his other hand drums display the cedar or cottonwood hull of the drum, this Plains style has a rawhide edge. The same rawhide used for the head is used as lacing so the whole hand drum expands and contracts equally. Hook a thumb through the ring in the back and allow the Plains Style american indian drum to rest on four outstretched fingers (no "claw hand" grip).
Cottonwood, Pine, Cedar
New Plains Style Full Rawhide Wrap Native Hand Drums
14" - $100.00 (our competitors' prices for this size range from $135 to $195) Our 14" cedar drums are $130 16" - $130.00 (competition prices range from $170 to $225) Our 16" cedar drums are $160
Pine 2 x 4s From Dumpster & Pine Saved From Power Company Waste
Keith Little Badger has built a new inexpensive line of Native American Plains Style Hand Drums. While the new pine drums cost less, they are far superior in quality than the plywood "Hoop Drum."
We do not use a padded handle because Native Americans believe that the heartbeat of Mother Earth echoes through their native drums. There are two important reasons why we don't use "mittins" on our hand drums:
First, padding interferes with the contact between you and your drum. Caucasian drum makers often use a sheepskin handle. Of the thousands of Native Americans we have met at powwows, not a single one carried or played a drum with a padded handle. It defeats the purpose of drumming as prayer.
Second, padded handles restrict the sounds of your drum. Our drums are famous as "scratch drums" used by Northern tribes. You can use your thumb to stop the reverberation and create a unique drumbeat. Drumming involves the whole hand, not just the drum beater or mallet. Padded handles limit the voice of your drum.
WHY UNBLEACHED BULL HIDE?
Bleaching weakens rawhide, so we use only UNBLEACHED BULL (male cow) hide. Why cow hide? Cheap drums will be covered with elk, goat, pig, or deer. These hides are extermely thin, and they will warp in even 5% humidity. They are also rubbery hides, which means they will stretch forever, so that your drum head will never be tight. Cow hide holds up under all weather conditions, and can withstand the humidity of a sweat lodge.
Since we support horse rescue ranchs, we find it very difficult to use a majestic horse to put a head on our drums. Cows are already a major food source. Their rawhide will be wasted, so we choose to recycle a byproduct of an animal already killed for food.
We do not use Buffalo for spiritual reasons. Buffalo have been on the species extinction list; cows have not. We believe that it is wrong to kill Buffalo to make drums when fast food restaurants slaughter cows by the billions. Haven't humans killed enough Buffalo? If you need to honor the Buffalo, tie a tuft of buffalo hair on your drum, don't kill the animial. For these reasons we believe the finest, most affordable sound comes from unbleached cow hide. All of our hides are commercially tanned to ensure uniformity in thickness and quality.
Customize your drum with a painting by award-winning artist, Cheryl Talking Bird. See painted drums and painted totem animal shields for some examples of her artwork.
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