Little is known of the music of the most ancient North Americans, partly because the way they lived and disposed of their dead has tended not to favour preservation of objects as fragile - or as special - as musical instruments.
However, this is no reason to suppose that the Continent's earliest occupants valued music any less than their more southerly neighbours or their modern descendants.
Indeed, unless invented wholly independently, the existence in Central and South America of Old-World instrument types such as Pan-pipes and flutes implies at least their earlier passage through the North, along the ancestral routes from the Bering Straits and the Canadian Arctic to the borders of Mexico.
Dance, as well as singing, must also have been essential forms of religious expression and entertainment, just as they are among traditional native Americans today.
