The tautirut (Inuktitut syllabics: ᑕᐅᑎᕈᑦ or tautiruut, also known as the Eskimo fiddle) is a bowed zither native to the Inuit culture of Canada.
Lucien M. Turner described the "Eskimo violin" in 1894 as being
...made of birch or spruce, and the two strings are of coarse, loosely twisted sinew. The bow has a strip of whalebone in place of horsehair, and is resined with spruce gum. This fiddle is held across the lap when played.[2]
The Canadian anthropologist Ernest William Hawkes described the tautirut in 1916:
It consists of a rude box, with a square hole in the top, three sinew strings with bridge and tail-piece and a short bow with a whalebone strip for hair. . . . Most Eskimo fiddles have only one string.[3]
- ^ Lucien M. Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory', Eleventh annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894, p.259 https://archive.org/stream/ethnologyofungav00turnrich#page/259/
- ^ Lucien M. Turner, 'Ethnology of the Ungava District, Hudson Bay Territory', Eleventh annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1894, p.258-259 https://archive.org/stream/ethnologyofungav00turnrich#page/259/
- ^ Hawkes, E. W. The Labrador Eskimo. Ottawa: Government Printing Bureau, (Geological Survey of Canada) Memoir 91; Anthropological Series, No. 14., pg 122, cited on NativeDrums.ca Archived May 22, 2008, at the Wayback Machine