In his left hand, Pompey held a jawbone by its chin, on an empty spot between the animal's front incisors and back molars. In his right hand, the 26-year-old Black mule-wagon driver held a “highly polished piece of rib,” ready to strike the jaw. In the evening twilight of June 3, 1845, on the south bank of Nebraska's Platte River, the men of the U.S. Army's First Dragoons gathered together, eager for his musical “exhibition.” And just before darkness fell, Pompey began a solo concert on the jawbone. A Dragoon officer recalled:

As the music proceeded he began gradually to fire up, and soon his whole body, head, arms, legs, and feet were moving in the most perfect time. He chanted the air and beat, pounded, and scraped the accompaniment. Sometimes he would simply play inside the two walls of his instrument as upon a triangle—but in an instant he...

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