Who we are

DAKOTA DRUM

Dakota Drum Co. is a small business located near Rapid City, South Dakota.
The owners are Dave Hansen and Sonja Holy Eagle.
We employ people mainly from Pine Ridge or Cheyenne River Reservations.
Shaler Lamont, Sonja’s cousin, has been with us for the last four years and is our main drum maker.
See more about Shaler in our drum making section.

Dave Hansen started this business in the late 70s mainly braintanning elk and deer hides
and working with different people that made traditional Lakota crafts.
Over a period of years it evolved into mainly drums and hide paintings.

When Dave and Sonja met and got together in the early 90s, Sonja was working at a computer manufacturing company.
She began painting drums and hides and within a couple of years she quit her job and made painting her full time occupation.
Since then she has developed into a well known artist combining her own style with traditional Lakota designs.

Our main goal at Dakota Drum is to create traditional drums of highest quality.
This means a lot of extra work goes into each one.
It also means you’ll have something that will last for generations, instead of just a few years.
Probably the biggest difference is that we use only hand scraped buffalo rawhide.
This is a labor intensive job that requires putting each hide on a frame and removing the meat
and hair using a traditional scraper.
Most drums today are made with a commercially produced rawhide.
This rawhide is made by using lye or other chemicals to remove the meat and hair.
The problem is these chemicals change the rawhide and make it more brittle.
That is why it cracks usually after just a few years.
When you use only water and scrape the hides they have all the natural strength and elasticity.
This rawhide will last at least 10 times longer than commercially produced rawhide and of course
we stand behind our products and will repair or replace any drums that might break.
See more about this process under drum making.

All of our drum frames for two sided drums are made from cottonwood.
These are chiseled out and aged the appropriate time (usually 3 to 4 months).
Cottonwood works the best for drums because is has a very twisted grain that will not crack.
These two sided drums are our main drums and are the very strongest. They come in sizes from 7 inch to 60 inch.

We also make one sided drums made from maple hoops. These are nice light drums.
They come in certain sizes of 8 inch, 10 inch, 13 inch, 15 inch, 17 inch and 20 inch.
They usually don’t have quite as nice of a sound as our two sided drums, but they are lighter and easier to carry.
Our drums start to have a really good tone at about the 13 to 14 inch size and usually the bigger the drum is the better the sound.

Each drum will come with one stick made from choke cherry ( a traditionally used wood here).
Drumsticks are made from deerskin and stuffed with buffalo hair, larger drums 30 inch
and larger come with 2 sticks, 40 inch and up with 4 sticks.
You also have the option of a painted or unpainted drum. Sonja paints with traditional earth paints.
These paints are made from different colors of rock ground to a fine powder and mixed with water.
After she paints a drum we put a sealer over the painting that makes it permanent
and you can even get it wet and it will not hurt the painting.

You can look at photos of previous drums and order something you like or call and talk to us or e-mail.
Also part of our web site has drums that are painted and available right now.
The prices we have listed are for painted drums and you can reduce the price 20 % if you want an unpainted one.
I.E.: A $ 100.00 painted drum would be $ 80.00 unpainted.

The other main thing we do is hide paintings. Mainly buffalo robes that are painted.
Because we buy so many buffalo hides for our drums, we have access to very nice winter hides
which we have tanned at a commercial tannery.
We also have a very good price on buffalo robes that are not painted.
Sonja also paints deer hides and occasionally we have other kinds of hides.

Please check our store to see a complete list of things available.

Dave Hansen & Sonja Holy Eagle
P.O. Box 75
Rapid City, SD 57709

tollfree
1-888-718-0893
phone ( 605 ) 348-2421

mail us

info@dakotadrum.com

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