in Blood Meridian Or The Evening Redness in the West, Cormac McCarthy tells us that quena are flutes made from human bones.

this is the hardest read of his I've stumbled across so far. I love some gross detail but this is a lot. and tedious. it doesn't flow like the others I read, but this whole flute made from human bones and the Indian attack have finally pulled me in, just when I was pages away from shaking my head and putting this in the life is too short pile. mutilation. scalping. sodomy. everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming. (this is how the west was 'won.' a lot of people died. the good, the bad, the ugly. all thinking they were in the right.) a lot of suffering. a lot of death.

a bush hung with dead babies. "I got consumption. I came out here for my health." dude, your arm is swollen to the size of your thigh and yellow pus and maggots in the wound. and you're wandering the desert after surviving an Indian attack. you don't have food or water or a weapon. you were probably better off back east. the stone floor of the church heaped with the 40 dead naked partially eaten bodies of those who'd barricaded themselves in the safety of God's house when the savages attacked. (another example of God Helps Those Who Help Themselves.) seriously. God can't do everything. maybe he can't do anything. you'd have to believe in him first. lot of good it did them.

bridles and reins made of human skin and teeth. necklaces made of human ears. wow. why the fuck did anyone go out west? let them keep the desert. damn. now that it's illegal to make things from your body parts, I do want to see the majestic west. the majestic MODERN west. as in no maurading bands of savages intent on your horribly painful demise (and feeding the buzzards and coyotes).