- Tubular rattles that are pierced with iron nails, creating a sound similar to that made by rainsticks have been made from gourds in West Africa for centuries, particularly by the Togo and Pangwe people,
- By the end of the 1500s nearly half of the population of Lima, Peru, was African slaves, and it would stay that way in Lima and in many Andean cities for 100 years, according to "The Atlantic Slave Trade," by Herbert S. Klein. Many of these slaves came from the west African Togo and Pangwe, according to online resource Native Village.
- Rainsticks are used by the Diaguita Indians of Chile, an area in need of rain, as it is among the driest in the world. In fact, modern rainsticks are made from the dead stalks of cacti by the Diaguita today, with the needles pressed inward to serve as baffles for pebbles inserted into the hollow cacti However, no evidence of rainsticks exists in early accounts of the Diaguita people.
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