Good stuff Barry. Certainly basic fifes and drums would be among the original instruments, but it would appear that the fiddle (in the shape we know it) predated the plucked instruments as far as European settlers in America go. Are there paintings of black slaves playing bowed instruments of non-European derivation? I believe the earliest painting/drawing of a banjo is circa late 1700s.(before J.W. Sweeney, anyway)

Rick