{"id":"AUSMAIN-012","label":"Gringai Torikotti bullroarer","people_or_site":"Gringai","country_current":"Australia","historic_region":"Williams River valley, Dungog-Gresford district","macroregion":"Australia / Southeast","local_name":"Torikotti","source_term":"Torikotti","source_language":"English","object_description":"Bullroarer named Torikotti, used in the Gresford Gringai initiation ceremony.","function_summary":"Used in the Gresford-district initiation (twin earthen rings, carved trees, ten-day seclusion) presided over, in Howitt's account of these tribes, by the being Coen/Koin","attestation_type":"secondary_catalog","source_key":"mining2026","source_type":"secondary_literature","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Native_Tribes_of_South-East_Australia.djvu/597","page_or_plate":"Howitt 1904, pp. 570-571, esp. p. 571; Mathews, JAI 26 (1896):320-340","map_confidence":"high","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"The Gringai of the Williams River country dreaded thunder: it was the anger of Coen, the being who presided over their world. He is the Koin whom Threlkeld's Awabakal neighbours described as a black-painted figure carrying a fire-stick, who comes ahead of the gatherings where the ceremonies are held. At the Gresford initiation the boy was painted red and seated in an earthen ring while the women lay around it with covered faces; he was led, eyes to the ground, to a second ring, shown the carved trees, secluded some ten days to learn the songs and dances, then washed, repainted white, and returned to the women's camp. 'The bull-roarer is called by the Gringai Torikotti,' Howitt records, 'and is used in these ceremonies.' The account reached him from the Allyn River settler J. W. Boydell through John Fraser of Maitland — the same scholar whose Awabakal volume preserves Koin.","pull_quote":"The Gringai had a great dread of thunder, and believed it to be the demonstration of the anger of some supernatural being, rebuking them for some impropriety.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), p. 431","term_gloss":"Torikotti: the Gringai name for the bullroarer used in their initiation ceremonies.","cls":"restricted","class_label":"Restricted","color":"#A43C2F","is_candidate":false,"flags":["initiation","women_taboo"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":true,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), ch. IX, pp. 570-571, 'The Ceremonies of the Gringai Tribe'; p. 431","url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Native_Tribes_of_South-East_Australia.djvu/597","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20261013000024/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Native_Tribes_of_South-East_Australia.djvu/597"},{"citation":"R. H. Mathews, 'The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,' Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897): 320-340"}],"source_citations":"A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), ch. IX, pp. 570-571, 'The Ceremonies of the Gringai Tribe'; p. 431; R. H. Mathews, 'The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,' Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897): 320-340","source_display":"A. W. Howitt, The Native Tribes of South-East Australia (1904), ch. IX, pp. 570-571, 'The Ceremonies of the Gringai Tribe'; p. 431; R. H. Mathews, 'The Keeparra Ceremony of Initiation,' Journal of the Anthropological Institute 26 (1897): 320-340","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bullroarer named Torikotti, used in the Gresford Gringai initiation ceremony.","function_display":"Used in the Gresford-district initiation (twin earthen rings, carved trees, ten-day seclusion) presided over, in Howitt's account of these tribes, by the being Coen/Koin","confidence_display":"high","attestation_label":"secondary catalog","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"gringai","display_name":"Gringai Torikotti bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/pd_plates/MAT1898-012.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/pd_plates/MAT1898-012_thumb.jpg","alt":"Mathews's Plate 9, a page of numbered bull-roarer outlines in varied long, broad and narrow shapes, with holes and a scale.","credit":"R. H. Mathews, Notes on the Aborigines of New South Wales (1907), pl. 9 (fig. 9)","license":"Public domain (published 1907)","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Notes_on_the_Aborigines_of_New_South_Wales_-_Plate_9_Bull-roarers_used_by_the_Australian_Aborigines.jpg","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Mathews’s plate 9 of NSW bullroarers (1907)"},"slug":"ausmain-012-gringai"}