{"id":"KEDDIE2023-002","label":"Nimkish roarer with unequal blades","people_or_site":"Nimkish ('Namgis), Kwakwaka'wakw","country_current":"Canada","historic_region":"British Columbia / northern Vancouver Island / Nimpkish River and Cormorant Island ('Namgis country)","macroregion":"North America / Northwest Coast","local_name":"","source_term":"two bladed bull roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Two-bladed bullroarer, one blade half the size of the other; American Museum of Natural History 16/8125, collected by Franz Boas in 1900.","function_summary":"Not recorded.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"keddie2023_nimkish_amnh_16_8125","source_type":"curatorial_article","source_url":"https://grantkeddie.com/2023/02/bullroarers-in-the-indigenous-collections-of-the-royal-b-c-museum/","page_or_plate":"Ethnographic Collections, paragraph following Figure 3","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Alert Bay, Cormorant Island, the 'Namgis home village by 1900; Boas's collecting village is not recorded.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"One blade is half the size of the other. This two-bladed roarer, collected in 1900, comes from the Nimkish, the 'Namgis people of the Nimpkish River on northern Vancouver Island, whose village now stands at Alert Bay. Among the Kwakwaka'wakw, the whirring stick belonged to the winter ceremony: at midnight men climbed secretly onto the house roofs and whirled it as the voice of the spirit come to carry off another novice.","pull_quote":"a two bladed bull roarer (16/8125) with one blade half the size of the other","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Grant Keddie, 'Bullroarers in the Indigenous Collections of the Royal B.C. Museum' (2023)","term_gloss":"","cls":"unknown","class_label":"Function not recorded","color":"#6B7884","is_candidate":false,"flags":[],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Grant Keddie, 'Bullroarers in the Indigenous Collections of the Royal B.C. Museum' (2023), Ethnographic Collections","url":"https://grantkeddie.com/2023/02/bullroarers-in-the-indigenous-collections-of-the-royal-b-c-museum/","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260516110350/https://grantkeddie.com/2023/02/bullroarers-in-the-indigenous-collections-of-the-royal-b-c-museum/"},{"citation":"American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, 16/8125"}],"source_citations":"Grant Keddie, 'Bullroarers in the Indigenous Collections of the Royal B.C. Museum' (2023), Ethnographic Collections; American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, 16/8125","source_display":"Grant Keddie, 'Bullroarers in the Indigenous Collections of the Royal B.C. Museum' (2023), Ethnographic Collections; American Museum of Natural History, Division of Anthropology, 16/8125","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Two-bladed bullroarer, one blade half the size of the other; American Museum of Natural History 16/8125, collected by Franz Boas in 1900.","function_display":"Not recorded.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"nimkish","display_name":"Nimkish roarer with unequal blades","image":{"full":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/GIFFORD1940-008_matthews1887_fig56_whizzer.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/hunt_2026_10_03/thumbs/GIFFORD1940-008_matthews1887_fig56_whizzer_thumb.jpg","credit":"Washington Matthews, “The Mountain Chant: A Navajo Ceremony”, BAE 5th Annual Report (1887), fig. 56, p. 436","license":"Public domain (published 1887)","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/annualreportofbu1887smit/page/n513/mode/1up","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Matthews’s engraving of a Navajo whizzer","pool_id":"auto-hunt_2026_10_03--GIFFORD1940-008_matthews1887_fig56_whizzer","auto_assigned":true,"last_modified":"2026-10-19"},"slug":"keddie2023-002-nimkish-namgis-kwakwaka-wakw"}