{"id":"MUS2026-014","label":"Mohave bullroarer plaything","people_or_site":"Mohave (Mojave)","country_current":"United States","historic_region":"Colorado River, Arizona/California","macroregion":"North America / Southwest","local_name":"","source_term":"bull-roarer","source_language":"English","object_description":"Bull-roarer of the Mohave (Mojave), in the collection of Smithsonian NMNH (NMNH Anthropology).","function_summary":"A toy, recently adopted by the Mohave.","attestation_type":"museum_specimen","source_key":"smithsonian_nmnh","source_type":"museum_collection","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35745/35745-h/35745-h.htm","page_or_plate":"NMNH record nmnhanthropology_8381310; Kroeber, The Religion of the Indians of California (UC-PAAE 4(6), 1907), Mohave section; Drucker1941 pp.92,188 (element1455)","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot","coordinate_basis":"approximate culture/locality centroid","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"The bullroarer, George Turner insisted, was a toy the Mohave had only recently taken up. Among the Mohave of the lower Colorado River, religious knowledge came through dreaming, and there was no initiation society for such an instrument to serve. Turner, a sixty-six-year-old man of Mohave Valley, placed the whirring blade among the playthings.","pull_quote":"All myths that are at all of sacred character are believed not to be handed down by tradition, but to be dreamed by each narrator.","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"A. L. Kroeber, The Religion of the Indians of California (1907), Mohave section","term_gloss":"","cls":"play_practical","class_label":"Play / practical","color":"#24766D","is_candidate":false,"flags":["toy_survival"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History E277950-0 (Mohave); collected by John P. Harrington, 1913","url":"https://n2t.net/ark:/65665/35a569276-a9d1-45e0-a24e-7842efe795a2"},{"citation":"Philip Drucker, “Culture Element Distributions: XVII—Yuman-Piman,” Anthropological Records 6(3) (1941), pp. 92, 188","url":"https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/anthpubs/ucb/text/ucar006-004.pdf","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20230107213633/https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/anthpubs/ucb/text/ucar006-004.pdf"},{"citation":"A. L. Kroeber, “The Religion of the Indians of California,” UC Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4(6) (1907)","url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35745/35745-h/35745-h.htm","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20260510090434/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/35745/35745-h/35745-h.htm"}],"source_citations":"Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History E277950-0 (Mohave); collected by John P. Harrington, 1913; Philip Drucker, “Culture Element Distributions: XVII—Yuman-Piman,” Anthropological Records 6(3) (1941), pp. 92, 188; A. L. Kroeber, “The Religion of the Indians of California,” UC Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4(6) (1907)","source_display":"Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History E277950-0 (Mohave); collected by John P. Harrington, 1913; Philip Drucker, “Culture Element Distributions: XVII—Yuman-Piman,” Anthropological Records 6(3) (1941), pp. 92, 188; A. L. Kroeber, “The Religion of the Indians of California,” UC Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 4(6) (1907)","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Bull-roarer of the Mohave (Mojave), in the collection of Smithsonian NMNH (NMNH Anthropology).","function_display":"A toy, recently adopted by the Mohave.","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"museum specimen","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"mohave","display_name":"Mohave bullroarer plaything","image":{"full":"assets/objects/MINE2026-079_prm_1911_86_95_yavapai.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/MINE2026-079_prm_1911_86_95_yavapai_thumb.jpg","alt":"A Yavapai medicine bullroarer from Fort McDowell: a broad blunt-ended wooden board incised with lightning zigzags and attached to a long looped cord.","credit":"Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, 1911.86.95 (Freire-Marreco collection)","license":"© Pitt Rivers Museum — non-commercial/educational reuse with attribution","source_page":"https://prm.ox.ac.uk/collections-online#/item/prm-object-39588","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Yavapai medicine bullroarer from Fort McDowell.","pool_id":"auto-MINE2026-079_prm_1911_86_95_yavapai"},"slug":"mus2026-014-mohave-mojave"}