{"id":"STEWART1941-001","label":"Wadatika wind-making bullroarer","people_or_site":"Wadatika (Wada-dokado, Burns Northern Paiute)","country_current":"United States","historic_region":"Harney Valley and Malheur Lake, southeastern Oregon","macroregion":"North America / Great Basin","local_name":"wimo'to","source_term":"bull-roarer (wimo'to)","source_language":"English","object_description":"Wooden bullroarer; no dimensions or surviving object recorded.","function_summary":"Whirled to make the wind blow; explicitly not a toy.","attestation_type":"ethnographic_attestation","source_key":"stewart1941_northern_paiute","source_type":"primary_ethnography","source_url":"https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/84154","page_or_plate":"pp. 365, 401 (elements 1870-1874), 403 (element 1981); Heizer ed. 1972:49-50","map_confidence":"medium","plot_status":"plot_with_caveat","coordinate_basis":"Burns, Oregon anchor — the Wada-dokado were settled in the Indian Colony at Burns when Stewart interviewed them; the band's territory historically centered on Malheur Lake and Harney Valley. Not a performance site.","jade_complex_role":"","blurb":"To make the wind blow, Wadatika men whirled a wooden bullroarer — and it was no toy, said Scarface Charlie and Blind Jim, the two elders Omer Stewart interviewed at Burns. A story told by Captain Louey Crook, a Wadatika narrator recorded by the frontier physician W. L. Marsden, is probably this instrument at work. Snow lay waist deep and the people were starving; a thaw-conjurer stood inside a ring of men and women, praying the south wind and the black and yellow pointed clouds into the valleys — then 'he whirled the conjuring stick and made the thaw come. It made a good noise.'","pull_quote":"Yes, you who has a tule quiver! Come and see me and bring the wind!","pull_quote_translation":"","pull_quote_cite":"Wadatika text of Captain Louey Crook, in Heizer (ed.), Notes on Northern Paiute Ethnography (1972), Doc. 52, p. 50.","term_gloss":"wimo'to: the Northern Paiute word for the bullroarer.","cls":"weather","class_label":"Weather / fertility magic","color":"#2F6FA3","is_candidate":false,"flags":["weather"],"f_jade_complex":false,"f_women_taboo":false,"f_women_special":false,"f_snake":false,"sources":[{"citation":"Omer C. Stewart, 'Culture Element Distributions: XIV, Northern Paiute,' Anthropological Records 4:3 (1941), pp. 365, 401 and 403; R. F. Heizer (ed.), Notes on Northern Paiute Ethnography: Kroeber and Marsden Records (1972), pp. 49-50","url":"https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/84154","archive":"https://web.archive.org/web/20201213003202/https://digicoll.lib.berkeley.edu/record/84154"}],"source_citations":"Omer C. Stewart, 'Culture Element Distributions: XIV, Northern Paiute,' Anthropological Records 4:3 (1941), pp. 365, 401 and 403; R. F. Heizer (ed.), Notes on Northern Paiute Ethnography: Kroeber and Marsden Records (1972), pp. 49-50","source_display":"Omer C. Stewart, 'Culture Element Distributions: XIV, Northern Paiute,' Anthropological Records 4:3 (1941), pp. 365, 401 and 403; R. F. Heizer (ed.), Notes on Northern Paiute Ethnography: Kroeber and Marsden Records (1972), pp. 49-50","date_citation_display":"","object_display":"Wooden bullroarer; no dimensions or surviving object recorded.","function_display":"","confidence_display":"medium","attestation_label":"ethnographic attestation","etymology_hedge":"","people_key":"wadatika wada","display_name":"Wadatika wind-making bullroarer","image":{"full":"assets/objects/NA-S1952-013.jpg","thumb":"assets/objects/NA-S1952-013_thumb.jpg","alt":"Navajo (Diné) bullroarer in a nineteenth-century published engraving.","credit":"The Franciscan Fathers, St Michaels, Arizona (1910)","license":"Public domain","source_page":"https://archive.org/details/ethologicnavaho00editrich","rehosted":true,"representative":true,"caption":"Navajo (Diné) bullroarer in a nineteenth-century published engraving.","pool_id":"american-west-navajo-engraving","last_modified":"2026-08-11"},"slug":"stewart1941-001-wadatika-wada-dokado-burns-northern-paiute"}