ARCTIC-002 - museum specimen
Eskimo-Aleut / Mackenzie River mouth
Canada - Northwest Territories - Mackenzie River mouth - North America - Arctic
Play / practical
Source term: bullroarer
A leaf-shaped wooden blade, notched down both edges, collected near the mouth of the Mackenzie River and now in the British Museum. Among the Western Arctic Inuit it was a child's noisemaker: a thin board hung on a length of sinew braid and swung until it gave off a loud whizzing roar. John Murdoch, who gathered such toys at Point Barrow on the international polar expedition of 1881-83, recorded the name as imigluta and was emphatic that the thing carried no ritual weight -- he never saw one in adult hands, and the specimen he brought home had been made for sale by a lad about thirteen or fourteen years old. The Mackenzie piece is recorded only to the delta region, not to a particular village.
It is the well known “whizzing-stick” found among savages in so many widely distant parts of the world, and often used in religious ceremonies. The Eskimo name is ĭmĭglúta. It consists of a thin board of pine wood, fastened by a string of sinew braid about 1 foot long to the end of a slender rod, which serves as a handle. When swung rapidly round by the handle it makes a loud, whizzing sound… This appears to be purely a child’s toy and has no mystical signification. I never saw one in the hands of an adult. This specimen was made and brought over for sale by a lad about thirteen or fourteen years old.
Murdoch 1892, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, p. 379
- Object
- Carved leaf-shaped wooden bullroarer with notches down both sides
- Function
- Western Arctic Inuit child's whizzing-toy (imigluta); no ritual significance per Murdoch
- Map confidence
- high - Mackenzie River mouth regional source anchor not British Museum location
- Source location
- British Museum object record
- Toy / secular survival