ARCTIC-004 - museum specimen
Point Hope Inupiaq wolfscarer Crossroads Alaska
United States - Alaska - Point Hope - North America - Arctic
Play / practical
wolf scarer English
Source term: bull roarer noisemaker
English collector's label: an Inupiaq wolf scarer, a bull roarer swung to frighten off wolves.
Etymology. "Wolf scarer" is the catalog's English descriptive label, naming the object's function rather than any recorded Inupiaq word; the source records no native term. (high confidence)
A noisemaker of baleen strung on a nylon cord, made in 1966 by Chester Seveck, the Inupiaq herder born on the Kivalina River who tended reindeer for forty-six years and later became a well-known Alaska Native dancer and showman around Kotzebue. In the Crossroads Alaska catalog it appears as entry 48, "Noisy toys," alongside a Yupik rattling sealskin ball from St. Lawrence Island, a Nivkh fishskin rattle from Sakhalin, and a Nanai cradle rattle from the Amur River, and is labeled an Inupiaq "wolf scarer" (bull roarer). The piece is fifteen centimeters long and held by the University of Alaska Museum in Fairbanks.
Iñupiaq "wolf scarer" (bull roarer) noisemaker made by Chester Seveck from Point Hope, Alaska, in 1966, of baleen with a nylon cord. University of Alaska Museum, Fairbanks, #UA66-4-2. 15 cm.
Crossroads Alaska: Native Cultures of Alaska and Siberia (1995), cat. 48 "Noisy toys"
- Object
- Baleen noisemaker with nylon cord made by Chester Seveck in 1966
- Function
- Exhibit catalog identifies Inupiaq wolf scarer as bull roarer/noisemaker
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Point Hope source locality not museum
- Source location
- Crossroads Alaska
- Toy / secular survival