The Bullroarer Atlas

ARCTIC-004 - museum specimen

Inupiaq / Point Hope

United States - Alaska - Point Hope - North America - Arctic

Play / practical

Murdoch's drawing of a whizzing stick from Utkiaġvik (Point Barrow): a painted, serrated blade lashed by a braided sinew cord to its rod handle...
Murdoch's drawing of a whizzing stick from Utkiaġvik (Point Barrow): a painted, serrated blade lashed by a braided sinew cord to its rod handle — the same Arctic-coast Iñupiat practice as the Point Hope wolf scarer, though not that community's own baleen instrument, made by Chester Seveck in 1966. J. Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, BAE 9th Annual Report (1892), fig. 377 — via archive.org Public domain Image source

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

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