Point Hope Inupiaq wolfscarer Crossroads Alaska

wolf scarer

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 an Inupiaq word.

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. It is an Inupiaq "wolf scarer," a bull roarer swung to frighten wolves away, and it belongs with the other noisy things of the North Pacific rim: the Yupik rattling sealskin ball of St. Lawrence Island, the Nivkh fishskin rattle of Sakhalin, the Nanai cradle rattle of the Amur River. 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"

Particulars

Object

Baleen noisemaker with nylon cord made by Chester Seveck in 1966