The Bullroarer Atlas

AUSMAIN-003 - ethnographic attestation

Wambaya (Umbaia in Spencer and Gillen)

Australia - Beetaloo Waterhole (Briggs Lagoon), Barkly Region

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Spencer and Gillen's Fig. 94, the wooden purtuli associated with Katakitji's snake-totem waterhole in Umbaia (Wambaya) country.
Spencer and Gillen's Fig. 94, the wooden purtuli associated with Katakitji's snake-totem waterhole in Umbaia (Wambaya) country. Baldwin Spencer and F. J. Gillen, The Northern Tribes of Central Australia (1904), p. 276, Fig. 94 Public domain Image source

Purtuli English

Source term: purtuli / putuli / Purtiili

Purtuli: the Umbaia name for the wooden churinga/bullroarer; the source's Umbaia correspond to today's Wambaya.

At Beetaloo Waterhole in Wambaya country, a wooden purtuli was linked to Katakitji, the snake ancestor said to have made the waterhole. Spencer and Gillen illustrated it as Fig. 94 and wrote that it could not be seen by anyone uninitiated. In the wider Umbaia initiation tradition, women and children were told that a bullroarer's roar was the voice of a great spirit—but this particular purtuli drew its sacred value from Katakitji, not from a spirit believed to live inside it.

Snake churinga belonging to water hole at Betaloo. name of stick = Purtuli. (Chingilli & Umlia name)

Spencer and Gillen expedition journal, Journal 2, p. 6, Camp 56, Betaloo Downs, October 1901
Object
Fig. 94 wooden purtuli (churinga/bullroarer), associated with Katakitji's snake-totem waterhole at Beetaloo.
Function
Sacred totemic object barred from the uninitiated; in Umbaia initiation, women and children were told that the bullroarer's roar was a great spirit's voice.
Map confidence
medium_high - NT Place Names Register Place ID 11197: Briggs Lagoon, locally known as Beetaloo Waterhole; matches the journal's Betaloo water-hole and camp locality.
Source location
Journal 2, p. 6; Northern Tribes 1904, pp. 275-277, 348, 351-352, 492 n.1, 500, 759; Fig. 94

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