BARNETT1937-001 - ethnographic attestation
Tolowa
United States - Smith River, Del Norte County, California - North America - Northwest Coast
Play / practical
Source term: bull-roarer (boy's plaything)
On the Smith River the bullroarer was a boy's plaything, and it was filed where it was heard to belong: among the instruments, with the split-stick and deer-hoof rattles, the roof-plank drum and the bone whistle, rather than among the games. What can be added is what it was not. This coast had no ceremonial recognition of a boy's coming of age and no dance for men alone, and the Tolowa's one solemn rite — a ten-night dance for a girl come of age — was sung without any instrument at all. Whatever a Tolowa boy whirled, it was not the property of a cult.
It was not used by the northwestern nations.
A. L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California, BAE Bulletin 78 (1925), p. 824 -- contradicted by Barnett 1937, p. 174.
- Object
- Not described; recorded only as a bull-roarer.
- Function
- A boy's plaything.
- Map confidence
- medium - Smith River / Lake Earl area, Del Norte County -- Tolowa territory anchor, not a findspot.
- Source location
- printed p. 174, element 746
- Toy / secular survival