The Bullroarer Atlas

BIRKET1930-001 - ethnographic attestation

Chipewyan / Dene / Etthen-eldeli

Canada - Churchill River - Reindeer Lake region - North America - Subarctic

Play / practical

A painted wooden bullroarer of the general North American type, teardrop-shaped with a zigzag design in black and olive pigment; not...
Representative image. A painted wooden bullroarer of the general North American type, teardrop-shaped with a zigzag design in black and olive pigment; not Birket-Smith's Chipewyan specimen, the notched slab on a smoked-skin thong figured as his 35a. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Am1891-0612-21) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

detjEndEl ne English

Source term: bull-roarer

Chipewyan (Northern Athapaskan) name recorded by Birket-Smith for the bull-roarer, a notched wooden slab whirled on a skin thong.

Among the Chipewyan of the Churchill River and Reindeer Lake country, the Danish ethnographer Kaj Birket-Smith set the bull-roarer down among the children's toys rather than the rites. He described it as a thin notched slab of wood tied to a skin thong with a small cross-pin, and recorded the local name as detjEndEl ne. He published the account in his Contributions to Chipewyan Ethnology, written up from the Fifth Thule Expedition.

Object
Birket-Smith places the Chipewyan bull-roarer among children's toys and describes the Fig. 35a specimen as a thin notched wooden slab tied to a smoked-skin thong with a small cross-pin.
Function
Children's toy bull-roarer; no ritual function stated in the checked amusements passage.
Map confidence
medium - Representative Churchill, Manitoba field-coverage anchor from Birket-Smith/eHRAF; the source also covers Reindeer Lake and does not give an exact collection spot for object H 1:65.
Source location
p. 71; Fig. 35a; object H 1:65, CNM

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