The Bullroarer Atlas

No. BIRKET1930-001

Chipewyan detjEndEl ne children's bull-roarer

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

Play / practical

A long, notched Chipewyan wooden bullroarer lies with its skin thong looped around a short cross-pin.
Plate I. Chipewyan notched wooden bullroarer with skin thong and cross-pin, H1.65. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image source

detjEndEl ne

Source term: bull-roarer

Chipewyan (Northern Athapaskan) name for the bull-roarer, recorded by Birket-Smith.

Among the Chipewyan of the Churchill River and Reindeer Lake country, the bull-roarer belonged to the children. The Danish ethnographer Kaj Birket-Smith, there for the Fifth Thule Expedition, set it down among their toys rather than the rites, and recorded its name: detjEndEl ne.

Particulars

Object
Thin notched wooden slab tied to a smoked-skin thong with a small cross-pin.
Function
Children's toy.

Sources

  1. Kaj Birket-Smith, Contributions to Chipewyan Ethnology, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921–24, VI(3) (Copenhagen, 1930), pp. 71–72, fig. 35a, object H 1:65 CNM View
  2. Nationalmuseet, object 85119 (H 1:65 CNM), illustrated in Birket-Smith (1930), fig. 35a

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.