Whir at the spring of Iwihinmu

Source term: bullroarer

Mount Pinos, ʔIwhinmuʔu, was holy ground, and no one gathered its pine nuts. A party from Tejon once camped by the only spring near the mountain, and Fernando, an Ineseño, laughed at the warnings. He went down to drink at night anyway. He heard dull sounds, then a deep voice: 'There is one at the door, a pauper.' Then he heard the whiz of a bullroarer. His companions heard him crashing back through the brush and took him for a bear; he came in a believer, and soon after they returned to Tejon he died. Another story of the mountain tells of a hunting fire that ran wild, a bullroarer's whir, white and red deer bursting out, and the ground shaking underfoot.

Then he heard the whiz of a bullroarer.

Thomas C. Blackburn, December's Child (1975), p. 300

Particulars

Object

A bullroarer heard, never seen, at sacred Mount Pinos.

Function

In narratives of the sacred mountain, the whiz of an unseen bullroarer marks a supernatural presence: once at a spring at night, once with a runaway fire, strange white and red animals and an earthquake.