The Bullroarer Atlas

No. COLLINS1979-001

Nilmile, made by hand

United States · Upper Kuskokwim River: Nikolai and Telida, interior Alaska · North America · Subarctic

Function not recorded

Deg Hit’an (Ingalik) bull-roarer made by Billy Williams at Anvik, Alaska: a pale spruce blade with saw-toothed edges and a rawhide line wound around and across the blade.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. A Deg Hit'an spruce bullroarer on a rawhide line, from the lower Yukon. CC0 · Image source

nilmile

Source term: bull roarer (n) nilmile

nilmile: bullroarer (Collins and Petruska 1979, p. 12).

On the headwaters of the Kuskokwim, the Dina'ena, the Timber River people, call the bullroarer nilmile. Their dictionary gives the word one sentence, and it is about making one: Nilmile iłtsen, 'He made a bull roarer.' Up here salmon arrive in hundreds rather than millions, so the year was built around them: king salmon taken at fences and weirs on spawning side streams, then hunting out toward the mountains, until the scattered bands drew together at Nikolai and Telida.

Particulars

Object
A bullroarer, called nilmile; its form is not recorded.
Function
Not recorded.

Sources

  1. Raymond L. Collins and Betty Petruska, Dinak'i (Our Words): Upper Kuskokwim Athabaskan Junior Dictionary (University of Alaska, 1979), p. 12 View
  2. Raymond L. Collins, Dichinanek' Hwt'ana: A History of the People of the Upper Kuskokwim who Live in Nikolai and Telida, Alaska (2000, rev. 2004) View

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