DRIVER1939-001 - primary ethnography
Sinkyone wind-control bullroarer
United States - South Fork Eel River - Bull Creek - Garberville region - North America - California
Weather / fertility magic
On the South Fork of the Eel, George Bert told Harold Driver in 1935 that the bullroarer's special power was to raise wind -- and that Sinkyone people used it more often to stop wind than to start it. A strip of madroña bark, struck and swung from one hand, was believed to do the same. Bert was eighty-four, born on Bull Creek, and had spent most of his life around Garberville; Driver recorded the practice without a local name or surviving object.
Bull-roarer produces especially wind; apparently more often used to stop than start it.
Driver 1939:398
- Object
- Wooden bullroarer; no exact object, dimensions, local name, or Sinkyone cord construction is recorded. Driver and Heizer use the ordinary free-air bullroarer class, not a buzzer.
- Function
- Produced wind and was used more often to stop wind than to start it.
- Map confidence
- medium - South Fork Eel anchor near Garberville and Bull Creek matching Driver's Sin 1 consultant history; not a named performance site.
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 398; culture elements 1341 and 1344
- Weather magic