DRUCKER1950-001 - ethnographic attestation
Hupachisat bullroarer
Canada - Head of Alberni Inlet, Vancouver Island - North America - Northwest Coast
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer
At the head of Alberni Inlet the bullroarer belonged to the Loqwana, the Wolf Dance — the great winter ritual of this coast, in which wolves carry novices off from the village and the initiated bring them home again. Almost everywhere in the world the roarer is reported as having always been there. Here it arrived. It came in with the Wolf Dance itself, four or five generations back, when a people who had been Salishan in speech and culture became Nootkan; instrument and ceremonial were borrowed together, and recently enough that the borrowing was still remembered.
- Object
- A wooden slat swung on a cord fastened to a handle, the standard form all along this coast. Neither dimensions nor material recorded.
- Function
- Sounded in the Wolf Dance, not given to children; it arrived with the ceremonial itself, four or five generations before.
- Source
- Philip Drucker, Culture Element Distributions: XXVI, Northwest Coast, University of California Anthropological Records 9:3 (Berkeley, 1950). Element 854 Bullroarer with sub-elements 855 With handle, 856 Ceremonial usage, 857 Toy, printed p. 199; ethnographic notes printed p. 268
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 199, elements 854-857; notes printed p. 268
- Source confidence
- medium Head of Alberni Inlet, Vancouver Island -- territory anchor, not a findspot.
- Initiation rite