The Bullroarer Atlas

DRUCKER1950-006 - ethnographic attestation

Wikeno bullroarer

Canada - Rivers Inlet and Owikeno Lake, central British Columbia coast - North America - Northwest Coast

Play / practical

Kroeber’s drawing of an Arapaho bullroarer model on its handle stick.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Kroeber’s drawing of an Arapaho bullroarer model on its handle stick · Public domain Image source

Source term: bullroarer

The Wikeno bullroarer was a handled slat and a child's toy. Its owners once held all of Rivers Inlet — perhaps the richest sockeye water on the coast — along with most of Calvert Island at its mouth, until the Bella Bella pushed them up to the head of it, where they stayed, a compact isolated people on Owikeno Lake. What their culture had lost by the 1930s it had lost to dwindling numbers rather than to conversion, which makes the toy a survival rather than a recollection.

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
A child's toy; no ceremonial use recorded.
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 Rivers Inlet / Owikeno Lake, central British Columbia coast -- territory anchor, not a findspot.

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