No. DRUCKER1950-006
Owikeno bullroarer
Canada · Rivers Inlet and Owikeno Lake, central British Columbia coast · North America · Northwest Coast
Play / practical
Source term: bullroarer
The Owikeno 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.
Particulars
- Object
- A 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), p. 199, elements 854-857, with notes p. 268