The Bullroarer Atlas

DRUCKER1950-008 - ethnographic attestation

Bella Bella bullroarer

Canada - Milbanke Sound, central British Columbia coast - North America - Northwest Coast

Play / practical

Koskimo whirring stick: a tapering blade on cord and handle (Boas fig. 189).
Representative — not this record’s object. · Koskimo whirring stick: a tapering blade on cord and handle (Boas fig. 189). · Public domain Image source

Source term: bullroarer

By the 1930s missionaries had been among the Heiltsuk of Milbanke Sound for sixty years, and no dance had been performed there in over fifty. The bullroarer was still in the village: a slat on a cord fastened to a handle, in children's hands. These were the people who drove the Wikeno out of Rivers Inlet and dominated the central coast; whatever place the instrument once had in their ceremonial went with the dancing. The toy outlasted it.

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
low to medium Milbanke Sound / Bella Bella, central British Columbia coast -- territory anchor, not a findspot.

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