The Bullroarer Atlas

No. DRUCKER1950-008

Bella Bella bullroarer

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

Play / practical

Berlin IV A 1488, the whirring stick Boas published as Koskimo: a broad tapering wooden blade and separate slim handle connected by a short cord at their ends.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Koskimo whirring stick: a tapering blade on cord and handle (Boas fig. 189). CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 · 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.

Particulars

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.

Source

Philip Drucker, Culture Element Distributions: XXVI, Northwest Coast, University of California Anthropological Records 9(3) (Berkeley, 1950), pp. 161–163, 199, 268

View the source · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.