DRUCKER1950-011 - ethnographic attestation
Hartley Bay bullroarer
Canada - Hartley Bay, Douglas Channel mouth, British Columbia - North America - Northwest Coast
Play / practical
Source term: bullroarer
Among the Gitga'at at Hartley Bay, at the mouth of Douglas Channel, the bullroarer was a handled slat and a child's toy. The ceremonial world it might otherwise have belonged to had gone early here: the dances, ranks and privileges of this stretch of coast had lapsed a generation or more before the 1930s. All three Tsimshian peoples, coast and river alike, held the instrument the same way — a plaything.
- 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 Hartley Bay, British Columbia. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Toy / secular survival