The Bullroarer Atlas

ELMENDORF1960-001 - primary ethnography

Twana (Skokomish and related Hood Canal bands)

United States - Hood Canal - Skokomish River, Puget Sound region, Washington - North America - Pacific Northwest

Play / practical

Representative—not this record’s object: Rappahannock bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is...
Representative—not this record’s object: Rappahannock bullroarer, shown as a regional stand-in; no image of this record’s own object is available yet. Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution (USNM E391849-0) Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Twana boys on Hood Canal had two ways to make a piece of wood sing. One was a perforated astragalus bone on a doubled cord, twisted and pulled taut at both ends until it buzzed. The other was a long, flat, elliptical blade of cedar, pierced at one end and whirled through the air -- bigger, louder, and listed in its own right among the tops, canoes, and popguns that filled a Twana childhood on the water.

The bullroarer was a flat, long, elliptical blade of cedar, perforated at one end...

Elmendorf 1960:227
Object
Flat, long, elliptical blade of cedar, perforated at one end; explicitly distinguished from the separate doubled-cord astragalus buzzer described earlier in the same chapter. No dimensions, cord length, or object figure recorded.
Function
A boys' toy, listed in Elmendorf's index alongside other children's playthings (tops, play canoe, popgun, buzzer, dolls, swing, shuttlecock); no ceremonial or adult use recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Skokomish Indian Reservation anchor on Hood Canal, the Twana homeland Elmendorf documents; not a named performance site.
Source location
printed p. 227 (index-confirmed: "Popgun 227, Buzzer 227, Bullroarer 227" under the Toys heading); Internet Archive search-inside scan position 606

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