The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-005 - archaeological find

Moriori (burial-ground find, Okawa)

New Zealand (Chatham Islands) - Okawa near Kaingaroa, Chatham Island - Oceania

Function not recorded

The Okawa whalebone bullroarer itself — Dendy's fig. 12: paired grooves run the length of the blade, the edges are set with ornamental notches,...
The Okawa whalebone bullroarer itself — Dendy's fig. 12: paired grooves run the length of the blade, the edges are set with ornamental notches, and deep fastening-notches flank the worn cord end. A. Dendy, Transactions of the N.Z. Institute 34 (1901), Plate VI fig. 12 Public domain Image source
Dendy's full plate of Moriori relics from Chatham Island; the bullroarer (fig. 12) sits among the fish-hooks, chisels and blubber-knives...
Dendy's full plate of Moriori relics from Chatham Island; the bullroarer (fig. 12) sits among the fish-hooks, chisels and blubber-knives collected on the same visit. A. Dendy, Transactions of the N.Z. Institute 34 (1901), Plate VI Public domain Image source

Source term: bull-roarer (whale-bone)

One evening at Wharekauri on Chatham Island, the Canterbury biologist Arthur Dendy accepted an invitation to the quarters of Abner Clough, a station hand — and amongst the miscellaneous articles littering Clough's table, "a remarkable-looking piece of whalebone at once arrested my attention." Clough had picked it up in an old Moriori burial-ground amongst the sand-hills near Okawa, by Kaingaroa. Dendy had "no difficulty in recognising in it a very typical example" of the bull-roarer: exactly six inches of carefully carved whalebone, honeycombed with the decay of age, a pair of grooves running the length of each face, the edges set with ornamental notches, and — beside the worn cord-notch at the narrow end — two deep side-notches cut "evidently to allow of secure tying." Its antiquity, peculiar form, sculpture and material were "pretty conclusive evidence that it is not of modern manufacture." No living memory backed the bone: the ethnographer Alexander Shand had never heard of such an instrument among the Moriori, which Dendy took as the mark of a sacred article — "probably, indeed, in the case of the Moriori highly tapu," for these people "possessed the tapu in all its forms and terrors." And it was so unlike the smooth, unornamented bull-roarer of the Maori that Dendy read a deeper history in the whalebone: the two peoples, he concluded, must have "branched off from one another at a very remote period."

The bone, which is represented in Plate VI., fig. 12, had evidently been carefully shaped and carved, and I had no difficulty in recognising in it a very typical example of that extremely interesting instrument of primitive races known to ethnologists as the "bull-roarer."

Dendy 1901, "On some Relics of the Moriori Race," Trans. N.Z. Inst. 34:131
Object
Carefully shaped and carved whalebone blade, exactly 6 in. by 1.75-2.75 in., honeycombed with decay; paired longitudinal grooves down each face, edges set with small ornamental notches; deep end-notch (probable cord hole) and side fastening-notches 'evidently to allow of secure tying'; found in an old Moriori burial-ground; figured Plate VI fig. 12.
Function
Not recorded. Shand never heard of the instrument among the Moriori; Dendy suggests it was tapu.
Map confidence
low_medium - Okawa near Kaingaroa, NE Chatham Island (find spot)
Source location
pp. 131-134, pl. VI fig. 12

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