The Bullroarer Atlas

EXH2026-009 - museum specimen

Slavey (Dene, Northern Athapaskan)

Canada - Fort Nelson, British Columbia - North America - Subarctic

Play / practical

An unfinished bullroarer blank: a rough, leaf-shaped board of pale wood with a pointed tang at one end, photographed with a color card and...
An unfinished bullroarer blank: a rough, leaf-shaped board of pale wood with a pointed tang at one end, photographed with a color card and scale — made by George Bain at Fort Nelson, British Columbia, the object documented here. Yale Peabody Museum, YPM ANT 057335 CC0 Image source

Source term: bullroarer (museum catalog)

A leaf-shaped wooden blade about a foot long, left unfinished, the work of a man named George Bain at Fort Nelson in the boreal northeast of British Columbia. It reached the Yale Peabody Museum in 1943, the same year John Honigmann did the fieldwork that became his ethnography of the Fort Nelson Slave. The museum records it plainly as a toy, with no ritual context attached.

1 Bullroarer, unfinished wood, toy, L. 13", made by George Bain, Fort Nelson, BC, Slave, N Athapaskan

Yale Peabody Museum, YPM ANT 057335 (catalog record)
Object
Unfinished wood bullroarer blank, leaf-shaped flat blade with tang, L. 13 in. (30.5 cm), made by George Bain; Yale Peabody YPM ANT 057335, accession YPM.05533 (1943).
Function
Catalogued as a toy. No ritual context recorded.
Map confidence
medium_high - Fort Nelson BC (stated locality of maker)
Source location
YPM ANT 057335

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