Kaibab Southern Paiute notched whirrers

naiyaratinömpö

Source term: bullroarer

naiyaratinömpö: the Kaibab word for the bull-roarer.

Powell's collection preserves a strange compound roarer: a long sumac staff, sinew cord and buckskin thong carrying two small notched wooden whirrers — an elaborate three-part rig gathered while the one-armed major was mapping the canyon country of the Colorado. What the Kaibab used the bull-roarer for was set down some sixty years on, when Mose, a blind Kaibab elder at Moccasin, Arizona, described the naiyaratinömpö to Omer Stewart: a wooden blade on a handled string, a boy's toy — and a means of making the wind blow. Powell's catalogue credits the rig to the Kaibab, whose name he himself carried onto the map: Southern Paiute for 'mountain lying down.'

There is a single bullroarer in the collection.

Fowler and Matley, Material Culture of the Numa (1979), p. 72.

Particulars

Object

A 67.5 cm Rhus trilobata stick, 76 cm four-ply sinew cord, and 69 cm buckskin thong carry two three-notched wooden whirrers (9 x 4 cm and 7 x 3 cm).

Function

This specimen's use is unrecorded; among the Kaibab the bull-roarer was a toy and was whirled to make the wind blow.