FOWLER1979-001 - museum specimen
Kaibab Southern Paiute (?)
United States - Arizona Strip - Kaibab Indian Reservation, northern Arizona - North America - Great Basin
Function not recorded
Source term: bullroarer
bullroarer: English Smithsonian source term; no Kaibab or Ute name is recorded.
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 Southern Paiute bullroarers were for, Isabel Kelly's informants later said plainly: weather. Las Vegas rain-doctors dreamed, sang and swung the mu'mut to bring rain — 'but they were not very successful' — and children were told its whirring would call rain, thunder and lightning. Powell's catalogue credits this rig to the Kaibab, whose name he himself carried onto the map: Southern Paiute for 'mountain lying down.'
There is a single bullroarer (Fig. 62a) in the collection.
Fowler and Matley, *Material Culture of the Numa* (1979), p. 72, fig. 62a.
- 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
- Function not recorded.
- Map confidence
- low - Representative Kaibab Indian Reservation anchor on Arizona's northern border. The source gives a collection attribution, not an object findspot.
- Source location
- p. 72, fig. 62a; table 2