GIFFORD1940-002 - ethnographic attestation
Cibecue Apache (Cibecue Creek band)
United States - Cibecue Creek, east-central Arizona - North America - Southwest
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull-roarer
Nine inches of flat wood on three feet of cord made the Cibecue Apache bullroarer that Toggie Nightjar — born at Sikaideska, 'white mountain sticks out,' on Cibecue Creek — described for E. W. Gifford: sounded openly, before everyone, and whirled during dances, though he named no particular one. A generation later some Cibecue people told the musicologist David McAllester that it belonged in the Crown Dance; the Crown Dance McAllester watched at Cibecue in 1953 had none.
...the bull-roarer (a flat stick whirled at the end of a cord to make a humming sound). The latter was said by some of my informants to be used in the Crown Dance, but there was none in the Crown Dance I saw at Cibecue in 1953.
McAllester 1960:471.
- Object
- Wooden blade about 9 by 2.5 inches, whirled on a cord about three feet long.
- Function
- Sounded openly in public and during dances; not used for curing, and not merely a toy.
- Map confidence
- medium - Cibecue CDP community anchor on Cibecue Creek — the band's home locality and near the informant's birthplace (Sikaideska, three or four miles below the store); not a dance ground.
- Source location
- pp. 2, 58-59 (elements 2208-2218), 151; McAllester 1960:471