GIFFORD1940-007 - ethnographic attestation
Saguaro roarer after the Vigita
United States - Santa Rosa Valley, Arizona - North America
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull-roarer
Purification followed the Vigita, and a person who skipped it could fall sick. Among the Kikimai, a Tohono O'odham (Papago) local group of the Santa Rosa Valley in the Arizona desert, the cure for that sickness needed no shaman: an ordinary person swung a bullroarer over the sufferer — a blade of saguaro wood, ten inches by two, dotted with red on both faces, on four feet of cord with a stick to grip. Papago rainmaking is famous, and Gifford's Kikimai list rules it out here in the same breath. No roarer to bring rain; a roarer for the Vigita.
No bull-roarer to bring rain, but bull-roarer in Vigita
Gifford 1940:185, note to element 2944.
- Object
- Saguaro-wood blade about 10 by 2 inches with red dots on both sides, whirled on a four-foot cord fitted with a grip stick.
- Function
- Swung over a person who had fallen sick from missing the purification required after the Vigita ceremony; not used to bring rain.
- Source
- Gifford 1940 KP column, note 2215 and Vigita note 2944
- Source location
- pp. 58-59, 151-152, 185
- Source confidence
- medium Santa Rosa Valley rite anchor.