Copper Inuit imilguptak (Jenness / CMH IV-D-462)

imilguptak

imilguptak — the Copper Inuit bull-roarer; nilitak, the buzz, is a separate children's toy Jenness knew only from description.

Among the Copper Inuit of Coronation Gulf the bull-roarer was a child's thing, and its name was its own: imilguptak, kept carefully apart in Diamond Jenness's account from the nilitak, the buzz. The anthropologist did more than write the word down — the serrated bone blade he collected, still on its sinew cord, sits in the Canadian Museum of History.

Two other toys, the bull-roarer, imilguptak, and the buzz, nilitak, are also confined to children.

Jenness, The Life of the Copper Eskimos (1922), p. 220

Particulars

Object

Serrated animal-bone blade on a single mammal-sinew cord, 22.0 x 5.0 x 0.5 cm — CMH IV-D-462, collected by Diamond Jenness, 1916 or earlier.

Function

Children's toy.