Owens Valley Paiute boys’ bullroarer

Source term: Bullroarer

A foot of thin board, an inch wide and a quarter-inch thick, holed at one end and hung on two feet of string from a notch cut in an eighteen-inch stick - and in Owens Valley that was the whole of it. No rain came of it, no dead spoke through it, no one was kept from seeing it. Grown men there still remembered swinging them as boys. The valley kept no drum and no musical rasp either — rasps belonged to the Paiute up at Pyramid Lake — and the roarer was simply a boy's thing.

A small, round stick, 18 inches long, serves as handle; a 2-foot string fastened to a notch in one end of it passes through a hole in a board 12 by 1 by 1/4 inch, which is swung. A small boy’s toy.

Steward 1933:278

Particulars

Object

A board 12 by 1 by 1/4 inches, holed and swung on a 2-foot string tied to a notch in one end of a small round stick 18 inches long, which serves as the handle.

Function

A small boy’s toy; Steward records no ceremonial or weather use in the valley.