The Bullroarer Atlas

JSTEWARD1941-004 - primary ethnography

Beatty Shoshoni bullroarer

United States - Beatty, Oasis Valley, Nye County, Nevada - North America - Great Basin

Function not recorded

Hunkpapa Lakota serrated bone bullroarer, NMAI 19/5826.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Hunkpapa Lakota serrated bone bullroarer, NMAI 19/5826. Image source

Source term: Bull-roarer

At Beatty, where the Amargosa surfaces in the Oasis Valley, the bullroarer was a wooden slat whirled on a cord, and nothing more of it was recorded. It sits in a line of valleys — Death Valley below, Lida to the west — that gave the instrument to children and denied it any power over the weather.

Object
Not described; the Great Basin form is a flat wooden slat swung on a cord from a short handle stick.
Function
Not recorded.
Source
Steward 1941, printed p. 307, element 1870 'Bull-roarer' + for column Sb. Informant dossier, printed p. 214: 'TSt, full-blood Shoshoni man, born ca. 1865 near Beatty, at or near which he has subsequently lived; coöperative, well informed, intelligent, and careful; one of the best informants; English fair; Provided list S-Bty.'
Source location
Page references

printed p. 307, element 1870 (column Sb); informant p. 214

Source confidence
high Beatty, Oasis Valley, Nye County, Nevada. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.

View source Open this point on the interactive map