JSTEWARD1941-011 - primary ethnography
Spring Valley Shoshoni (S-SprV)
United States - Spring Valley, White Pine County, eastern Nevada - North America - Great Basin
Function not recorded
wunzivu English
Source term: Bull-roarer
wunzivu, the Spring Valley Shoshoni name for the bullroarer (Steward 1941:250). The same word is recorded at Elko for the ring-and-dart game, so it is not a stable instrument term across Shoshoni country. Steward gives nui as the Elko name for the bullroarer instead; nui is transparently 'play' - the same page glosses an unbaked-clay doll as nui dua, 'play child.'
Spring Valley's contribution to the record is a word: wunzivu, the bullroarer. It travels badly. A hundred and fifty miles north at Elko, wunzivu names the ring-and-dart game, and Elko's word for the roarer is nui — two Shoshoni valleys, one word, two different objects. The instrument itself went undescribed here.
It was also called: wunzivu, S-SprV (but S-Elko called the ring-and-dart game wunzivu); nui, S-Elko.
Steward 1941:250, Bull-roarer section
- Object
- Recorded under its own name; the object is not described.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Map confidence
- medium - Centroid of Spring Valley, White Pine County, Nevada, between the Snake and Schell Creek ranges. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 307, element 1870 (column Sj, +?); name printed p. 250; informant pp. 213-214