JSTEWARD1941-013 - primary ethnography
Snake River Shoshoni wind bullroarer
United States - Snake River, southern Idaho - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
Source term: Bull-roarer
On the Snake River the bullroarer was swung to make the wind blow — the northernmost of the three places in Steward's survey where it was a weather instrument, with Elko and Battle Mountain on the Humboldt below it. Against that stand flat denials from the south, in Death Valley and the Owens Valley, where it was a child's plaything and nothing more. Steward made the split a general one: the southern Great Basin used the roarer as a toy, the northern to bring the wind.
- Object
- Recorded as present without description of the object itself.
- Source
- Steward 1941, printed p. 307, element 1870 'Bull-roarer' + for column Sn, with sub-element 1874 'used to make wind blow' also +. Informant dossier, printed p. 213: 'CT, full-blood Shoshoni man, born ca. 1874 at Bliss on the Snake River, Idaho; went to Owyhee (Western Shoshoni Reservation) at the age of 26; well informed, coöperative, very conscientious and…
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 307, element 1870 and sub-element 1874 (column Sn); informant p. 213
- Source confidence
- medium Bliss, on the Snake River in Gooding County, Idaho. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Weather magic