JSTEWARD1943-001 - ethnographic attestation
Bohogue Shoshoni wiipunonohwi at Fort Hall
United States - Snake River plain about Fort Hall, southeastern Idaho - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
wiipunonohwi
Source term: bull-roarer (wiipunonohwi)
At Fort Hall the Bohogue swung a wooden slat on a wooden handle to bring the warm wind, and let their children swing it as well. They called it wiipunonohwi. Steward translated that 'spinner', but the word does not say spin: it is built from the prefix for acting by means of a long object and the root Sapir records for making a drumming, booming noise. The name is the sound. So is the people's own - bohovi, the sagebrush, and gue, the buttes standing north of the Snake River where they wintered.
- Object
- Wooden whirrer fitted with a wooden handle.
- Source
- Julian H. Steward, Culture Element Distributions: XXIII, Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni, Anthropological Records 8:3 (1943). S-FtHl column, element block p. 333: 1974 bull-roarer +, 1975 whirrer of wood +, 1978 handle of wood +, 1979 toy +, 1980 used to bring warm wind +. Name, note to element 1974, p. 383: 'Called: wiipunonohwi (spinner), S-FtHl…
- Source location
- Steward 1943, pp. 264, 265, 333, 383
- Source confidence
- medium to high Winter range on the Snake River in the vicinity of Fort Hall, Idaho, which Steward gives as the band's own wintering ground and on which the reservation was later established. Spring-to-fall range was wide and is not represented. Not a use site.
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival