JSTEWARD1943-001 - ethnographic attestation
Bohogue Shoshoni ('sagebrush-butte people'), Fort Hall
United States - Snake River plain about Fort Hall, southeastern Idaho - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
wiipunonohwi English
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.
- Function
- Swung as a children's toy and swung to bring warm wind.
- Map confidence
- medium_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.
- Source location
- Steward 1943, pp. 264, 265, 333, 383
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival