JSTEWARD1943-003 - ethnographic attestation
Shoshoni of Promontory Point and Cache Valley: Huk'undUka and Pankwi-dUka
United States - Promontory Point and the lower Bear River, north shore of Great Salt Lake, and Cache Valley, northern Utah - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
newUkivo English
Source term: bull-roarer (newUkivo)
Among the Shoshoni of Promontory Point and Cache Valley the bullroarer was not a toy. Theirs is the only list in Steward's northern survey that marks the plaything use absent while the weather use stands, and the only one that records who was permitted to do the work: a person born in summer. Steward was careful to add that being summer-born conferred nothing else - it bought no standing, no calling, no rank, and stopped at the edge of the weather. The name they gave the instrument, newUkivo, has nothing in common with the booming compounds their neighbours used, and he left it untranslated.
This distinction of summer and winter-born people is not carried beyond this slight control of weather.
Steward 1943, p. 384.
- Object
- Wooden whirrer fitted with a wooden handle.
- Function
- Swung to bring warm wind, by a person born in summer; the toy use is denied.
- Map confidence
- medium - Promontory Point and the lower Bear River, the territory Steward names first for this composite list. The list also covers the Pankwi-dUka of Cache Valley, roughly 60 km east-northeast, which this single dot does not represent. Not a use site.
- Source location
- Steward 1943, pp. 264, 333, 383, 384
- Weather magic