JSTEWARD1943-003 - ethnographic attestation
Promontory and Cache Valley newUkivo, swung for weather
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
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.
- Source
- Julian H. Steward, Culture Element Distributions: XXIII, Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni, Anthropological Records 8:3 (1943). S-Prom column, element block p. 333: 1974 bull-roarer +, 1975 whirrer of wood +, 1978 handle of wood +, 1979 TOY MINUS, 1980 used to bring warm wind +, 1981 by people born in summer +. Name, note to element 1974, p. 383: 'Called:…
- Source location
- Steward 1943, pp. 264, 333, 383, 384
- Source 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.
- Weather magic