JSTEWARD1943-004 - ethnographic attestation
The feathered Gosiute whirrer of Skull Valley
United States - Skull Valley, west of the Great Salt Lake, Utah - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
Source term: bull-roarer
The Gosiute of Skull Valley lived at the few springs of a dry valley west of the Great Salt Lake, and theirs is the only bullroarer in Steward's northern survey with a feather on it. It is also the only one whose material he never recorded. He marked the wooden blade absent and the wooden handle present; the sheep-horn form every informant in the volume denied outright. So what actually whirred at the end of that cord goes unnamed. Children swung it and it was swung to bring the warm wind, and whether the summer-born rule held here the old man who remembered it - at second hand, from his grandfather - could not say.
Bull-roarer.--Whirrer made of sheep horn.
Steward 1943, p. 357.
- Object
- A whirrer carrying a feather, fitted with a wooden handle; the blade material is not recorded.
- Source
- Julian H. Steward, Culture Element Distributions: XXIII, Northern and Gosiute Shoshoni, Anthropological Records 8:3 (1943). GS-SklV column, element block p. 333: 1974 bull-roarer +, 1975 whirrer of wood MINUS, 1977 FEATHER ON WHIRRER PLUS (the only positive mark on this element in the survey), 1978 handle of wood +, 1979 toy +, 1980 used to bring warm wind…
- Source location
- Steward 1943, pp. 265, 333, 357
- Source confidence
- medium Skull Valley, Utah, the territory Steward assigns the list. He notes it 'was sparsely settled at the few sources of water', so a single valley-centre dot stands for a scatter of springs. Not a use site.
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival