KELLY1932-001 - ethnographic monograph
Surprise Valley Paiute wind bullroarer
United States - Surprise Valley, northeastern California and Warner Valley, Oregon - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
kwi'mo English
Source term: bullroarer
kwi'mo is Kelly's term for the bullroarer; tüsa'ibidun names the wind-calling rite (and once a separate whirled stake), with uncertain spelling.
When snow lay deep over Surprise Valley and would not melt, a man whirled the kwi'mo bullroarer to bring the warm south wind. Isabel Kelly's Kidütökadö informants remembered the object as a boy's toy too: a juniper blade marked with black spots or lines, tied loosely with deer hide to a wand-like handle. The wind-calling rite, tüsa'ibidun, was specialist work — performed for payment in beads or a belt, sometimes by a man born in summer, sometimes with nothing more than an eight-inch whirled stake.
A man whirls a bullroarer (kwi'mo) to bring a warm wind to melt the snow.
Kelly 1932, p. 202.
- Object
- Juniper bullroarer, decorated with black spots or lines, tied loosely with deer hide to a wand-like handle.
- Function
- Boy's toy and weather device: whirled to bring the warm south wind and melt deep snow.
- Map confidence
- medium - Representative Surprise Valley cultural-region anchor; not an informant birthplace or performance site.
- Source location
- pp. 177, 202
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival