The Bullroarer Atlas

KELLY1932-001 - ethnographic monograph

Surprise Valley Paiute (Kidütökadö)

United States - Surprise Valley, northeastern California and Warner Valley, Oregon - North America - Great Basin

Weather / fertility magic

Representative—not this record’s object: Steward’s drawing of the Nevada Shoshoni wumuitui, another Great Basin wind bullroarer; Kelly...
Representative—not this record’s object: Steward’s drawing of the Nevada Shoshoni wumuitui, another Great Basin wind bullroarer; Kelly published no plate of the kwi’mo. Steward, Culture Element Distributions: XIII, Nevada Shoshoni (Anthropological Records 4:2, 1941), Fig. 4f Public domain Image source

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

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