Coast Miwok bullroarer

umul

In central California the bullroarer belonged to two peoples only, the Pomo and the Coast Miwok, Edwin Loeb found; among the Maidu, on Dixon's authority, it was only a child's toy. Loeb groups the Coast Miwok with the Pomo, Yuki, and Huchnom inside the Ghost ceremony, the masked tribal initiation in which boys lay down as if dead, were covered with straw, then roused to life and bathed. His detailed account of bullroarers in that rite is Pomo: they sounded inside the subterranean ghost house while the women and children kept outside were told the noise was the voices of the dead. The Coast Miwok staged it the same way: their ghosts, the walipo, came down from the hills with fire burning in their hair, while the boys lay painted black on the ground and were now and then thrown over the fire.

Bullroarers (umul) were whirled in the ceremonial house, and the women believed the roaring to be the voices of the ghosts.

Edwin M. Loeb, The Western Kuksu Cult, UCPAAE 33(1) (1932), p. 116

Particulars

Function

Sounded in the boys' Ghost initiation; in the secret society's pololo memorial dance, two men swung it as the voice of thunder.