The Bullroarer Atlas

LOEB1929-028 - ethnographic attestation

Arapaho

United States - Great Plains - Arapaho - North America

Play / practical

Kroeber's fig. 153: an Arapaho bull-roarer model on its 61 cm handle stick, a small serrated blade tied on with a thong at the base; Kroeber...
Kroeber's fig. 153: an Arapaho bull-roarer model on its 61 cm handle stick, a small serrated blade tied on with a thong at the base; Kroeber notes the name hateikuucaⁿ was also applied to a separate bone buzzer used in the ghost dance, but this figure depicts the bull-roarer proper. A. L. Kroeber, The Arapaho (Bulletin AMNH 18, 1907), fig. 153 Public domain Image source

hateikuuca Arapaho (Algonquian; Plains)

Source term: "hateikuuca"

Among the Arapaho the bullroarer was a boy's toy: a flat piece of bone about two by four inches, strung on a short cord and swung from a wooden handle. Whirled fast it was said to roar like distant thunder, the bellowing of a bull, or howling, and it was held to produce wind because it sounded like wind. It also entered the Ghost Dance, where it was sometimes used to start the singing. Among the closely related Gros Ventre, Kroeber found the bull-roarer and the buzzer to be only children's toys, both called nakaantan, "making cold" — the same word the Gros Ventre gave to the thermometer — which he traced to the widespread idea that the bull-roarer breeds wind. Loeb cites the Arapaho as the northern edge of the Plains bullroarer; drawing on Spier's western survey he records it making wind among the Arapaho but serving only as a toy among the Gros Ventre and Paiute.

They were both called nakaantan ("making cold," a name given also to the thermometer), probably from the widespread Indian idea that the bull-roarer breeds wind.

Kroeber 1908, Ethnology of the Gros Ventre (Anthropological Papers AMNH 1)
Function
Loeb treats Arapaho as the northward Plains limit, with toy deterioration and analogous wind-making use in Spier's data.
Map confidence
low_medium - representative coordinate for named people, place, or region in Loeb
Source location
pp. 271, 284

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