Klamath boy's paddle bullroarer

sqiˑwʼ

sling; bull-roarer

Etymology. Barker's Klamath Dictionary glosses sqiˑwʼ as "sling; bull-roarer" — one informant described a children's missile-throwing sling, the Pompey informants "a kind of noisemaker you whirl around your head." The word names the instrument by its whirled-noise function.

The Klamath bullroarer was a plain thing — a paddle of unornamented wood about fourteen inches long, notched at the narrow end for its cord — and Leslie Spier's informants dismissed it as a boy's plaything. The whirred sound that carried real power belonged to a different instrument: a buzzer of deer astragalus spun on a sinew cord, its drone shaped into the words poke'wot poke'wot, "drive the deer out." It was a hunting charm, echoing the drives near Pelican Bay where deer were forced into the water and women waited in canoes to kill them.

The bullroarer is a boy's plaything; it has no significance.

Leslie Spier, Klamath Ethnography (UCPAAE 30, 1930), p. 83

Particulars

Function

A toy for boys, swung for amusement.