LOEB1932-001 - ethnographic attestation
Inland Yuki thunder-voice bullroarer
United States - Round Valley, Mendocino County - North America - California
Restricted
aelamo'otom English
aelamo'otom — 'thunder breath' (Loeb); alamol k'ani — 'thunder voice' (Foster). Distinct people from the Coast Yuki row.
Among the inland Yuki of Round Valley the bullroarer breathed thunder. Aelamo'otom, thunder breath, spoke with the voice of Taikomol, the creator, who was Thunder himself; in the winter initiation it swung whenever the instructor's teaching turned to him, and at a sick person's doorway two men whirled the blades until the patient fell into the healing trance. The Yuki could even point to the spring, in Witukomno'm country, where that voice had first come out of the earth.
- Function
- Voice of the creator Taikomol, who was equated with Thunder: swung in the winter initiation whenever the instructor spoke of Thunder and Taikomol, and whirled by two men at a patient's doorway to throw the sick into curing trance.
- Map confidence
- medium - Southern Round Valley, Mendocino County.
- Source location
Page references
Loeb 1932, pp. 66-68; Foster 1944, p. 210
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite