The Bullroarer Atlas

No. LOEB1932-001

Inland Yuki thunder-voice bullroarer

United States · Round Valley, Mendocino County · North America · California

Restricted

The schoolboys’ ual ual, a small wooden paddle with cotton string tied around its narrow end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. The schoolboys' ual ual: a hand-sized paddle on its cotton string Image source

aelamo'otom

aelamo'otom — 'thunder breath' (Loeb); alamol k'ani — 'thunder voice' (Foster).

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.

Source

E. M. Loeb, The Western Kuksu Cult, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 33(1) (1932), pp. 66-68; G. M. Foster, A Summary of Yuki Culture, Anthropological Records 5:3 (1944), p. 210

View the source · archived

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Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.