Long Valley thunder-men's wiyabal

wiyabal

Source term: bullroarers

wiyabal: Long Valley Patwin bullroarers; compare kimi wiyaba, thunder-man.

Eight men stood four on each side of the fire, squirrel-hawk feathers on their heads and bodies, and swung their bullroarers, wiyabal. In their houses the women believed they were hearing the voice of thunder-man. This was the kimima-yapai, the midsummer thunder ceremony of the Long Valley Patwin, at which boys of nine to twelve were made men. Ghosts came running down from the roof of the dance house; the boys were tossed out through the smokehole with blazing sticks tied to them, and their mothers doused the flames to bring them 'back to life'. Two kuksu then stabbed them before the women, the boys feigned death, and the director revived them with the touch of a feather from his headdress. When the hesi reached Long Valley about 1870, the thunder-men and their bullroarers went into it whole, as nowhere else among the Patwin or Maidu.

The women in their homes thought that the noise of the bullroarers was the voice of thunder-man.

Edwin M. Loeb, The Eastern Kuksu Cult (1933), p. 225

Particulars

Object

Bullroarers (wiyabal) swung by eight men impersonating thunder-man.

Function

Voice of thunder-man in the kimima-yapai, the midsummer thunder ceremony at which boys of nine to twelve were initiated; women at home took the noise for thunder-man himself. After about 1870 the thunder performance and its bullroarers passed into the Long Valley hesi, from all of whose acts women were barred.