MCKENNAN1965-001 - ethnographic attestation
Chandalar storm-turning bullroarer
United States - Alaska - East Fork Chandalar and upper Sheenjek drainages - North America - Subarctic
Weather / fertility magic
Source term: bull roarer
Children and adults played with blades blackened with charcoal and notched along both edges. The sound also belonged to weather-working: a bullroarer could forestall approaching rain. Other recipes called rain down—hanging a bullhead from a child’s neck or bothering a raven. A familiar plaything belonged to a larger repertoire for changing the sky.
rain can be forestalled by the use of a bull roarer
McKennan 1965:84
- Object
- Blades notched along both edges and blackened with charcoal.
- Function
- Used to forestall rain as a storm approached; also a popular plaything for children and adults.
- Source
- Robert A. McKennan, The Chandalar Kutchin (Arctic Institute of North America Technical Paper 17, 1965), pp. 50 and 84
- Source location
Page references
Printed pp. 50, 84; PDF pp. 63, 97.
- Source confidence
- high
- Location note
- Arctic Village as a present-day Chandalar Gwich’in territorial anchor; the passage does not identify a performance site or settlement.
Regions: The Americas · North America
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival