No. MINE2026-074
Saline Valley Shoshoni wooden bullroarer
United States · Saline Valley, eastern California · North America · Great Basin
Play / practical
wumuitui
Source term: wooden whirrer for bull-roarer
wumuitui: Saline Valley Shoshoni name Steward records for the wooden whirrer he figured.
In the southern Great Basin the bull-roarer was a plaything, and this wumuitui was a boy's toy and nothing more: a compact oval whirrer, notched like a saw along both edges and pierced at one end for its buckskin thong. Wilbur Patterson of Saline Valley made it for Harvard's Peabody Museum in 1935. Only farther north, at Elko, Battle Mountain and on the Snake River, did Shoshoni whirl it to bring the wind, and only beyond the Basin did it call rain.
wooden whirrer for bull-roarer, Saline Valley Shoshoni
Steward 1941:225, Fig. 4f.
Particulars
- Object
- Serrated oval wooden whirrer, pierced at one end and tied by a 15-inch buckskin thong to a 10-inch stick handle.
- Function
- A boy's toy.
Source
Julian H. Steward, 'Culture Element Distributions: XIII, Nevada Shoshoni,' Anthropological Records 4:2 (1941), p. 225, fig. 4f, and p. 250