The Bullroarer Atlas

MINE2026-074 - ethnographic attestation

Saline Valley Shoshoni

United States - Saline Valley, eastern California - North America - Great Basin

Play / practical

Steward's own illustration of the wumuitui: an oval whirler with a saw-toothed rim, strung through a small hole near one end — the bull-roarer...
Steward's own illustration of the wumuitui: an oval whirler with a saw-toothed rim, strung through a small hole near one end — the bull-roarer he documented among the Saline Valley Shoshoni. Steward, Culture Element Distributions: XIII, Nevada Shoshoni (Anthropological Records 4:2, 1941), Fig. 4f Public domain Image source

wumuitui English

Source term: wooden whirrer for bull-roarer

wumuitui: Saline Valley Shoshoni name Steward records for the wooden whirrer he figured.

This wumuitui was made by a Saline Valley Shoshoni man Julian Steward recorded only as WP; Steward published the piece itself as Figure 4f of his 1941 Nevada Shoshoni survey — a compact whirrer, broad-bodied, narrow at the waist, pierced at the tip. In the southern Great Basin the bull-roarer was a plaything: only farther north, at Elko and Battle Mountain, 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.
Object
Wooden bullroarer with broad body, narrowed neck, and pierced attachment tip; figured by Steward as a Saline Valley Shoshoni wumuitui.
Function
A plaything, on Steward's own account of the southern Great Basin: he published this Saline Valley wumuitui as his Figure 4f, and records the toy use for the southern bands, wind-bringing belonging to the north (Steward 1941).
Map confidence
high - Named Saline Valley locality anchor; the figure does not specify a findspot within the valley.
Source location
p. 225, Fig. 4f

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