MINE2026-074 - ethnographic attestation
Saline Valley Shoshoni wooden bullroarer
United States - Saline Valley, eastern California - North America - Great Basin
Play / practical
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: in the southern Great Basin the bullroarer was a toy, wind-bringing belonging to the northern bands (Steward 1941).
- Map confidence
- high - Named Saline Valley locality anchor; the figure does not specify a findspot within the valley.
- Source location
Page references
p. 225, Fig. 4f; description printed p. 250
- Toy / secular survival