MINE2026-087 - ethnographic attestation
Trumai
Brazil - Upper Xingu, Mato Grosso - South America - Amazonia
Restricted
kuth; uríuri (shared with Kamayurá); huri huri English; Portuguese
Source term: bull roarer / zunidor
kuth = the Trumai bull roarer, its rites 'buried'; uríuri = the word for bull roarer in both Kamayurá and Trumai (Murphy & Quain 1955, p. 9); huri huri = the same name as recorded in Guirardello-Damian 2011, with huri huri wal the zunidor-making ritual.
By 1938 the Trumai told Buell Quain that they had “buried the kuth”: the rite was no longer performed, but most adults remembered travelling to the Kamayurá village for ceremonies where men “did things that the women cannot see.” The bullroarer’s name survives as uríuri or huri huri, along with the remembered pequi-festival rite for making it.
As the Trumaí express it, they have "buried the kuth" (bull roarer), but most of the adult men knew the ritual connected with it and remembered when it was still in use.
Murphy & Quain, The Trumai Indians of Central Brazil (1955), p. 71.
- Object
- No physical description survives: Murphy and Quain call the information on the defunct rites extremely meagre, and the 2011 lexicon identifies the instrument only through the Portuguese term zunidor.
- Function
- Defunct kuth rites remembered by adult men in 1938: dancing in the Trumai village preceded a joint ceremony at the Kamayurá village where they 'did things that the women cannot see.' A making-ritual, huri huri wal, is remembered as part of the pequi festival.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Aldeia Três Lagoas, a current Trumai village anchor; the sources are culture-wide, not site-specific.
- Source location
- Murphy & Quain 1955, pp. 9, 71; Guirardello-Damian 2011, pp. 144-145, 150-151
- Forbidden to women