The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-005 - museum specimen

Hunkpapa Lakota

United States - South Dakota (Standing Rock) - North America - Plains

Play / practical

The Hunkpapa Lakota bone bull-roarer documented here — a slat with fine zigzag serration along both edges and a perforation at the narrow end.
The Hunkpapa Lakota bone bull-roarer documented here — a slat with fine zigzag serration along both edges and a perforation at the narrow end. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (19/5826) Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

chankabletuntunpi (Teton/Lakota): "wood having edges," the Dakota name for the bull-roarer, a four-edged slat fastened by a hide strip to a handle and whirled to make a whizzing roar (Dorsey 1891).

A Hunkpapa Lakota bull-roarer, a flat slat whirled on a cord until it whizzes, held in the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Where the Lakota use of the instrument is recorded, it is a boys' toy: J. Owen Dorsey, working among the Teton Dakota, set it down as chankabletuntunpi, "wood having edges" — a four-sided piece tied by a hide strip to a handle, which a boy grips and whirls around his head to make it roar. Collectors recorded the same among the neighboring Oglala (a boy's plaything) and Omaha. Tellingly, the ceremonial bull-roarer of the American West belonged to the Hopi, Zuni, Navaho, and Apache, not to the Sioux, for whom the documented life of the whirled slat was play, not cult.

Chan'kabletuntun'pi, Wood having edges... A straight piece of wood is prepared, with four sides or edges, and is fastened by a strip of hide to another piece of wood which is used as a handle. The boy grasps the handle, whirls it around his head, making the four-cornered piece move rapidly with a whizzing noise.

J. Owen Dorsey, "Games of Teton Dakota Children," American Anthropologist (o.s.) 4(4):343 (1891), as reproduced in Culin, Games of the North American Indians (1907), p. 750.
Object
Bull-roarer of the Hunkpapa Lakota, in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
Function
A boys' toy where Lakota use is recorded: the Teton chankabletuntunpi, "wood having edges," whirled overhead on its hide strip to roar (Dorsey 1891; Culin 1907).
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
Dorsey 1891, American Anthropologist o.s. 4(4):343; cf. Culin 1907 (BAE 24th Ann. Rep.) pp. 750-751, fig. 1008

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