Incised Karuk bone roarer

Source term: bull-roarer

Worked from incised animal bone rather than wood, this bull-roarer comes from the Karuk of the Klamath River — one of the northwestern California nations of whom Alfred Kroeber wrote that the bull-roarer "was not used." Strung on cord and marked with carving and a single perforation, it entered the Museum of the American Indian in 1936, bought from the collector Margaret Alta Richards. Nothing of its own life was recorded: who made it, when, or how it was sounded is unknown. In a corner of California where the whirring instrument had no place, the survival of a Karuk example is itself the puzzle.

The bull-roarer has been reported from several scattered tribes. As might be expected, its function is religious, but is not well known and seems to have varied. To the Luiseno it was a summons. It was not used by the northwestern nations.

A. L. Kroeber, Handbook of the Indians of California (BAE Bulletin 78, 1925), p. 824

Particulars

Object

Bull-roarer of the Karok (Karuk), in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).

Function

Not recorded.