The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-013 - museum specimen

Miskito

Nicaragua - Río Coco (Wanks River) - Mesoamerica - Central America

Function not recorded

The Miskito bull-roarer itself — an elongated palm-wood blade with its hide-lace cord wrapped at one tip, catalog number 13/2528 inked on the...
The Miskito bull-roarer itself — an elongated palm-wood blade with its hide-lace cord wrapped at one tip, catalog number 13/2528 inked on the wood; collected by David E. Harrower in 1924 at Sang Sang and San Carlos on the Río Coco (Wanks River), Nicaragua. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (13/2528) CC0 Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

A Miskito bull-roarer from the Río Coco — the Wanks, or Segovia, River that now divides Nicaragua from Honduras — held in the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. It was gathered by David E. Harrower, who spent two months in 1924 collecting among the Miskito, Sumu, and Rama for the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, working out of Río Coco villages such as Asang and Krasa. The object record fixes the people and the place but not the purpose; what the instrument was sounded for here is not set down, and its ritual character is inferred from the wider region rather than from anything noted of this specimen.

Object
Bull-roarer of the Miskito, in the collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI).
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
NMAI_142388 / catalog 13/2528

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