The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-015 - museum specimen

Mushuau Innu (Naskapi)

Canada - Labrador - North America - Subarctic

Function not recorded

The Mushuau Innu (Naskapi) serrated antler bull-roarer documented here, its teeth cut along both edges of the blade, cord wound at the tapered...
The Mushuau Innu (Naskapi) serrated antler bull-roarer documented here, its teeth cut along both edges of the blade, cord wound at the tapered grip — collected in Labrador. National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (16/2468) Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

A bull-roarer of the Mushuau Innu (Naskapi), the caribou hunters of the Labrador barren grounds, now held at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. The catalogue records the object, the people, and the place, but nothing of how it was used: no ceremony, no spirit, no name for it. Lucien Turner, who in the 1880s inventoried Naskapi amusements down to the cup-and-ball, the drums, and the rattle, listed no such instrument at all. Among the forager peoples of northern North America the bull-roarer turns up most often as a child's whirring toy rather than a sacred voice, and on the public record that is the likeliest thing this one ever was.

Object
Bull-roarer of the Mushuau Innu (Naskapi), 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
National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI)

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