The Bullroarer Atlas

No. MUS2026-017

Quechan roarer, a recent arrival

United States · Lower Colorado River, Arizona · North America · Southwest

Play / practical

Tohono O’odham Wihoewiketeke with a painted blade, long fibre cord, and wooden whirling handle.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Tohono O’odham Wihoewiketeke with painted blade, cord, and whirling handle. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

A bull-roarer of the Quechan (Yuma), from the Lower Colorado River, held in the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. No use is attached to this piece, but Pat Miguel, a Yuma man questioned in the mid-1930s, remembered the instrument as a recent arrival among his people — a toy, not a ceremony's voice.

Particulars

Object
Bull-roarer of the Quechan (Yuma), in the collection of Smithsonian NMNH (NMNH Anthropology).
Function
Not recorded for this specimen; Quechan testimony of the mid-1930s reported the bullroarer as a recent arrival among the Yuma, used as a toy.

Sources

  1. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Department of Anthropology, E325201-0, Quechan, Yuma Reservation, Arizona; collected by Frances Densmore, accessioned 1923 View
  2. Philip Drucker, “Culture Element Distributions: V—Southern California,” Anthropological Records 1(1) (1937), pp. 5, 25 View · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.