The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-017 - museum specimen

Quechan (Yuma) bull-roarer (museum specimen)

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

Play / practical

Tohono O’odham Wihoewiketeke with painted blade, cord, and whirling handle.
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 child's toy, not a ceremony's voice.

Bull-Roarer

Smithsonian NMNH record nmnhanthropology_8394213
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.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
NMNH record nmnhanthropology_8394213

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