The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-022 - museum specimen

Cashinahua (Kaxinawá)

Peru - Upper Purús - Juruá - South America - Western Amazon

Function not recorded

Cashinahua (Kaxinawá) bull-roarer — Penn Museum, 295570 (upper Amazon).
Cashinahua (Kaxinawá) bull-roarer — Penn Museum, 295570 (upper Amazon). Courtesy of the Penn Museum (non-commercial / educational use) Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

Yae: the Cashinahua (Panoan) name recorded by collector K. M. Kensinger for this bull-roarer; no gloss of the word's meaning or any associated use is given in the source.

A bull-roarer of the Cashinahua, nearly a metre long, of seed, resin, and cord, collected on the Rio Curanja in southeastern Peru and bought from the anthropologist Kenneth M. Kensinger by the Penn Museum in 1965. Its native name is recorded as Yae. Kensinger spent some seven years among these Panoan-speakers between the 1950s and 1990s and documented their fertility rites — the kachanawa dance whose chants “call the spirits of the vegetables to the new gardens” — but the museum's entry for this object goes no further than its name and materials, noting only that it is beans and cord like its near-twin in the same accession.

Bull-Roarer ... Native Name: "Yae" ... Cashinahua ... Peru | Rio Curanja ... Purchased from Kenneth M. Kensinger, 1965

Penn Museum object record, Cashinahua bull-roarer "Yae," object 295570 (accession 65-10-91)
Object
Bull-roarer of the Cashinahua (Kaxinawá), in the collection of Penn Museum (Penn 295570).
Function
Not recorded.
Map confidence
medium - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
Penn 295570

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