The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-107 - museum specimen

Moose Cree

Canada - Moose Factory, James Bay, - North America

Weather / fertility magic

A board inscribed in ink "Whirling Stick — To Scare the Devil" beside a painted red serpentine line — a North American bull-roarer held by the...
Representative image. A board inscribed in ink "Whirling Stick — To Scare the Devil" beside a painted red serpentine line — a North American bull-roarer held by the British Museum, shown for the general form; not the Moose Cree bull-roarer from Moose Factory, James Bay, documented here. © The Trustees of the British Museum (E/Am1891-0612-22) CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bull-roarer

Bull-roarer (Lolomikan in the Smithsonian title); the four winds named in Eastern Cree as Kiwetinung-nizeo (north), Nikapihun-nizeo (west), Wapanung-nizeo (east), Shawanung-nizeo (south).

Among the Eastern Cree of the James Bay country, the winds were four brothers, and the bull-roarer was the hunter's tool for summoning them. Skinner recorded that men "to whom the wind is of importance" would sit up all night whirling a bone or serrated wooden blade on twisted sinew cords to bring the wind, its rushing buzz thought to call the real thing. Three forms were in use, and pointedly they were "rarely used as toys" — this was weather magic, not a plaything. The Smithsonian holds a Moose Cree example, attributed to the Moose and Albany bands at Moose Factory, the same people whose wind-bringing Skinner described.

Hunters and others to whom the wind is of importance use a bull roarer to bring it. They sit up all night manipulating this instrument. Its connection with the wind probably lies in its noise, which resembles the rush of the wind.

Alanson Skinner, Notes on the Eastern Cree and Northern Saulteaux (1911), p. 60
Object
Bull-roarer of the Moose Cree, Smithsonian (NMNH/NMAI).
Function
Smithsonian metadata identifies a Moose Cree bull-roarer (Lolomikan); object-specific use and gender context are not recorded in the checked metadata.
Map confidence
high - approximate culture/locality centroid
Source location
Skinner 1911, p. 60 (Eastern Cree, "Directions and Weather Customs"); cf. p. 141 (Northern Saulteaux)

View source Open this point on the interactive map