The Bullroarer Atlas

MUS2026-137 - museum specimen

Inupiaq, Wainwright

United States - Wainwright, North Slope, Alaska - North America - Arctic

Play / practical

Murdoch's 1892 engraving of a Point Barrow whizzing stick: a long wooden handle joined by cord to a saw-edged blade, drawn at one-third scale....
Representative image. Murdoch's 1892 engraving of a Point Barrow whizzing stick: a long wooden handle joined by cord to a saw-edged blade, drawn at one-third scale. It stands in for the Wainwright Imigluktaaq — a baleen bull-roarer catalogued by the Burke Museum along the same Iñupiaq coast — whose own photograph could not be used here. J. Murdoch, Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, BAE 9th Annual Report (1892), fig. 377 — via archive.org Public domain Image source

Imigluktaaq English

Source term: Bull Roarer

Imigluktaaq: Iñupiaq name paired by the Burke Museum with 'Bull Roarer'; no gloss is supplied by the object record.

At Ulġuniq, the Iñupiaq name for Wainwright, life moves between the Chukchi Sea and the tundra. Families hunt bowhead whales and caribou, while seasonal camps follow waterfowl and fish; a successful whale is shared through the community and celebrated at Nalukataq. The imigluktaaq packs its roar into a blade only six inches long—cut from baleen rather than wood and swung from a single cord. At Point Barrow, a hundred miles up the coast, John Murdoch knew this instrument as "purely a child's toy"; he never saw one in the hands of an adult.

Imigluktaaq, Bull Roarer

Burke Museum Arts & Cultures Collections Database, object 2004-92/84.
Object
Six-by-one-and-a-half-inch baleen blade with a single attachment point and cord; Burke Museum 2004-92/84.
Function
A child's toy on the North Slope: at Point Barrow Murdoch found the imigluktaaq "purely a child's toy... I never saw one in the hands of an adult" (Murdoch 1892).
Map confidence
high - Wainwright community anchor named in the Burke culture field, not an exact collection location.
Source location
Burke object 2004-92/84

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