MUS2026-229 - museum specimen
Zuni Dick's two-piece bullroarer
United States - Pueblo - Southwest - North America
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bull-roarer
Cambridge accessioned it in 1924, from Louis Clarke, and wrote three sentences: a bull-roarer, made by a well known Indian, Zuni Dick; formed of two bits of wood, one attached to the other by string; used in all ceremonies by men. There is no photograph, no measurement, no Zuni name for it, and no account of any occasion on which it sounded. Named Indigenous makers are rare in museum registers of this era, and Zuni Dick's survives only in a collector's offhand phrasing. Who he was, and on whose word the museum called every ceremony his instrument's business, remains open.
Bull-roarer, made by a well known Indian, Zuni Dick. Formed of two bits of wood, one attached to the other by string. Used in all ceremonies by men
Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, register description, accession 1924.125
- Object
- Wood and string. The museum's whole description of the construction is "two bits of wood, one attached to the other by string" - a two-piece stick-and-blade rig rather than a single blade, though which element is the whirled blade and how the string is made off cannot be settled without a photograph. No measurements, no local term and no images are exposed on the record.
- Function
- Used in ceremonies by men, according to the museum register. The register does not name an occasion, rite, observer or source for its sweeping claim that the object was used in all ceremonies.
- Map confidence
- medium - Zuni regional anchor; the record's only place field is "USA; New Mexico" with a Zuni cultural affiliation, and no village, findspot or collecting point.
- Source location
Page references
Cambridge MAA accession 1924.125 (record 488142); MAA film ref. FM:83169