MUS2026-266 - museum specimen
Oraibi To-Wok-Kin-Pi blade
United States - Oraibi - Third Mesa, Arizona - North America - Southwest
Function not recorded
To-Wok-Kin-Pi
Source term: Bullroarer
To-Wok-Kin-Pi: the Hopi name for the bullroarer as written on this Oraibi object. Voth recorded the Oraibi form as towo'kingpiala; it appears as tovokìnpi at Walpi and tovolpi at Shipaulovi.
Two years after this blade left Oraibi, H. R. Voth published what a thing of that name does there in August. Coming down to the spring in the Summer Snake ceremony, the priest stopped short of the water, twirled the bullroarer and blew his eagle-bone whistle — announcing himself, he said, to the water deities: Balolookongwuu, the plumed water serpent, and the Clouds. Stewart Culin carried this one east in 1901 with its twisted fibre cord still through the tapered end, and the Hopi word went onto the card with it.
- Object
- Rectangular wooden blade tapering slightly to a perforated end, with a twisted fibre cord; 25.8 × 3.2 cm.
- Function
- Not recorded.
- Source
- Penn Museum 38702; Oraibi, Third Mesa, Arizona; Wanamaker Southwest Expedition/R. Stewart Culin, 1901; wood and fibre; 25.8 × 3.2 cm
- Source location
Page references
38702; object 285639
- Source confidence
- high Oraibi/Third Mesa, the exact Penn provenience.
- Snake-linked