The Bullroarer Atlas

NA-S1952-007 - secondary catalog

Diegueno / Kumeyaay

United States - California - Baja borderlands - North America

Restricted

A pale, worm-pitted wooden slat, faceted to a blunt point at one end and squared at the other where a heavy cord passes through the drilled...
Representative image. A pale, worm-pitted wooden slat, faceted to a blunt point at one end and squared at the other where a heavy cord passes through the drilled hole, faint reddish diagonals crossing its face in a rough zigzag - part of the same Oslo Hopi set, used here for lack of a photograph of the Diegueño/Kumeyaay object. Kulturhistorisk museum, Universitetet i Oslo (Etnografisk) (UEM29633/g) CC BY-SA Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Among the Diegueño (Kumeyaay) of the San Diego backcountry the bull-roarer was, in T. T. Waterman's words, "a smooth, narrow piece of greasewood about three feet long, fastened end on to a short twisted rope of milkweed fibre"; swung rapidly around the head it gave out a deep booming or roaring sound. Its work was to gather people: down to recent years before Waterman wrote in 1910, it was sounded three times as the signal for an assembly for ceremonial purposes. The instrument also appears in the wider survey record of Southern California as a curing implement, listed as having curative properties among the shamans of the Diegueño alongside the Mono, Yokuts, Pomo, and others, though Waterman himself records only the summoning function.

The rhombus or bull-roarer was used by the Diegueno until recent years. It consists of a smooth, narrow piece of greasewood about three feet long, fastened end on to a short twisted rope of milkweed fibre. When swung rapidly around the head of the performer it gives out a deep booming or roaring sound. This instrument was formerly sounded three times as the signal for an assembly for ceremonial purposes.

Waterman 1910, The Religious Practices of the Diegueño Indians, p. 282
Function
Instrument used as assembly signal; also listed with shamanic curative properties
Map confidence
medium - regional_anchor: Representative Kumeyaay/Southern California anchor; exact subgroup/source remains broad in Seder
Source location
51-54

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