The Bullroarer Atlas

NA-S1952-014 - secondary catalog

Tonto Apache

United States - Southwest - North America

Sacred / spirit

Bourke's Fig. 431, two Apache bullroarers side by side: the left carved with a stacked figure, zigzag bands and triangle borders, the right...
Representative image. Bourke's Fig. 431, two Apache bullroarers side by side: the left carved with a stacked figure, zigzag bands and triangle borders, the right left plain to show its natural wood grain, both looped with long twisted cords; shown for the Apache form generally, not the Tonto Apache curing practice documented here. J. W. Powell / J. G. Bourke (1892), Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology Public domain Image source

Source term: bullroarer

Among the Apache, the bullroarer was cut by the medicine-men from pine or fir that had been struck by lightning on the mountain tops — such wood, Captain John G. Bourke recorded, "is held in the highest estimation among them, and is used for the manufacture of amulets of especial efficacy." Bourke, who saw the instrument in the 1880s, gave its name as tzi-ditindi, "the sounding wood," and was told that the lines painted on its front were the entrails of the wind god and those on the rear his hair, of several colors, representing the lightning. Twirled rapidly about the head and from front to rear, it imitated the sound of a gust of rain-laden wind; by making that sound, one medicine-man explained, "they compelled the wind and rain to come to the aid of the crops." Among the Tonto Apache, Bourke noted, the brother of the head chief Cha-ut-lip-un was himself the great medicine-man.

The rhombus of the Apache was made by the medicine-men from wood, generally pine or fir, which had been struck by lightning on the mountain tops.

Bourke 1892, The Medicine-Men of the Apache (Ninth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology), pp. 476-477
Map confidence
medium - regional_anchor: Representative central Arizona anchor; exact source and locality remain broad in Seder
Source location
51-54

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