NA-S1952-015 - ethnographic attestation
Wukchamni Yokuts (Sam Garfield; Taya'pnucau near Lemon Cove)
United States - Southern Sierra Nevada foothills - Lemon Cove - Tulare County, California - North America
Sacred / spirit
Source term: bullroarer
Spun between the palms like a firedrill and pressed point-first to an aching body, the whirled slat was made to draw the poison out — a curer's tool among the Wükchamni Yokuts of the Sierra foothills. The same instrument could kill: a sorcerer smeared it with poison and, whirling it, shot the sickness into a chosen victim. Men alone handled it, and in other hands its roar was said to raise a storm. Harold Driver's Wukchamni informant set down all three uses in 1937.
The bull-roarer was rotated in hands as in making fire and point applied to afflicted part of body. Supposed to extract poison.
Driver 1937, printed p. 126, note to item 1242
- Object
- Wooden bullroarer. Driver records palm-rotation in curing and whirling in harmful sorcery, but gives no dimensions or surviving object.
- Function
- Used to produce storms; in curing it was palm-rotated and pressed point-first to the afflicted body to extract poison; poison placed on it could be projected at someone by whirling the instrument.
- Map confidence
- high - Lemon Cove community anchor from Driver's informant biography; Garfield was raised at Taya'pnucau nearby. This is not a documented sounding site.
- Source location
- printed pp. 58-60, 85, 126; items 1233-1244
- Weather / fertility magic