NA-S1952-015 - secondary catalog
Yokuts
United States - 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 informants set down all three uses in 1937.
among the Mattole, Mono, Pomo, and Yokuts, it is used by the shaman in curing
Seder 1952, "Old World Overtones in the New World," Univ. of Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, on the channel clapper (pp. 51-54)
- Object
- Bullroarer listed with shamanic curative properties
- Map confidence
- medium - regional_anchor: Representative San Joaquin Valley anchor; exact source and subgroup remain broad in Seder
- Source location
- 51-54