The Bullroarer Atlas

NAEXP-001 - ethnographic attestation

Oglala Dakota (Pine Ridge) bull-roarer toy

United States - Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota - North America - Plains

Play / practical

Oglala tateka yuhmunpi from Pine Ridge, figured by Culin in 1907.
Oglala tateka yuhmunpi from Pine Ridge, figured by Culin in 1907. · Public domain Image source
Penn Museum 22127, an Oglala example, preserves the long whirling-stick assembly; Culin's primary figure shows the Oglala bullroarer form.
Penn Museum 22127, an Oglala example, preserves the long whirling-stick assembly; Culin's primary figure shows the Oglala bullroarer form. Image source

tateka juihmunpi English

Source term: bull-roarer

The name Meeker recorded among the Oglala for the bull-roarer slat; Culin renders it tateka yuhmunpi.

At Pine Ridge the collector Louis L. Meeker found a thin flat rectangular slat of wood tied by a thirty-six-inch thong to the end of a long stick, and recorded it as a boy's plaything that the Oglala called tateka yuhmunpi — the kind of bull-roarer a child whirls overhead to make a whizzing roar. Meeker gave it to the Free Museum of Science and Art at the University of Pennsylvania in 1900, and Stewart Culin figured it as number 22127 in his 1907 survey of Native games. Culin opened his bull-roarer section by calling the toy form "presumably borrowed from the implement used in religious rites" of the Hopi, Zuñi, Navaho, Apache, and other tribes, but for this Oglala specimen he recorded only the plaything and its name.

This is described by the collector, Mr Louis L. Meeker, as a boy's plaything, under the name of tateka yuhmunpi.

Culin 1907, Games of the North American Indians (BAE 24th Annual Report):750
Object
Thin flat rectangular wood, 1.5 x 5.5 in., on a 36-in. thong tied to a 31-in. stick (Free Museum of Science and Art, Univ. Pennsylvania, no. 22127).
Function
Boy's plaything; Culin frames the bull-roarer toy as 'presumably borrowed from the implement used in religious rites'.
Map confidence
medium_high - Pine Ridge Reservation centroid, South Dakota; representative anchor, not an exact collection site.
Source location
Page references

p. 750; fig. 1008

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