The Bullroarer Atlas

NAEXP-003 - ethnographic attestation

Omaha / Nebraska

United States - Nebraska (Omaha territory) - North America - Plains

Play / practical

A slender wooden stick with a coiled cord, photographed with its Pitt Rivers catalog card 1903.129.4.1 - a Zuni piece shown for the general...
Representative image. A slender wooden stick with a coiled cord, photographed with its Pitt Rivers catalog card 1903.129.4.1 - a Zuni piece shown for the general Southwest form, not the six-inch notched stick fastened to a whip that Omaha boys swung as gahoota. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1903.129.4.1) Image source

gahoota English

Source term: bull-roarer

gahoota: the Omaha name La Flesche gave Culin for the boys' whip-mounted bull-roarer; its meaning was already lost to him when he recorded it.

Among the Omaha of Nebraska the bull-roarer was a boys' plaything called gahoota: a stick six inches long, notched at one end and fastened to the end of a whip. It was described to Stewart Culin by Francis La Flesche, himself an Omaha man and the first professional Native American ethnologist, who said he did not know what the name meant. Culin grouped it with the bull-roarers of the Oglala and Teton Dakota and took the children's toy to be, in his word, presumably borrowed from the implement used ceremonially by the Hopi, Zuñi, Navaho, and Apache.

Mr Francis La Flesche described the bull-roarer, as used by Omaha boys as a plaything, under the name of gahoota. It is made of a stick, 6 inches long, with a notch cut at one end, and fastened to the end of a whip. Mr La Flesche did not know the meaning of the name.

Culin 1907, Games of the North American Indians (BAE 24th Annual Report):750
Object
Stick 6 in. long with a notch at one end, fastened to the end of a whip; swung by boys.
Function
Boys' plaything described by Francis La Flesche (himself Omaha); Culin frames the toy as derived from ceremonial use.
Map confidence
medium_high - Macy, Nebraska (Omaha Reservation headquarters town); representative community anchor — Culin gives only 'Nebraska'.
Source location
p. 750

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