The Bullroarer Atlas

NAGPRA1998-001 - museum specimen

Five Gaan masks and their roarer

United States - San Carlos Apache Reservation, Arizona - North America - Southwest

Sacred / spirit

Representative—not this record’s object: painted Hopi wooden blade, British Museum
Representative — not this record’s object. · painted Hopi wooden blade, British Museum · CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Image source

Source term: bull roarer

On an August night in 1935, at a dance held among the San Carlos Apache to cure a shaman's wife, four Gaan came out with their bodies painted black, feather curtains over their faces. With them came the clown, whitened, hooded in grey, a whirlwind drawn on his chest and a bullroarer in his hands: at San Carlos he whirled it to announce the spirits. People there never spoke the Gaan's name, and to see the real ones was to fall sick. That same year the Laboratory of Anthropology in Santa Fe bought a whole San Carlos set from Grenville Goodwin: five Gaan masks of painted wood, cloth and feathers, nine painted wands, and one bullroarer of wood and leather.

If saw real gan got sick; hence never called name of gan.

Gifford, Culture Element Distributions: XII, Apache-Pueblo (1940), p. 182, note 2893 (San Carlos)
Object
Bullroarer of wood and leather, kept in one fifteen-piece set with five Gaan masks of painted wood, cloth and feathers and nine painted wooden wands, acquired on the San Carlos Apache Reservation before 1935 (Museum of Indian Arts and Culture / Laboratory of Anthropology, Santa Fe).
Function
Kept with Gaan masks and wands as one ceremonial set; at San Carlos the clown whirled the bullroarer to announce the masked Gaan dancers, then during the dance.
Source
National Park Service, Notice of Intent to Repatriate Cultural Items from Arizona in the Possession of the Museum of Indian Arts and Cultures/Laboratory of Anthropology, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, NM, Federal Register 63(114), 15 June 1998, pp. 32682-32683 (FR Doc. 98-15820): "five Apache gaan masks constructed of painted wood, cloth, and feathers…
Source location
Page references

FR 63:32682-32683; FR 61:21487 (ASM 85-40); Gifford 1940:152, 182

Source confidence
medium to high
Location note
San Carlos, the agency town, as anchor for "the San Carlos Apache Reservation" named in the notice; not a findspot. Sits beside the representative Bourke San Carlos anchor (BOURKE1892-002), a different attestation.

Regions: The Americas · American Southwest · North America

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