NAMER-009 - museum specimen
Mesa Grande Diegueño, San Diego County, California
United States - California - San Diego County - Mesa Grande Reservation - North America
Function not recorded
Source term: Bullroarer (Image withheld)
A bullroarer made by the Mesa Grande Diegueño of the Mesa Grande Reservation, on the high plateau of northern San Diego County, California, held by the National Museum of the American Indian as catalog NMAI_70779. The museum withholds the photograph of the object as culturally sensitive, so the surviving record names the people, the place, and the object class but shows nothing of the thing itself. Among the Diegueño the bullroarer was sounded as a signal for assembling the people, and the shamans used it as a curative instrument. What this particular specimen was made to do, and who was permitted to hear it, the catalog does not say.
In North America, the bull-roarer has curative properties among the shamans of the Diegueño, Mono, Navaho, Tonto Apache, Yokuts, Pomo, and Papago; formerly this was also true of the Tanaina.
Penn Museum Bulletin, "Old World Overtones in the New World" (penn.museum/sites/bulletin/3526)
- Object
- NMAI object NMAI_70779, a Mesa Grande Diegueño bullroarer from the Mesa Grande Reservation with image withheld.
- Function
- No use is recorded for this specimen, and the museum withholds its image. Among the Diegueño more broadly, the bullroarer served as a signal for assembling the people, and shamans treated it as a curative instrument.
- Map confidence
- high - Representative Mesa Grande Reservation public community anchor.
- Source location
- NMAI_70779