NAMER-009 - museum specimen
Mesa Grande Diegueño bullroarer (image withheld)
United States - California - San Diego County - Mesa Grande Reservation - North America
Sacred / spirit
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 — a smooth, narrow piece of greasewood on a short twisted rope of milkweed fibre, called air — was swung three times by one of the old men as the signal for the people to assemble, opening the Clothes-Burning mourning ceremony and the Whirling dance that followed; the shamans also 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.
Some time about the middle of the afternoon one of the old men swings the bull-roarer, air, three times. This is the signal for the people to assemble.
T. T. Waterman, The Religious Practices of the Diegueño Indians (1910), p. 308, on the afternoon preceding the Clothes-Burning ceremony.
- Object
- NMAI object NMAI_70779, a Mesa Grande Diegueño bullroarer from the Mesa Grande Reservation with image withheld.
- Function
- Sounded three times by one of the old men as the signal for the people to assemble for ceremonial purposes — Waterman records it opening the Clothes-Burning mourning ceremony, with the Whirling dance following; shamans of the Diegueño are also credited with using the bullroarer as a curative instrument. No use is recorded for this specimen itself, and the museum withholds its image.
- Map confidence
- high - Representative Mesa Grande Reservation public community anchor.
- Source location
- NMAI_70779