No. NAMER-010
Inyo County denticulated toy bullroarer
United States · California · Inyo County · North America
Play / practical
Source term: Denticulated bull roarer used as a toy
A toy: a bullroarer with a denticulated blade, its edge cut into teeth, made in 1935 by Wilbur Patterson, a Shoshoni of Saline Valley in the high desert of eastern California, for Harvard's Peabody Museum. Across the Inyo Mountains the Owens Valley Paiute gave their small boys the same plaything: a board on a string, whirled from a stick handle.
A small, round stick, 18 inches long, serves as handle; a 2-foot string fastened to a notch in one end of it passes through a hole in a board 12 by 1 by 1/4 inch, which is swung. A small boy's toy. T.S. and G.C. remember playing with them.
Julian H. Steward, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, UCPAAE 33(3) (1933), p. 278.
Particulars
- Object
- A serrated wooden oval, 8.6 by 5.4 cm, tied with buckskin to a carved wooden handle.
- Function
- Used only as a boy’s toy.
Sources
- Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, object 35-78-10/4991, details/29026 View
- Julian H. Steward, Ethnography of the Owens Valley Paiute, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 33(3) (1933), p. 278