The Bullroarer Atlas

NAMER-011 - museum specimen

Northern Paiute, Utah

United States - Utah - North America - Great Basin-Southwest

Sacred / spirit

A long, flat wooden slat, gently tapered and pierced near one end for a knotted cord — a Pitt Rivers Museum piece standing in for the Southwest...
Representative image. A long, flat wooden slat, gently tapered and pierced near one end for a knotted cord — a Pitt Rivers Museum piece standing in for the Southwest bull-roarer type. The Northern Paiute charm from Utah described here, a red-pigmented, serrated paddle, has not been photographed. © Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford (acc. 1917.53.465) Image source

Source term: Toy and charm to drive away evil spirits; bullroarer

A Northern Paiute bullroarer from Utah that Harvard's Peabody Museum records as two things at once: a child's toy and a charm to drive away evil spirits. It is a worked wooden handle with a red-pigmented, serrated paddle tied on by a twisted cord, about seventeen centimetres long, and the catalog adds that it may be connected with the Bear Dance. The botanist Edward Palmer collected it around 1875; the museum keeps the object's image restricted. Beyond the double use and the possible dance, nothing of how it was sounded was set down.

Object
Bullroarer: a worked wood handle with a red-pigmented, serrated paddle attached by a twisted cord; overall 16.6 x 3.5 x 0.7 cm. Wood, vegetable fibre, and pigment.
Function
Recorded as both a child's toy and a charm to drive away evil spirits; the catalog notes it is possibly related to the Bear Dance.
Map confidence
medium - Utah state-level representative anchor; the catalog gives the people (Northern Paiute) and the state but no exact locality.
Source location
Peabody Museum object 76-20-10/9421

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