The Bullroarer Atlas

NAMER-012 - museum specimen

Northern Pomo black bullroarer made by Sam Tony, 1906

United States - Northern Pomo territory, upper Russian River drainage, Mendocino County, California - North America

Restricted

Pomo bullroarer from Coyote Valley Rancheria, with a dark blade and cordage coil.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Pomo bullroarer from Coyote Valley Rancheria, with a dark blade and cordage coil. Image source

ma-dim / pa-doch

Source term: bull roarer

The two Pomo names recorded on the museum object record for this instrument; the museum gives them without translation. The form pa-doch echoes the padok of the Eastern Pomo kalimatoto padok, the "doll of Thunderman" recorded by Loeb for the Pomo bullroarer.

A black-painted wooden slat almost three-quarters of a metre long, made by Sam Tony, a Northern Pomo man, and carried east on Stewart Culin's 1906 Brooklyn Museum expedition through California. The museum catalogues it as a Large Black Bull Roarer and records its two Pomo names, ma-dim and pa-doch, but no use; the entry preserves a maker and a date and little else. Among the inland Pomo such slats were the secret gear of the guya, the ghost society: kept concealed in moss between ceremonies, their nature unknown to women and children, their roar passed off on outsiders as the voice of the dead — and later, carried into the Kuksu cult's Thunder ceremony, as the voice of Thunder man, the Eastern Pomo calling the instrument kalimatoto padok, the doll of Thunderman. A Northern Pomo initiate remembered looking at the whirling bull roarers and being told it was the voice of Thunder God, and that he would die if he spoke of what he saw to the non-initiated. The same padok, holding thunder's power, was whirled to cure those whom thunder had frightened. Pomo myth kept the bullroarer's Thunder-voice close to another great being: Bagil, the water-serpent whose brother was the cannibal dragon Gilak, was invoked in the same breath as Thunder man in war-prayer, and the rainbow itself was called the breath of the water-snake Bagila (Loeb, Pomo Folkways, 1926: pp.201, 302, 303, 316-317).

These instruments, when not in use, were always kept carefully concealed in moss. The nature of the padok was unknown to women and children. When the padok were heard at the time of the ghost dance the outsiders were told that it was the voice of the dead.

E. M. Loeb, Pomo Folkways (1926), p. 341.
Object
A long, flat, black-painted wooden slat, 72.5 cm long and 9.5 cm wide, of wood and pigment, catalogued by the Brooklyn Museum as a musical instrument. The narrow elongated blade proportions are those of a whirled bullroarer rather than a spun buzzer.
Function
Wielded in the secret guya (ghost) ceremony and, carried into the Kuksu cult, in the Thunder ceremony, where its roar was the voice of Thunder man; the padok were kept concealed in moss, their nature unknown to women and children, and initiates were warned they would die if they told the non-initiated what they had seen. It was also a powerful curing agent against thunder-fright and other sickness. Documented for the inland Pomo, Northern Pomo included; no use is recorded for this specimen itself.
Map confidence
medium - Representative anchor in Northern Pomo territory on the upper Russian River near Ukiah / Sherwood Valley, Mendocino County; the museum record names only the maker's people (Northern Pomo) and the 1906 California expedition, not a finer collection locality.
Source location
Accession 06.331.8127

View source Open this point on the interactive map