NAMER-015 - ethnographic attestation
Chemehuevi (Southern Paiute)
United States - Eastern Mojave Desert and Chemehuevi Valley along the lower Colorado River (southeastern California - western Arizona) - North America
Weather / fertility magic
Among the Chemehuevi of the eastern Mojave Desert and the Chemehuevi Valley of the lower Colorado River, the bullroarer came in two registers. Plain wooden slats were whirled by children as toys; a second form, cut from mountain-sheep horn and notched along its edge, was swung for rain-making, to call down water on the desert. The instrument belonged to a broader Great Basin world of "sheep dreamers" - hunt-and-rain shamans whose visions ran to bighorn, rain, and the bullroarer itself. The detail comes from Isabel Kelly's 1936 fieldwork on Chemehuevi shamanism, where the contrast between the toy of softwood and the rain-charm of horn is stated plainly.
wooden bull-roarers were used as toys, while those of mountain sheep horn (notched) were for rain-making (Kelly, 1936, p. 138)
A. B. Elsasser, "Archaeological Evidence of Shamanism in California and Nevada," UCAS Reports (kas024-005), p. 38, quoting Kelly 1936:138.
- Object
- Two forms of bullroarer are reported: plain wooden slats whirled by children as toys, and notched slats of mountain-sheep horn whirled for rain-making.
- Function
- Plain wooden bullroarers were children's toys; notched mountain-sheep-horn bullroarers were whirled for rain-making.
- Map confidence
- high - approximate territory centroid (eastern Mojave Desert / Chemehuevi Valley anchor on the lower Colorado River)
- Source location
Page references
Kelly 1936:138, quoted verbatim in Elsasser, UCAS Reports kas024-005, p. 38 (paragraph on the Chemehuevi of the Mojave Desert)
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival