The Bullroarer Atlas

NAMER-018 - ethnographic attestation

Kato (Cahto)

United States - Cahto Valley and Long Valley, head of the South Fork of the Eel River, near Laytonville and Branscomb, Mendocino County, northern California - North America

Restricted

Bourke's engraving of two Apache rhombi: rectangular wooden blades carved with chevron and wavy-line patterns, each hung from a long plaited...
Representative image. Bourke's engraving of two Apache rhombi: rectangular wooden blades carved with chevron and wavy-line patterns, each hung from a long plaited cord tied to a small toggle. Shown for the general Apachean form; the telbut sounded inside the Kato dance house during the boys' winter initiation has no picture of its own. J. W. Powell / J. G. Bourke (1892) Public domain Image source

telbut Athabascan (Kato/Cahto)

Among the Kato (Cahto), the southernmost Athabascan people of the California coast, every boy of about twelve was shut into the earth-covered dance house for the whole winter. Starved, blackened, and laid in a row under straw until they grew weak "like dead people" -- the chief turning the row over each morning -- the novices were visited each night by men impersonating the ghosts of the dead, who came down from the hills. After the ghosts entered, bullroarers were whirled inside the house. To the women, who were barred from the rite and told nothing of it, the roaring was the voice of the ghosts themselves. The ethnographer Edwin Loeb recorded the ceremony from Kato informants near Laytonville, at the head of the South Fork of the Eel River.

After the ghosts had entered, the bullroarers were sounded. The women at home believed that the bullroarers were the voices of the ghosts.

Loeb, "The Western Kuksu Cult," UC-PAAE 33(1):27, 1932 (The Kato).
Object
Whirled bullroarers sounded inside the earth-covered dance house during the Kato boys' winter initiation school (keate).
Function
Whirled in the boys' winter initiation school so that the excluded women would believe the roar was the voices of the ghost-impersonators.
Map confidence
high - approximate territory centroid (Cahto Valley / Long Valley, head of South Fork Eel River, anchored near Laytonville, Mendocino County)
Source location
p.27 (The Kato, Tribal Initiation / boys' winter school)

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