The Bullroarer Atlas

NGUINEA-002 - ethnographic attestation

Kimam (Kolepom / Frederik-Hendrik Island)

Indonesia - Frederik-Hendrik Island (Pulau Yos Sudarso - Kolepom), south coast - Oceania - New Guinea

Restricted

A dark wooden blade with a forked.
Representative — not this record’s object. · A dark wooden blade with a forked. · CC BY 4.0 Image source

Jet / Wèwi; Kuriowa (Wanggambi)

Jet: both the mythical white-skinned figure and the Ndom/Kimam name for the bull-roarer itself in Serpenti's account. Kuriowa: the Wanggambi name for the blade itself — about 25 cm by 2-3 cm — in Boelaars's village narrative, where Wewi is the spirit, the game, and the voice in the bullroarer.

Etymology. Among the Ndom-speaking Kimam of Kolepom the bullroarer is called Jet, which is at the same time the name of a mythical being: a white-skinned, hugely bearded 'superman' who lives underground, is given offerings of food that he swallows whole, and who during initiation is said to come and devour the boys. In the south-coast villages the same instrument and being are called Wèwi. (high confidence)

Every two or three years Wewi makes his round of the villages of Kolepom — from Wanggambi on to Kawe, Kladdar, Tor, and the rest — and the men and boys go out to meet him loaded with food, their bullroarers tied to sticks and swung in circles. At the cry 'Wewi is coming' the women scream, leap into the water, and smear themselves with clay. For three or four days the men feast with him; asked afterward what they did, they answer only: we kept him company, painted our faces, sang. Wewi once played this game with the women themselves, until a man watching from the bushes told the men everything — since then no woman may play it, see a bullroarer, or even hear one, lest maggots crawl from her rotting body. At Wanggambi the little blade, Kuriowa, also swings around the grave at funerals no woman may attend; and in the Ndom villages to the southwest the same instrument is Jet, revealed to terrified boys in initiation seclusion.

Luisteren ze toch, zien zij het toch, de maaien zullen uit hun verrotte lijven lopen van achteren en van voren.

If they listen anyway, if they see it anyway, the maggots will run out of their rotten bodies, from behind and in front.

Boelaars, Nieuw Guinea, uw mensen zijn wonderbaar (1953), p. 123
Object
Ndom/Kimam bull-roarer Jet, a plain whirled slat about 25 cm long and 3-4 cm wide, sounded by men during boys' isolation/initiation. At Wanggambi the blade, called Kuriowa (about 25 x 2-3 cm), was tied to a stick and swung in circles.
Function
Ndom-speaking Kimam initiation centred on the Jet bull-roarer: women and boys were meant to fear Jet, boys initially must not see the bull-roarers, and initiates were threatened with death if they told women the secret. At Wanggambi men met the spirit Wewi's village circuit swinging bullroarers tied to sticks, and swung the Kuriowa around the grave during funeral rites from which women were excluded.
Map confidence
high - approximate territory centroid (mining 2026)
Source location
Page references

pp. 169-171; local extraction during source-recovery pass; Boelaars 1953 pp. 122-124

View source Open this point on the interactive map