No. OLSON1967-001
Tlingit hunkaya'na toy bullroarer
United States · Southeast Alaska · North America · Northwest Coast
Play / practical
hunkaya'na
hunkaya'na — 'north wind sound.'
On the Northwest Coast, where carved whistles did the spirits' talking, the Tlingit bull-roarer stayed in the hands of children. Hunkaya'na, they called it — the north wind's sound — and Olson, recording the word, drew the boundary in the same breath: in the Lukana dances the whistles were the voices of the spirits, and no bull-roarer was used. A spirit voice nearly everywhere else, here the whirring blade was only weather, and only play.
Particulars
- Function
- A toy — and explicitly nothing more: in the Lukana society dances the whistles were the voices of the spirits, and 'there was no bull-roarer used.'
Source
R. L. Olson, Social Structure and Social Life of the Tlingit in Alaska (Anthropological Records 26, 1967), p. 121 and n. 238