PARSONS1939-001 - ethnographic attestation
Laguna (Kawaik) Pueblo / Keresan
United States - Laguna (Kawaik) Pueblo - Cibola County - New Mexico - North America - Southwest
Weather / fertility magic
oyamamuts English / Keres name
Source term: rhombus (bull-roarer or whizzer)
oyamamuts: the Keres name Parsons records for the rhombus (1939:377 fn); no lexical gloss recovered — absent from Boas's Keresan Texts. mu'sh: Laguna Keres for yucca-root suds (Parsons, JAF 31, 1918, fn).
Laguna stands alone among the Keres pueblos: when Elsie Clews Parsons drew up her great synthesis of Pueblo religion, this was the only Keresan town where the whizzer had ever been noted — and almost the only place east of the mesas, for as she put it, the instrument 'has not been noted among other Keres, or in recent years anywhere in the East.' Here it was swung to produce storm, as at Hopi. And in the rain ceremonial it was given a second, wetter office: dipped into the medicine bowl to stir up the yucca-root suds the Laguna call mu'sh, then wielded as an aspergill, scattering the drops. Parsons cites no source for any of it; she had worked Laguna herself since 1917, and the oyamamuts entered her synthesis straight from the field.
It is used to stir suds in rain ceremonial (Laguna), and serves as an aspergill.
Parsons 1939, I:378
- Function
- Swung to produce storm; in rain ceremonial used to stir the yucca-root suds and to serve as an aspergill (Parsons 1939:377-378).
- Map confidence
- high - Old Laguna (Kawaik) village anchor; not a documented performance site.
- Source location
Page references
printed pp. 377-378 (Vol. I, leaves 411-412)
- Weather magic