RAY1942-001 - ethnographic attestation
Kittitas
United States - Kittitas Valley, Yakima River, central Washington - North America - Plateau
Weather / fertility magic
Source term: bull-roarer
The Kittitas bullroarer was cedar, sometimes deer rib, whirled on a cord held in the bare hand. It was a child's toy. It influenced the weather. It called the Chinook, the warm wind that comes in off the Pacific and takes the winter apart, and it brought rain. And it was sounded by children at the request of their elders — the entry that undoes the others: the thing was in a child's hands, but the decision to sound it was not the child's to make.
- Object
- A wooden blade, of deer rib, whirled on a cord held in the hand.
- Function
- A child's toy that is also a weather instrument: it calls the Chinook, the warm wind, and brings rain, and children sound it at the request of their elders.
- Map confidence
- medium - Kittitas Valley, central Washington -- territory anchor, not a findspot.
- Source location
- printed p. 184, elements 4094-4103
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival