RAY1942-005 - ethnographic attestation
Shuswap bull-roarer
Canada - Fraser River - Soda Creek, central British Columbia - North America - Plateau
Play / practical
Source term: bull-roarer
The Shuswap bullroarer — wooden, of cedar, whirled from the hand — was a child's toy, and that is where it stopped: the weather use was denied outright. The same answer comes back from the Lillooet and the Lower Thompson downriver, so the whole northern end of the Plateau holds the instrument as a plaything and nothing else, while three hundred miles south the Kittitas and Wenatchi were using it to call the warm wind. One instrument, one region, two entirely different jobs, and the seam runs somewhere in between.
- Object
- A wooden blade, of cedar, whirled on a cord held in the hand.
- Function
- A child's toy of cedar; the weather function is explicitly denied.
- Source
- Verner F. Ray, "Culture Element Distributions: XXII, Plateau," University of California Anthropological Records 8:2 (Berkeley, 1942), printed p. 184. The bullroarer block is elements 4094-4103 and Ray sub-divides the function, which is unusual: 4094 Bull-roarer; 4097 Deer rib; 4099 Child's toy; 4100 Influences the weather; 4101 "Calls" Chinook (warm) wind…
- Source location
- printed p. 184, elements 4094-4103
- Source confidence
- medium Soda Creek on the Fraser, central British Columbia -- the locality of Ray's. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Toy / secular survival