RAY1942-008 - ethnographic attestation
Coeur d'Alene bull-roarer
United States - Lake Coeur d'Alene, northern Idaho - North America - Plateau
Play / practical
Source term: bull-roarer
The Coeur d'Alene bullroarer was wooden, of cedar or else of deer rib, whirled from a cord held in the hand, and it was a child's toy. Against the weather it was given a flat no. That no is placed interestingly: northwest, the Kalispel also refused the weather use; northeast, over the mountains, the Kutenai claimed every weather power and called the Chinook by name. The boundary between a Plateau where the roarer works on the sky and a Plateau where it is a plaything runs somewhere across this ground, and the Coeur d'Alene answer is one of the two posts it hangs from.
- Object
- Recorded in two forms, a wooden blade of cedar and one of deer rib, whirled on a cord held in the hand; the handle was denied.
- Function
- A child's toy of cedar or deer rib, whirled from the hand; 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 Lake Coeur d'Alene, northern Idaho -- territory anchor.
- Toy / secular survival