The Bullroarer Atlas

SA-Z1953-002 - ethnographic attestation

Sherente

Eastern Brazil - South America

Restricted

Xerénte (Sherente) bull-roarer hipã-wave-wazdizé, Piabanha, Rio Tocantins, Brazil — a dark hardwood slat wound thickly with cord near the neck,...
Xerénte (Sherente) bull-roarer hipã-wave-wazdizé, Piabanha, Rio Tocantins, Brazil — a dark hardwood slat wound thickly with cord near the neck, the museum label carrying the same native term Zerries records for this entry. Världskulturmuseerna / Museum of World Culture, Gothenburg (1937.27.0146); collected by Curt Nimuendajú CC BY 4.0 Image source

hieparo-wawe-wazdize' Šerente (Akwẽ / Xerente; Jê family), eastern Brazil

howling of Hieparo-wawe

Etymology. The Šerente bull-roarer is the hieparo-wawe-wazdize, the "howling of Hieparo-wawe": named for the shaggy night-demon Hieparo-wawe, the personified planet Mars, whose voice it produces when whirled to summon him. (high confidence)

Among the Sherente (Xerente) of eastern Brazil, the whirling of the bullroarer was the voice of Hieparo-wawe, a night demon who personified the planet Mars and ran as the chief companion of Wairie, the anthropomorphized moon. Through Mars and the Seven Stars the moon sent its revelations to the sdakra moiety. Hieparo-wawe appeared only after dark, usually to a lone hunter at his stand: long-haired and shaggy, the lord of the will-o'-the-wisps. His visionaries painted the entire body black save the face, hands and feet, which were red, in the paint of the demon himself. A man who wanted to become a medicine-man or a good hunter sought him out during roughly six days of instruction, carrying a bullroarer kept in an elongated lidded calabash; this instrument was the hieparo-wawe-wazdize, the "howling of Hieparo-wawe." At an appointed spot in the woods he whirled it, and the demon came. Nimuendajú, whose 1942 monograph underlies the record, noted that Mars' pupils "are considered good doctors," singing at night to cure the sick. Small boys, meanwhile, kept buzzing boards (dawazdi) among their ordinary toys.

When his pupils, during their approximately six days' period of instruction, want to meet him in the woods, they carry with them a bull-roarer (hieparo-wawe-wazdize', "howling of Hieparo-wawe") in an elongated lidded calabash. At the appointed spot they whirl it, and forthwith the demon appears.

Nimuendaju 1942:89, quoted in Zerries 1953:280
Function
Small boys have buzzing-board toys; more serious bullroarer is the howling of Hieparo-wawe used by pupils seeking medicine-man or hunter power
Map confidence
medium - regional_anchor: Representative Tocantins/Xerente coordinate; medicine-man calling rather than full male-initiation bundle
Source location
89 (bullroarer); cf. 41, 85, 90

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