SA-Z1953-003 - secondary catalog
Eastern Timbira - Canella and Chakamekra
Eastern Brazil - South America
Restricted
Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer
pikwek — the Ramkokamekra-Canella name for the bull-roarer; among the now-extinct Chakamekra it carried a special term, pepyetokare, "insignia of the pepye," marking it as proper to the second initiation phase.
Among the Ramkokamekra (Canella) and the now-extinct Chakamekra of eastern Brazil, the bullroarer belonged to the second phase of male initiation, the pepyê. After nightfall and before daybreak the class leader was to swing the instrument, the booming alarm passed from cell to cell so that no secluded novice had fallen asleep; a sleeper would be punished by the commandant. When Curt Nimuendaju took part in the pepyê festival of 1933, he found the signal given only now and then, and at first did not understand the sound he occasionally heard. He recorded one exchange between two novices: "Did you hear my bull-roarer this noon?" "Yes!" "I thought you were asleep." Outside this rite the object was otherwise rare, turning up mainly as a children's toy. That its modest role was a decline from something larger is suggested by the Chakamekra, whose specimens were considerably larger and more carefully made than the surviving Ramkokamekra examples, and who had a special term, pepyetokarê, marking it as insignia of the pepyê.
After nightfall and before daybreak the class leader should swing the instrument, the alarm being passed on from cell to cell to make sure that its inmate has not fallen asleep, in which case the commandant would punish him.
Nimuendaju 1946 (The Eastern Timbira, trans. Lowie):186
- Function
- Second phase male initiation; class leader sounds bullroarer at night; larger Chakamekra specimens imply stronger former role
- Map confidence
- medium_high - regional_anchor: Representative Canella/Eastern Timbira coordinate; women-taboo status not extracted here
- Source location
- Nimuendaju 1946:186 (primary); Zerries 1953:279-280, 293-294 (intermediary)
- Initiation rite
- Toy / secular survival