The Bullroarer Atlas

SA-Z1953-009 - secondary catalog

Mehinaku upper-Xingu clubhouse bullroarer

Central Brazil - South America

Restricted

Mehinakú Schwirrholz suspended in the men's house, Upper Xingu, collected 1887 — von den Steinen (1894) Fig. 121.
Mehinakú Schwirrholz suspended in the men's house, Upper Xingu, collected 1887 — von den Steinen (1894) Fig. 121. · Public domain Image source
A modern Matapu board in fish form — red fish-mouth, the cord hole in its jaw — photographed during Braida's fieldwork.
A modern Matapu board in fish form — red fish-mouth, the cord hole in its jaw — photographed during Braida's fieldwork. Image source

matahu / matapu German / English extraction

Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer

matahu (var. matapu): the Mehinaku and Nahuqua name for the bullroarer; among the Mehinaku, Matapu is also the spirit of the hummer.

When Karl von den Steinen reached the Mehinaku on the upper Xingu during his second Brazilian expedition of 1887-88, he stepped into their flute-house and found, hung along a ladder-like rack beside twenty masks and a few straw pendants, a single bullroarer: sixty centimeters long, painted black and red, and shaped like a sword-blade. The Mehinaku and the neighboring Nahuqua called it matahu, or matapu; the Nahuqua instruments were carved in the shape of a fish and ornamented with the zigzag that stands for a snake. Von den Steinen noticed that no idea of secrecy clung to the thing -- the masks and the bullroarer alike were handed over to him without hesitation, and among the Nahuqua the men whirled it openly on the village square without driving the women away -- so that here, unlike on the Australian or New Guinea pattern, it was not a weapon hidden from the women. Among the upriver Bakairi the same kind of board went by yelo, their word for thunder, named (he was told) for its droning hum; and in later Mehinaku accounts the word matapu also names the spirit of the hummer, focus of a three-day ritual in which villagers make humming-boards, hang them in the men's house, and keep them at a distance from the women. Braida, living with the Mehinaku in the 2000s, recorded the rite the hanging board belonged to: at the pequi festival two men whirl the zunidores at once, a paired couple of spirit-fish whose wind-roar summons the Matapu, the river-master spirit. The boards are painted as named fish — walaku the piau, alapayakumã the bicuda, yuetsiniri the voadeira, puitxa the matrixã. Women may not see them being made, on pain of sudden death or wasting illness, and only when the boards stop turning do they hand over the roasted fish, mingau and beiju for the spirits' feast.

an dessen senkrecht stehenden, angebundenen Sprossen zwanzig Masken, einige Strohbehaenge und ein 60 cm langes, schwarz und rot bemaltes Schwirrholz von der Form einer Schwertklinge herabhingen.

from its upright, lashed-on rungs hung twenty masks, a few straw pendants, and a 60-centimeter-long bullroarer, painted black and red, in the shape of a sword-blade.

von den Steinen 1894:104
Function
Sacred Matapu instrument of the pequi festival: whirled in pairs to summon the river-spirit whose voice it is; its making is hidden from women on pain of sudden death or grave illness. Von den Steinen saw one hanging openly with the caiman masks in the 1887 men's house.
Map confidence
medium_high - regional_anchor: Representative upper-Xingu coordinate; exact ritual role uncertain.
Source location
Page references

v.d. Steinen 1894:104 (men's-house bullroarer, eyewitness); 327 (matahu/matapu, fish/snake form, Tafel 21-22); 81 (Bakairi yelo = thunder)

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