SA-Z1953-021 - ethnographic attestation
Kashibo
Northeastern Peru - South America
Restricted
taī German / English extraction
Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer
taī = Kashibo name for the bull-roarer; kaná-wanög = "thunder voice", what children are told the sound is; maya = hollow whirring stick; tsinkati = solid whirring stick (both stick-whirrers distinct from the bull-roarer proper); otanõ = the man disguised as a dead man to frighten children.
Among the Kashibo of northeastern Peru the bull-roarer, called taī, was a toy for the half-grown children and was whirled at the little ones to frighten them when they were naughty; to the children it was named as the voice of thunder, kaná-wanög, and it was the father who carved it. Günter Tessmann, whose 1930 fieldwork is the source here, recorded two further buzzing sticks kept alongside it — the hollow maya and the solid tsinkati, the latter likewise swung to scare children — and, in the same breath, a man called otanõ who veiled himself in palm leaves with a calabash on his head to play a dead man at the naughty children. In that pairing of roaring wood and dead-man bogey Otto Zerries saw the wreck of an older initiation, in which bush-spirits had been impersonated by mask and roaring wood.
Eins ist das auch als Spiel verwendete Schwirrholz = taī. Ein spitz zulaufendes Stück Holz ist an einer Schnur und diese an einem Stock befestigt. Den Kindern wird es auch als kaná-wanög = Donnerstimme(?) hingestellt. Der Vater fertigt es an.
One of them is the bullroarer, taī, also used as a game. A tapering piece of wood is fastened to a cord, and the cord to a stick. To the children it is presented as kaná-wanög — the voice of thunder(?). The father makes it.
Tessmann 1930:152 (Kaschibo, rubric 71)
- Function
- Toy and child-frightening use; presented to children as the voice of thunder (kaná-wanög); Zerries reads the deceased-impersonator paired with the roarer as the survival of an older initiation.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - regional_anchor: Survival row; exact ritual status uncertain.
- Source location
- Tessmann 1930:152 (Schwirrholz "taī" + thunder-voice "kaná-wanög"); 139 (maya/tsinkati whirring sticks; Taf. 16 Fig. 2 = tsinkati); 147 ("Keine Kultfeste. ... Keine Masken."); German original read directly 2026-07-12 — via Zerries 1953:287, 297
- Spirit voice
- Initiation rite
- Weather / fertility magic
- Toy / secular survival