No. SA-Z1953-025
Itonama bullroarer
Eastern Bolivia · South America
Function not recorded
Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer
Among the Itonama of the eastern Bolivian lowlands the bullroarer was a narrow wooden blade some thirty centimetres long, pierced at one end for a long cord. Erland Nordenskiöld carried examples out of their country, but what its sound was for is lost. Among neighboring northeastern Bolivian peoples the bullroarer turns up as a children's toy — a plaything for the Chacobo, Yuracaré, and Guarayu, and known to the Chimane as kakabadje — but for the Itonama even that much is unknown.
The bull-roarer exists also among the Itonama, but Nordenskiõld (1919, p. 162) has said nothing about its meaning.
Zerries 1953:288 (The Bull-roarer among South American Indians)
Particulars
- Object
- Narrow rectangular wooden blade, 30 cm long, pierced at one end for a long cord.
Source
Erland Nordenskiöld, An Ethno-Geographical Analysis of the Material Culture of Two Indian Tribes in the Gran Chaco (Comparative Ethnographical Studies 1, Göteborg, 1919), p. 162; Otto Zerries, 'The Bull-roarer among South American Indians,' Revista do Museu Paulista n.s. 7 (1953), pp. 288 and 302