Chocó toy and spirit-protection bullroarer

Source term: Schwirrgerät / Schwirrholz / bullroarer

Among the Chocó of the Colombian and Panamanian rainforests the bull-roarer was chiefly a children's toy, roughly made and, in recent years, often painted with aniline dyes. Henry Wassén, working among the Noanamá in the 1930s, recorded its one magical use: an Indian who had to cross the forest alone at night, passing from one place to another, might carry a bull-roarer painted red with bija to frighten away evil spirits. Erland Nordenskiöld, on the Río Sambú, found painted wooden objects hung in the medicine men's huts during certain magical rites — figures of snakes, turtles, iguanas, eagles, and butterflies, some of them oval and giving the impression of bull-roarers, though the genuine whirled ones seemed to serve only as playthings. One Chocó bull-roarer he collected on the Sambú stood about sixteen centimeters high.

The bull-roarer is of course chiefly a toy, but I was told of one occasion where its use corresponds with its magical character among other tribes.

Wassén 1935:65-66 (Notes on Southern Groups of Choco Indians in Colombia), transcribed verbatim in Zerries 1953:290-291

Particulars

Function

Mostly a children's toy; sometimes carried through the forest at night, painted red with bija, to frighten evil spirits.