SEDER1952-OW-002 - secondary catalog
Umatilla bone bullroarer
United States - Columbia Plateau, Oregon - North America
Weather / fertility magic
On the Columbia Plateau the Umatilla stood in the small company of North American peoples who made their bullroarer from bone — theirs cut from bone or a deer rib rather than wood. Across most of the continent the instrument was cedar or pine; only a scatter of peoples, the Achomawi and Arapaho among them, turned the skeleton of the hunt into the sound itself.
...bone or deer rib was found among the Achomawi, Arapaho, Mono, Panamint, Kittitas, and Umatilla.
Seder, 'Old World Overtones in the New World', University Museum Bulletin 16.4 (1952), p. 54
- Object
- Cut from bone or a deer rib rather than wood (Seder's continental materials survey).
- Function
- A plaything that also worked on the weather. Ray's Umatilla informant marked it a child's toy and an instrument that influences the weather in the same breath, and qualified it for bringing rain.
- Map confidence
- high - Umatilla Reservation / Pendleton area anchor.
- Source location
Page references
pp. 51, 54; Ray 1942 printed p. 184 (els. 4094-4103)
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival