STEWART1941-004 - ethnographic attestation
Kuyui-dokado ('cui-ui eaters') Northern Paiute, Pyramid Lake
United States - Pyramid Lake and the lower Truckee River, western Nevada - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
wimo'to English
Source term: bull-roarer (wimo'to)
Wimo'to: Stewart's survey-wide Northern Paiute element heading for the bullroarer; the band name is from kuyui, the cui-ui sucker of Pyramid Lake.
At Pyramid Lake the wimo'to was a wooden whirrer — no horn version — swung by children and swung to bring the wind. Two brothers described it separately and agreed in every detail: toy and wind instrument both, the two jobs still joined, as they were everywhere at the western end of Northern Paiute country.
- Object
- A wooden whirrer; not described further.
- Function
- Swung both as a children's toy and to make the wind blow.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Nixon, on the lower Truckee at Pyramid Lake, where both. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Source location
- Stewart 1941, pp. 363, 401, 403
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival