The Bullroarer Atlas

STEWART1941-005 - ethnographic attestation

Kuipa-dokado ('ground-squirrel eaters') Northern Paiute

United States - Lower Humboldt River and Humboldt Sink, north-central Nevada - North America - Great Basin

Weather / fertility magic

Loud and Harrington's complete Plate 15, ‘Objects of horn and wood’.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Loud and Harrington's complete Plate 15, ‘Objects of horn and wood’ · Public domain Image source

wimo'to English

Source term: bull-roarer (wimo'to)

Wimo'to: Stewart's survey-wide Northern Paiute element heading for the bullroarer.

The ground-squirrel eaters of the Humboldt Sink swung a wooden roarer to bring the wind — the eastern pattern, in which the instrument worked on the weather first. On whether children here were allowed one, the testimony splits both ways.

Object
A wooden whirrer; not described further.
Function
Swung to make the wind blow; also reported as a toy.
Map confidence
medium - Humboldt Sink, the centre of the territory Stewart assigns the band; the Lovelock colony where he found them lies just northeast. Not a use site.
Source location
Stewart 1941, pp. 363, 401, 403, 438

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