STEWART1941-007 - ethnographic attestation
Pakwi-dokado wimo'to, a children's toy
United States - Southern shores of Walker Lake, Soda Spring Valley and Hawthorne, western Nevada - North America - Great Basin
Play / practical
wimo'to
Source term: bull-roarer (wimo'to)
Wimo'to: Stewart's survey-wide Northern Paiute element heading for the bullroarer.
On the south shore of Walker Lake the roarer stopped being a weather instrument. The Pakwi-dokado had the wimo'to and children played with it — and, alone among the Northern Paiute bands, they denied that it was swung to bring the wind. Their denial falls exactly where the Shoshoni line to the east ran: toy to the south, weather to the north. The boundary is not an accident of silence; it is a flat denial standing where every neighbour affirmed.
- Object
- A wooden whirrer; not described further.
- Function
- A children's toy; the wind-making use is explicitly denied.
- Source
- Omer C. Stewart, Culture Element Distributions: XIV, Northern Paiute, Anthropological Records 4:3 (1941). Pa column, table p. 401: 1870 bull-roarer +, 1871 whirrer of wood +, 1872 of sheep horn -, 1873 used as toy +, 1874 to make wind blow MINUS. Band and informant, p. 364: the Pakwi-dokado lived on the south shores of Walker Lake, in Soda Spring Valley…
- Source location
Page references
Stewart 1941, pp. 364, 401, 403; Steward 1941, p. 250
- Source confidence
- medium South shore of Walker Lake between Soda Spring Valley and Hawthorne, the territory Stewart assigns the band; not a use site.
- Toy / secular survival