The Bullroarer Atlas

No. STEWART1941-008

Sawawaktodo-tuviwarai wind-making wimo'to

United States · Middle Humboldt River around Winnemucca, north-central Nevada · North America · Great Basin

Weather / fertility magic

Mishongnovi Hopi bullroarer: a white-painted wooden blade with a yellow-green zigzag snake outlined in black running along its length, and a hole near one rounded end.
Plate I. Representative — not this record’s object. Painted Hopi snake-lightning bullroarer from Mishongnovi, British Museum. CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · Image source

wimo'to

Source term: bull-roarer (wimo'to)

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

Among the Sawawaktodo-tuviwarai, the 'sagebrush-mountain dwellers' of the middle Humboldt, the roarer was for wind and not for children — the eastern Northern Paiute pattern. Three bands to the north told it the same way: the 'red-butte dwellers' of the Quinn River, the Tago-toka of the Owyhee, and the 'wada-seed eaters' of Malheur Lake.

Particulars

Object
A wooden whirrer; not described further.
Function
Swung to make the wind blow; toy use denied.

Source

Omer C. Stewart, 'Culture Element Distributions: XIV, Northern Paiute,' Anthropological Records 4:3 (1941), pp. 364, 401 and 403

View the source · archived

Part of The Bullroarer Atlas, companion to The Eve Theory of Consciousness.