The Bullroarer Atlas

STEWART1942-001 - primary ethnography

Deep Creek Goshute (Pieroagönota)

United States - Deep Creek Valley - Ibapah, western Utah, edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert - North America - Great Basin

Play / practical

Northern Ute bullroarer 60974 with its buckskin line, collected by George A.
Representative — not this record’s object. · Northern Ute bullroarer 60974 with its buckskin line, collected by George A · CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Image source

Source term: Bull-roarer: whirrer of wood

In the dry valleys under Ibapah Mountain, on the southwestern edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert, Goshute children whirled a wooden roarer purely for the sound of it. Stewart's chief witness was Commodore, a blind man of about ninety-six who had lived his whole life near Ibapah — he refused to be interviewed at first, then, after overhearing a younger man's answers, decided he alone could tell the truth about the old ways. In his country the whirrer was a plaything; the wind-working powers Ute bands claimed for it stopped at the desert's edge.

Object
Whirrer of wood; the wooden handle on a string used by the Ute bands was denied.
Function
Whirled as a toy; no weather or ritual use recorded.
Map confidence
medium - Ibapah, Utah — the Deep Creek band's center near Ibapah Mountain (Stewart p. 236); principal informant Commodore had always lived near Ibapah.
Source location
printed p. 291 (els. 2792 +, 2797 toy +; 2795 handle -, weather els. -); band p. 236; informants p. 238

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