STEWART1942-007 - primary ethnography
Shivwits Southern Paiute bullroarer
United States - Shivwits Plateau, Arizona Strip, northwestern Arizona - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
nanemotö English
Source term: Bull-roarer: whirrer of wood
nanemotö: the Shivwits term for the bull-roarer in Stewart's comparative vocabulary — unlike the naiyaratinömpö family of terms among neighboring bands; no literal gloss is given. nanimit — Lowie's spelling of the Shivwits word (= Stewart's nanemoto), recorded with the AMNH model.
On the Shivwits Plateau, the dry tableland reaching to the Grand Canyon's north rim, the nanemotö was a boy's noisemaker that could also work: whirled hard on its handled string, the wooden blade made the wind blow. Frank Mustache, a Shivwits man of about seventy who spent nearly his whole life near Saint George, gave Stewart the band's record on the small reservation along the Santa Clara River where his people had settled after leaving the plateau.
- Object
- Whirrer of wood swung on a string with a wooden handle.
- Function
- A toy; also whirled to make wind blow.
- Map confidence
- medium - Shivwits Plateau centroid, the band's former homeland in northwestern Arizona (Stewart p. 237). Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 291 (els. 2792, 2795, 2797, 2799 +; 2800/2801/2802 -); vocabulary p. 352; band p. 237; informants p. 239 | Lowie 1924, p. 257 and fig. 36
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival