STEWART1942-008 - primary ethnography
San Juan Southern Paiute (Kaibökadöt-tawip-nunts)
United States - Navajo Mountain country, northern Arizona - southern Utah - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
naiyaratinömpö English
Source term: Bull-roarer: whirrer of wood
naiyaratinömpö: the San Juan Paiute term for the bull-roarer in Stewart's comparative vocabulary (shared with the Kaibab); no literal gloss is given.
In the slickrock country around Navajo Mountain, a summer-born Paiute could whirl the naiyaratinömpö to still the wind; everyone else swung it for the noise. By Stewart's day the San Juan people were a small band living among Navajo who far outnumbered them — one informant remarked that the Paiute were learning a lot about doctoring from their neighbors. Joe Francis, called Nömö'-maots, blind and about eighty, born in the Badaway country south of Lee's Ferry, gave most of the record at his camp east of Gap Trading Post.
- Object
- Whirrer of wood; the handled-string rig of the Ute bands was denied.
- Function
- A toy; also whirled to stop wind, effective only for people born in summer.
- Map confidence
- medium - Navajo Mountain anchor for the Kaibökadöt-tawip-nunts, the eastern of the two San Juan Paiute bands Stewart's informants named (p. 237); informants camped east of Gap Trading Post in the 'Badaway country.'
- Source location
- printed p. 291 (els. 2792, 2797, 2801, 2802 +; 2795 handle -); vocabulary p. 352; band p. 237; informants p. 239
- Weather / fertility magic
- Toy / secular survival