STEWART1942-009 - primary ethnography
Mowatci Ute wind-and-cloud bullroarer
United States - Rio Grande headwaters near Conejos, Colorado, and northeastern New Mexico - North America - Great Basin
Weather / fertility magic
munu'nunöpö (U1); nianu'nömpö (U2)
Source term: Bull-roarer: whirrer of wood
munu'nunöpö: Saparits's Moache term, identical to the word Stewart recorded for the neighboring Mowataviwatsiu; nianu'nömpö is Nicholas Eaton's form. Both carry the Numic instrumental ending -nömpö / -nöpö, 'thing for doing X with.' Stewart's comparative vocabulary (printed p. 352) supplies no literal gloss.
The Moache Ute wimo'to was a wooden whirrer swung from a handled string: a plaything, but also the thing that made the wind blow and cleared the clouds away. The memory of it was contested — one elder described all of that; another denied every form and every use, yet gave a Moache word for it anyway, nianu'nömpö, beside the first man's munu'nunöpö, the same word the neighbouring Uncompahgre used. Whatever the two disagreed about, it was not whether their people knew the instrument.
- Object
- Whirrer of wood swung on a string with a wooden handle; mountain-sheep horn and rawhide forms denied.
- Function
- A toy, and whirled to make wind blow and to clear away clouds.
- Source
- Omer C. Stewart, Culture Element Distributions: XVIII, Ute-Southern Paiute, Anthropological Records 6(4) (1942), Ute Mowatci lists U1 and U2. U1: Saparits or Sapareach, age ca. 87, father Mowataviwatsiu, mother Mowatci; born near Conejos, Colorado; lived at Cimarron, New Mexico until ca. 40, then Ignacio, Colorado 7 yrs., then Ouray, Utah for the last 40…
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 291 (U1 els. 2792, 2795, 2797, 2799, 2800 +; 2793, 2794, 2796, 2801, 2802 -; U2 - throughout; el. 4087 - both); vocabulary p. 352; bands p. 236; informants pp. 238-239
- Source confidence
- medium Conejos, Colorado, on the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival