STEWART1942-009 - primary ethnography
Mowatci Ute (Moache)
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) English
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.
- Map confidence
- medium - Conejos, Colorado, on the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Territory anchor for the named people; not a use site.
- 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
- Weather magic
- Toy / secular survival