No. STEWART1942-009
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; nianu'nömpö
Source term: Bull-roarer: whirrer of wood
munu'nunöpö: Saparits's Mowatci term, identical to the word Stewart recorded for the neighbouring Uncompahgre (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.
Among the Mowatci, the Moache Ute, the bullroarer 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 Mowatci 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.
Particulars
- 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; informants Saparits (Sapareach), ca. 87, interviewed at Ouray, Utah, and Nicholas Eaton, ca. 76, interviewed near Ignacio, Colorado (pp. 238-239)