TSCHOPIK1946-001 - ethnographic attestation
Aymara of Chucuito
Peru - Chucuito, Puno — northwestern Lake Titicaca basin - South America
Play / practical
Source term: bull-roarer
Among the Aymara of Chucuito, on the Peruvian shore of Lake Titicaca, the bullroarer is a child's toy — a slat swung in the street, ranked with the tops and the slings. It has no ceremonial life here at all. Across the whole Andean area that is nearly the entire record of the instrument: in the heartland of the old Andean states, where the panpipe, the notched flute and the conch trumpet were instruments of empire and worship, the whirled slat is reported for two peoples only, the Chocó of the Panama–Colombia forest and these Aymara. Even the Aymara armoury against hail has no place for it — cow-horn trumpets blown at the clouds, bowls of coals sprinkled with pepper and fish bones, a woman's skirt waved to embarrass the hail spirit into passing by.
Boys play with wooden tops and baked clay marbles, although these games may not be aboriginal. The bull-roarer is a child’s toy.
Harry Tschopik, Jr., "The Aymara," Handbook of South American Indians 2 (BAE Bulletin 143, 1946), p. 553
- Object
- Not described; a whirled slat swung on a cord.
- Function
- A child's toy, ranked with the tops and the slings.
- Map confidence
- medium_high - Chucuito, Puno department, Peru — Tschopik's named fieldwork town on the northwestern shore of Lake Titicaca.
- Source location
Page references
HSAI 2:553. Page double-locked: the Handbook's own general index (vol. 7) reads "Bull-roarers ... toy, 1: 338, 343, 393; 2: 553"; and the following leaf of the open Smithsonian scan carries the running head "554 SOUTH AMERICAN INDIANS [B. A. E. Bull. 143]".
- Toy / secular survival