VANSTONE1961-001 - museum specimen
Northern Ute FMNH 60974 bullroarer
United States - Uintah and Ouray Reservation - Utah - North America
Weather / fertility magic
Source term: bull-roarer
No name is attached to this specimen. Smith's Northern Ute vocabulary does record one for the instrument - /neta=t+ mutunu=p+/, tagged (WR) for the White River band (1974, printed p. 279) - but this object is not assigned to a band, so the name is not claimed for it.
On the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, a Northern Ute hand cut a rough rectangular board, narrowed it at one end, and tied on a buckskin line - a toy, VanStone judged, made to be twirled for the pleasure of its own roar. Among Northern Utes at large, though, Anne Smith recorded a larger purpose: the bullroarer called the wind, and drove off rain and snow. It would answer only to someone born in the summer.
Attached at this notch is a length of buckskin line. Presumably the toy was activated by twirling the piece of wood while holding the buckskin line.
VanStone 1961:15
- Object
- Crudely shaped rectangular wooden board narrowing to a notched proximal end, with one buckskin line attached at the notch; exact specimen photograph survives.
- Function
- A wind-caller in Northern Ute practice - Anne Smith's ethnography records that the bullroarer was 'used to call the wind' and 'should be swung by someone born in the summer to bring wind to blow away rain or snow'; VanStone judged this particular buckskin-corded specimen a toy, but the tribal wind use governs the class.
- Map confidence
- medium - Uintah and Ouray Reservation regional anchor; the catalog does not assign object 60974 to the Uintah/Whiterocks or Uncompahgre/Ouray subset.
- Source location
Page references
printed p. 15; Figure 37f printed p. 48; FMNH negative 113080; Smith 1974 printed p. 164 (weather passage) and p. 279 (vocabulary)
- Weather magic