WALLACE1952-001 - ethnographic attestation
Comanche, Southern Plains
United States - Comancheria - southwestern Oklahoma - North America - Southern Plains
Sacred / spirit
yuane (yu'anee) English
yuane / yu'anee — 'warm wind' (Robinson & Armagost gloss it 'south wind'); wekubupu is the dictionary's word for the object itself.
The Comanche called it the warm wind. Yu'anee was a cedar slat, its edge sometimes cut into notches to be the beaver's tail, and it belonged to the medicine men. At the Beaver Ceremony it swung at the tipi to call the people in; in war it rode near the shield, and in the moment of danger a man whirled it to feel his power — a bullet, they said, would come straight, and miss.
- Object
- A cedar slat, sometimes with notches along one edge to represent the beaver's tail.
- Function
- Medicine and war: swung to call the people into the Beaver Ceremony tipi; carried near the shield in time of war and whirled in danger to feel power — a bullet would come straight but miss.
- Map confidence
- low_medium - Lawton / Wichita Mountains anchor — where Hoebel's 1933 Comanche informants were interviewed; the practice is people-wide, not local.
- Source location
- Wallace & Hoebel 1952, pp. 175-176
- Spirit voice