WILLIAMS1936-001 - ethnographic attestation
Karama (Elema group 7)
Papua New Guinea - Gulf - Oceania - Sahul
Restricted
tiparu Eleman family (Eastern Elema, Karama, Kerema District, Gulf Province)
tiparu: the Karama word for the roarer, and locally for bamboo whistles too, which Williams sets aside as not true bull-roarers. bukari: both the chief who owns a named roarer and, elsewhere in Elema, the instrument itself. mai-karu: the 'worker' clan that keeps and swings it. migiosora: the Karama title for the chief of the eravo, the men's house.
At Karama, on the Gulf of Papua, the bullroarer was a court as much as a voice. Twelve of them were held in the village, each with a name, each belonging to a bukari clan whose leading man was its chief and, in the neighbouring Uaripi speech, its rubu-papa - father of the bull-roarer. The chief never swung it himself. That fell to a paired clan of mai-karu, the workers, who kept the instrument and brought it out when called. A man who had been wronged went to the bukari; the bukari called up his roarer; the mai-karu sounded it, and the offender paid in pigs. The chief killed a pig for the worker, the worker returned shell ornaments to the chief, and the quarrel was closed. Offended badly enough, the bukari could summon the monster itself - a thing of terror that stayed in the village until a pig placated it. The same roarers were sounded to muster labour for a house or a fence. To the women and the uninitiated the things were snakes, and one of them was named Obo, Williams's word for the great carpet snake. The government officer at Karama reckoned the sound went up two or three times a month.
When there is occasion for calling up the bull-roarer it is the bukari who does so. He is in a sense in authority over it. But he does not concern himself with the actual swinging. This is for the mai-karu, the 'worker.'
F. E. Williams, Bull-Roarers in the Papuan Gulf (Port Moresby, 1936), p. 41
- Object
- Spatulate wooden blade swung on a cord; twelve named roarers held at Karama, each owned by a bukari clan and sounded by a paired mai-karu clan. Bamboo whistles also called tiparu locally are excluded by Williams as not true bull-roarers.
- Function
- Initiation roarer that doubles as an instrument of law: the owning bukari chief summons his named roarer to punish an affront or force a settlement, offenders paying pigs, and to muster labour for house- and fence-building. Sounded on average two or three times a month.
- Map confidence
- high - named_village
- Source location
- pp. 39-46, 52
- Spirit voice
- Snake-linked
- Initiation rite
- Forbidden to women