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Has anybody mentioned that the original artifact may have been a “buzz button,” used by a shaman to make a noise similar to that of a whirlwind? The only NDN reference to it I found easily was to its use by the Fourche Maline people in Oklahoma. Anyway it is ancient and widespread (globally), sort of like a bull roarer but I think a little less common.
I’ll paste in some instructions I found on the Web, by an Australian named Peter Macinnis. I wouldn’t recommend doing this with your $40 reproductions, but I’d suggest that is what the artifact was made for. (As opposed to jewellery.) Especially if we are sure that symbol represents a whirlwind.
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A buzz button
You will need a large button, and some tough thin thread or
string. Put the two ends of the string through two holes in the
button (if it is a four-hole button, use diagonally opposite
holes), and tie the two ends of the string securely.
Loop two fingers of each hand through the string with the
button in between your hands, and flip the button to make it
turn once or twice. By alternately pulling and releasing the
string, the button will start to rotate, producing a characteristic
roaring noise. Harder pulling produces faster rotation, and a
higher tone.
The main thing to keep in mind here is that the button is
spinning slightly irregularly, and that these irregularities come
at regular intervals.
I’m not sure that everything a shaman does has to do with patients or illness. (It might be related to weather, for example.) But to the extent that it does, the humming or buzzing sound made by the whirling disc is supposed (in a few cultures that maintained the magical use of it at least into the nineteenth century, if not to the present) to stand for the voices of ancestors or gods. Which, of course, only the shaman could understand and interpret.
Another school of thought holds that the repetitive sound (interrupted regularly, as the disc changes its direction of spin) sounds like human sighing or “heavy breathing,” and was associated with fertility or erotic rites.
The gizmo is sold today as a “folk toy” and is called among other things a Whirlygig and a Buzz Saw (both of which terms, however, also refer to something altogether different). Russian ethnomusicologists have issued a recording of a female shaman (is that a shawoman?) playing one, in the Amur River valley; their liner notes in English call it a “buzz disk.” In ancient Greece it was called “Iynx,” also the name of a minor goddess, and the source of our word “jinx” (which still has something to do with magic).
The Fourche Maline people (to whom I referred in my last posting about this artifact) are usually dated about 800 BC to 1000 AD. So we are not talking about a folk toy from, like, Berea College Student Industries. This instrument is at least as old as the DNA that came across the Bering Sea with our fairly remote Siberian ancestors.
By the way, Kathleen6, have you made a ceramic one yet? Somebody out your way used to make ceramic sand dollars, we have a couple as Christmas tree ornaments. Seems to me the technology would be about the same.
Hi, I love getting this information. Thank you for posting it. No, I have to say that I haven’t made anything with clay lately. I’m going to though. I just finished an art show and had to spend time making paintings for it. Somehow, I think having this knowledge will make my clay whirlwinds better. That sounds funny, but I believe it.
Kathleen
I ran across a sketchy reference that might be important to somebody who wants support for the ancient kinship of the northwestern Plains Siouan people with Occaneechi, Saponi, or whoever has the best claim on that disc/whirlwind artifact. Be patient with the spellings, and the interpretation of the object as a “toy” (if it was for shamanistic magic, it was sacred). Here’s the note:
Stewart Culin reported (3) on the appearance of this toy concept among the native peoples in North America. Some of these were: the Algonquians of Oklahoma and Montana, Eskimos of Hudson Bay, Greenland and Alaska, Shosheans of Arizona and California, Sioan of Montana and South Dakota, Yuman of Arizona and Zunian of New Mexico.
3) Stewart Culin, Games of the North American Indians, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1975.
The website also has a nice photo of a little girl spinning one of the discs, which is probably more useful than anybody’s verbal description, if you haven’t previously seen how it works. Check it out at http://home.frognet.net/~ejcov/disc.html
Linda and all Interested, I just found this site last night . It gives information on the excavation of the site and where the shell carving discussed was found. In this instance it was found on the body worn as a gorget or pendant. There was also a smaller pendant carving found. I will give the web site and if it works then fine, if not try going to Google and type in Excavation Occaneechi Town and that should pull it up on your search engine. If not then contact me at eyancey@ec.rr.com and I will try and help. Once on that page click on Artifacts , then next on Shell Ornaments, then on Pendants. In the article you can click on either large pendant or small. Read the entire article which will give more information about this item and it’s use. John Lawson gives a early description. One article on this site mentions a rattlesnake design used in some way but I could find no more about that. Thanks for handling the chaos with grace and love. We are all searching and sometimes get frustrated. Ed
I am going to post this information at the beginning just in case someone will see it there also.
Sorry–one of my Seinor Moments! I forgot to give the site information. http://www.ibiblio.org/dig/ “Good Reading and Much Information” in fact a CD Rom can be purchased. Ed
There’s a typo in the url Ed posted for this artifact, should be http://www.ibiblio.org/dig/
Interesting stuff, you have to hop around a bit to discover that the shell object in question was found on the sternum of a child of about 3 1/2, plus or minus a year. He or she was buried with quite a few other things of both Euroamerican and native manufacture. The gorget may have been jewellery, as assumed by the archaeologists; but it might also have been the little kid’s favorite toy. (See the photo linked in my last posting on this thread, in which a child of just that age is spinning one.) Anyway if it was (or ever had been) for shamanistic use, that usage had probably ceased before it was buried with the child.
I’d still contend that its typology is among the aerophones (like the four jews harps also found in the Occaneechi Town dig); and as a musical instrument it differs from them in being probably not of European origin. But I’m not on the warpath about this, and as art, it is just what Linda said in the first place — an excellent emblem for the Eastern Siouan Descendants Association.
Thanks for the correction on the url for that site. I entered this information in two different places so that other’s would be able to see it and look it up if interested. On my second entry I remembered my Grandmother(of Native American Descent) who took the time when busy sewing to go into her basket and pull out a “large” black or brown button. She then took thread and a chunk of beeswax and waxed the thread then threading it through the button and tying the ends. She carefully placed the string just right on my finders and hand and then showed me how to wind the button up and then began an adventure of motion,exercise, and sound that lasted for hours. The intensity of pleasure I felt was as great as my imagination and I gurantee I had plenty of that in those days. My Grandmother’s GGrandfather was known as The Shell Man and so this article has a particular interest to me. I have been told this could have been the same as shaman of holy man and that he would have prepared ornaments and objects used in ritual or sacred rites and dances. Maybe someone out there has some knowledge to share on that identification. Thanks again Pappy! Ed
I don’t know if the buzz button concept will (or should) catch on with others. But if it does, they might want to know the original type of string to use. This is from William Byrd’s Histories of the Dividing Line betwixt Virginia and North Carolina (New York: Dover, 1967), p. 286, referring to the date Nov. 10, 1728:
One of the men, who had been an old Indian Trader, brought me a Stem of Silk Grass, which was as big as my little Finger…
The Indians use it in all their little Manufactures, twisting a Thread of it that is prodigiously Strong. Of this they make their Baskets and the Aprons which their Women wear around their Middles, for Decency’s Sake. These are long enough to wrap quite round them and reach down to their Knees, with a Fringe on the under part by way of Ornament…
As this species of Silk Grass is much Stronger than Hemp, I make no doubt but Sail Cloth and Cordage might be made of it with considerable Improvement.
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From the photo in the archaeological report on the Occaneechi Town dig, it appears that the original shell object (ornament or instrument, as the case may be) was just about 7 cm., or 2 3/4 inches, in diameter. It was apparently made from a piece of the outer whorl of a conch shell, shaped into a disc, rather than from a shell that was more circular in its natural state. Others are welcome to disagree with this interpretation — that’s the way it looks to me.
Can you identify the plant Silk Grass for me and where it usually is found growing? I am assuming the skirts were woven and the method of weaving would be interesting to know also. Would the fringe have been of the same material or something else.
I believe much of the ancient shell carving involved Whelk which is conch or some type of the conch family or a term for that shell when used.
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