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Cultural Context

ceremonial

Description

Circular rattle formed of two bent concentric circles of wood holding four compartments containing the sound-making pebbles; a wooden rod is inset across the centre. Plain on one side and painted with red criss-crosses on the other, and with red and blue stripes around the outer ring.

Narrative

This rattle may be one of a pair, as it appears to be similar to a rattle (VII-C-1116) in the collection of the Canadian Museum of History, in Gatineau. A pair of circular rattles of this type was owned by Chief Simadiiks (Semedik), of Gitwangak. The artist W. Langdon Kihn painted a portrait titled "Chief Semedik, Eagle phratry" in 1924, in which the chief is shown holding a rattle that appears similar to MOA rattle A2588. One of the chief's rattles was collected by Marius Barbeau in 1924 for the Museum of Man; the other was purchased by Kihn, presumably around the same time. The rattle A2588 was acquired sometime before 1976 by Walter Koerner, and was classified as Haida, likely because such circular rattles, sometimes called shamans’ rattles, were also historically used by the Haida (e.g., Am1954,05.928 at the British Museum), along with other northern Northwest Coast peoples.

History Of Use

Circular rattle used to accompany the halait dance (healer’s dance). Similar circular rattles are also represented in miniature on Haida carvings depicting shamans (spiritual healers) and may have once been a form common to the Nations of the northern Northwest Coast.