Headdress

Item number 959 from the The Burke: University of Washington.

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Exhibit Label

Tall, glossy black dorsal fin, hair streaming from the trailing edge, is the mark of the killer whale: the most imposing natural animal of the Tlingit world and a crest of the Wolf phratry. Here the orca is combined with the wolf itself in a powerful crest headdress, collected by George Emmons from the Stikine Tlingit. Emmons did not identify the clan that owned the headdress, but described it as of "totemic significance," worn by the chief--to whose care it was entrusted--only upon special occasions when the whole family was present. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)