Exhibit Label

Of all animals, the land otter was the one most firmly associated with shamans' work. It was feared as a manifestation of dangerous supernatural power. Shamans acquired their most powerful supernatural help from otters. Before the economic motivation of the fur trade and before the missionaries' inroads on the power of shamans broke down earlier reluctance, no Tlingits, except for shamans, trapped otters or used their furs. This was due to the belief that otters were really transformed humans who had drowned or become lost, and that they took drowned people and made them into land otters or land otter men. These attitudes about otters have not entirely disappeared. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)