Model Of An Indian House And Door Post

Item number E89184-0 from the National Museum of Natural History.

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Notes

From card: "Totem post for house."Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=635 , retrieved 2-2-2022: House (model) Haida houses were monumental constructions - massive posts and beams, walls planked with cedar, roofs made of bark slabs, and sleeping platforms that ranged in tiers around a deeply sunken central hearth. A smoke hole in the roof gave ventilation and light. On many houses the entryway passed through the base of a pole that displayed clan crests. Crests shown on the model include, from top to bottom, Grizzly Bear, Raven stealing the moon, Beaver, and Mountain Goat. Artists made miniatures of actual houses for museum collectors, and this one may represent Grizzly Bear House at Skidegate.This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.Listed on page 43 in "The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915", in section "Arts of the Northwest Coast Tribes".