Bark-Breaker

Item number E206548-0 from the National Museum of Natural History.

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Notes

From card: "Thin board, sharp on lower edge and with hand grip on upper edge. Used for breaking cedar bark."Bark shredder.Clyde Tallio (Nuxalk) of the delegation from Bella Bella, Bella Coola and Rivers Inlet communities of British Columbia made the following comments during the Recovering Voices Community Research Visit May 20th - 24th, 2013. This is a shredder, not a beater. After you've beaten your bark and softened it, you take the bark and you put it at the edge of a box or a table, and you use the shredder to fray the fibers. Then you're able to make it into clothing, diapers, or menstrual pads. There is a cedar bark softening dance.Listed on page 50 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 (Tools)".