Carving - Model of a Shaman's Grave

Item number E274274-0 from the National Museum of Natural History.

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Notes

From card: "Box, painted inside with totemic designs in which a "Doctor" [shaman] is lying in state. The figure wears only a breechclout of painted leather. Loaned to Renwick Celebrations 12/17/81, Returned 1982. Illus.: p. 34, pl. 190, Celebrations catalogue, Smithsonian Press, 1982. [Caption from Celebrations catalogue is taped to back of card:] Model of Grave, 1880-1912, Tlingit Indians; Alaska, wood, sinew, nails, paint. For most Tlingits a funeral consisted of cremating the corpse and placing its ashes in a box ina "grave house." It was thought that the soulds of the deceased would be more comfortable in the afterworld near a fire. From the position of the body and the type of box, this Tlingit model most likely represents the grave of a shaman. Funerary practices for shamans were much more involved than those for ordinary persons. The shaman himself usually selected his grave site. There were strictly prescribed ways for preparing the body and for leaving it inthe grave house. Once it was installed in the house, villagers feared and avoided the site. Anyone passing the grave made an offering of tobacco to the spirt of the shaman. Tlingits believed that the body of a shaman did not decay but rather dried up and that the fingernails continued to grow - even through the boards of the grave house."