Hunting Pouch - Octopus Bag

Item number E89196-0 from the National Museum of Natural History.

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Notes

OCTOPUS BAG; FLORAL BEADWORK. FROM JAMES G. SWAN ORIGINAL TAG WITH ARTIFACT: "NO. 201 HAIDA INDIANS HUNTING POUCH. KULTL GEAR. SITKA INDIAN MANUFACTURE. SKIDEGATE, B.C. AUG. 30, 1883, JAMES G. SWAN, $1."Linda Wynne, Florence Sheakley, Alan Zuboff, Virginia Oliver, and Ruth Demmert made the following comments during the Tlingit Recovering Voices Community Research Visit, March 13-March 24, 2017. This is an octopus bag, specifically used for hunting because of the strap. Florence noted that she made a bag similar to this one that took her over a month to complete, and wasn't as busy as this one with regards to the beadwork design. The bag has some large, size 10 beads, which were produced later on, and don't have the same good detail as smaller beads. Virginia commented that someone may have added beads to this bag after it was created in order to sell it. The button on this object could be a brass button taken from a military coat. This bag has double toes and was made with two needles, whereas beaders today usually use only one needle.