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Description

Soul-catcher carved with double-headed animal design and inlaid with haliotis shell. [CAK 10/06/2009]

Longer Description

'Soul-catcher' with incised animal images, eyes inlaid with haliotis shell. The top of the soul-catcher has four perforations. A leather strip is strung through two of the perforations. [?NM 13/12/96]

Primary Documentation

Accession Book Entry - May H. BALFOUR, Curator - Bone 'soul-catcher' inlaid with haliotis shell, Haida, Queen Charlotte Is, N. Pacific
Added Accession Book Entry - This object was physically numbered by Nicolette Meister

There is no further information on the catalogue card. [CW 9 6 98]

Pitt Rivers Museum label - "Soul-catcher" of bone inlaid with haliotis shell. HAIDA, QUEEN CHARLOTTE ID., N. PACIFIC. Coll'd by Lieut. Richardson, R.N. Lent by H. Balfour Esq., 1905.

Related Documents File - Small handwritten note, initialled S. W. (undated): 'American Indian leg bone of an Indian chief made into a flute (of some sort) brought over by Lieutenant Richardson, Son of Admiral Richardson Baywater Crescent. S.W.' [MOB 22/10/2001]

Related Documents File - The Haida Project Related Documents File contains video of research sessions and interviews with Haida delegates from September 2009 as part of the project ‘Haida Material Culture in British Museums: Generating New Forms of Knowledge'. It also includes post-visit communications that discuss object provenance. For extensive photographic, video, and textual records documenting the Haida research visit as a whole, including but not limited to preparations of objects for handling, travel logistics, British Museum participation, transcribed notes from research sessions and associated public events held at PRM, see the Haida Project Digital Archive, stored with the Accessions Registers. Original hand-written notes taken during research sessions have been accessioned into the Manuscripts collection, in addition to select other materials. [CAK 02/06/2010]

Research Notes

The following information comes from Haida delegates who worked with the museum's collection in September 2009 as part of the project “Haida Material Culture in British Museums: Generating New Forms of Knowledge”:
This soul-catcher was viewed alongside other shamanic material on Friday Sept 11, 2009. Christian White commented that the design seemed to be very old in style. He noted that soul-catchers are sometimes made from bear bone. Diane Brown explained that soul-catchers are used when a person is sick and their spirit has left their body; the medicine man or sgaaga then uses the soul-catcher to suck the illness out and then blow the soul back into the body. Nika Collison did not think this soul-catcher was made from ivory, but rather from bone and possibly caribou bone. Delegates requested shamanic material not be put on display. [CAK 12/05/2010]

The piece of paper accompanying the object indicating it was made from a leg bone and used as a flute is likely inaccurate. The object is a soul-catcher, used by shamans to catch the departing souls of ill patients until they could blow the soul back into the patient. There is no precedent for soul catchers being made from human bone; often they were made from ivory or animal bone. [CAK 10/06/2009]

A rolled piece of paper was found within the soul-catcher. The paper (now in RDF) reads: 'American Indian leg of bone of an Indian chief made into a flute (of some sort) brought over by Lieutenant Richardson Son of Admiral Richardson. Bayswater Crescent S.W.' [NM 13 12 96]. (See also research notes [CAK 10/06/2009].)

Referred to on p. 9 of 'Haida Art in the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford, and the Rev. Charles Harrison', by June Bedford, in European Review of Native American Studies, Vol. XII, no. 2 (1998), pp. 1-10. Bedford wonders whether this might be a soul-catcher formerly belonging to shaman Kute that Charles Harrison is supposed, by his own account, to have sent to the Pitt Rivers Museum: 'It does seem possible this is Kute's, but it does not quite fit with Harrison's description.' [JC 16 4 1999]