The paper is white. The ink is dark blue, light blue, red, and yellow.

The paper is white. The ink is black and red.

The paper is white. The ink is black and red.

The ethnological collections of the Washington State Museum (now the Thomas Burke Memorial Washington State Museum) were greatly enlarged by the acquisition of the Emmons collection of Tlingit material at the close of the Alaskaka-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909. At that time, curator Frank Hall began to catalog the collection. Perhaps arbitrarily, since Hall had to start somewhere, a pair of Haida dance shirts collected by James Swan for the Washington exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago were given the catalog numbers 1 and 2. The design on the front of the tunic represents a sea lion, while the one on the back is a killer whale, or orca. Killer whale and sea lions are crests of the Haida Raven phratry. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

The trade cloth is red and blue.

The cedar root is yellow cedar. The grass is dye, purple, and green.

The cedar root is yellow cedar, grass, dye, and purple.

The wool is yarn. The wool is white, black, and blue. The fur is beaver (animal).

In the Spirit of the Ancestors-This model pole reproduces the figures from a late 19th century pole from the Haida village of Howkan in Southeast Alaska. The pole displays the wasgo, a supernatural sea wolf at the bottom, holding a killer whale; the bird-in-the-air who assisted the hero in capturing the wasgo; the young man who captured the wasgo and wore his skin; and the shaman mother-in-law of the young man who took credit for his work, holding her circular puffin-beak rattles.