Similar to E168157 (see remarks for that object), this Taku Tlingit object may originate with the Taku Tlingit of the Upper Taku River area of British Columbia.

FROM CARD: "FOR CONTENTS OF THIS BOX SEE #45976-9."

OVAL STONE PAINT MORTAR; ANIMAL FORM. REMNANTS OF BLUE GREEN PAINT IN MORTAR. Loan Museo Nacional de Antroplogia 5/18/64. Loan returned 2012.

FROM CARD: "CEDAR BARK. ONE THESE 8 MATS WAS APPARENTLY EXCHANGED, FOR IT RETURNED TO USNM IN 1931 IN THE EVANS COLLECTION AND WAS GIVEN NO. 361,312."

Anthropology catalogue ledger book identifies Catalogue #s E20827 and E20911 as Swan original # 61. List in accession file identifies # 61 as "1 box containing complete outfit of an Indian medicine man, Hannegan Indians, Klawark village, P. of Wales Island, Alaska." Catalogue Nos. E20828 - 38 may be related objects?

From card: "Body, including arms and legs, is of brown printed calico in grape design, loosely stuffed with grass. To this is attached a face carved of cedar wood with mouth and part of nose painted red. Eyes and other features accentuated in black paint. Flat carved wooden hands painted red on the palms. Feet are simple black forms with the ankle, and toes indicated by a series of deep excisions. Neck, wrists and ankle have short sashes of red cotton cloth. Illus.: p. 92, Pl. 98, Celebrations catalogue, Smithsonian Press, 1982. [caption from this catalogue is attached to card:] Puppet, ca. 1890-1930. Northwest Coast Indians; British Columbia, Canada, and Alaska. cedar, red cloth, calico cotton, red paint, grass stuffing. 30 1/2 x 13 x 44 (77.5 x 33 x 10.2). Kwakiutl and Tsimshian secret societies used puppets to suggest to a believing audience that spirits were actually present. As part of an elaborate ritual stagecraft, puppets often appeared in acts of illusion. A box might be thrown over a fire to dim its light, whereupon a puppet would miraculously materialize from the gloom, or, at a sound from the roof, puppets might sweep down from a smokehole. In their cures, Tlingit shamans frequently used puppets to represent either a healing spirit or the illness itself."

From card: "Cedar bark."Original label attached to artifact says "Jessie Matthews [presumably the maker or original owner?], Jackson, Alaska." Jackson is an alternate name for Howkan, Alaska, which is a Haida town.Listed on page 41 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".