Museum Expedition 1905, Museum Collection Fund

Museum Expedition 1904, Museum Collection Fund

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Jerome Blum

Fully dressed doll with a coconut husk base, beaded necklace and earrings.This type of doll was created extensively for the burgeoning tourist market during the ealry 1900s.

Bequest of W.S. Morton Mead

Mrs. Ann Barber, the Maidu owner sold this belt to the Museum curator Stewart Culin. According to another Maidu informant, Mrs. Azbil, when she came into the country everyone of any wealth and importance had a belt. People could marry with them. The man gave it away. They also wore it in the War dance and this was the only way a man used it because it actually was a women's belt. This particular belt had been given to Mrs. Barber by her first husband, Pomaho, who married her with it. When he died it became hers and she was criticized for not burning it. The belt would be wrapped around the waist of the dancer twice for the Hesi, Toto of Kenu dances. The patterns on the belt mirror those used on baskets. The red triangles are composed of the scalps of twenty-five woodpeckers and are called grapevine leaves. The two narrow strips, composed of duck feathers, were named after the tongs used to lift the boiling stones out of the baskets when boiling mush. The knot of the belt where the threads come together is called the navel. Feather belts were the supreme Maidu representations of wealth and as such were prime candidates for destruction at death of the owner. Thus they are rare.

This bentwood corner bowl was made by the distinctly Northwest Coast process called kerfing. A single plank of wood is first trimmed, notched , steamed and bent. The bottom and sides were then pegged or sewn together with tree root. Finally the bowl is decorated with carving, painting and adding operculum shell trims. The large bowl would have been used for dried food. The abstracted design on the sides represents a killer whale.

Worn by both men and women, tubes of bone or wood pushed through the ear were a common form of personal adornment in central California.These have been elaborately decorated with feathers and clamshell.

This type of headdress is restricted to women wearing it. The quill decorations are commonly used on many dance regalia articles in southern California.The decorations mounted on slender wires will move as the wearer moves.

This ceremonial plume would have been worn straight across the back of the head, stuck into a hair net. Curator Culin's informant, George, said that it indicated his rank as captain and it had been a gift to him. The raw materials are responsible for much of the effect of wealth and prestige. The larger piliated woodpecker does not live around Chico; its feathers must be traded in from the mountains. This pin employs sixteen of its scalps- a multiple of four, the sacred number. The manzanita wood for the shaft is especially hard and difficult to carve.