The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

Museum Purchase: Indian Collection Subscription Fund, Rasmussen Collection of Northwest Coast Indian Art.

Museum Purchase: Indian Collection Subscription Fund, Rasmussen Collection of Northwest Coast Indian Art.

At either side of this bunch of owl feathers are one or two pairs of triple pronged ceremonial hairpins. Wire is used as their base as the desired effect is to make them tremble as the dancer moves.

Headdress frontlet with a wooden bear crest, set within a frame, and painted red, green, and black. The back is unpainted. The frame as well as the bear's eyes, teeth, and paws have inlaid sections of carved abalone shell. Long ermine trailers hang down the back and sea lion whiskers stick out from the top. The headdress would have been worn for a Welcome or Peace Dance. The face's thick, heavy, black eyebrows help to corroborate this attribution. A fistful of eagle down feathers would be placed inside the center of the frontlet. As the chief danced and bowed and greeted his audience, the feathers would float out of his headdress symbolizing peace and friendship. In Tshimshian this was known as Am-halait or "power from the Sky." CONDITION: The object is in fair and stable condition. Special care in handling the piece should be taken for it was treated with arsenic in the past.

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 headdress would have been worn by a man on the back of the head. The long wooden pin would secure it to a hairnet. It is part of a dance outfit see 06.331.8027,a,b,c,e.

Chief's headdress with frontlet carved with a bear and frog and a train with ermine skins. [CAK 10/02/2010]

George Emmons collected this headdress from a chief of the Koskedi Raven clan at Sitka, Alaska. Although Tlingit headdresses are often attributed to the Tsimshian, many frontlets, including this one, are clearly Tlingit in style. The frontlet's height, the form and arrangement of figures, the blue-painted rim with its widely separated abalone plaques, the red trade flannel, and the mallard-skin border, all point to Tlingit origin. The figures carved on the frontlet are a raven and a large head that resembles a bear. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)