Standing, Remojadas-style, male figure, probably representing a warrior, with hands clasping what looks like a cup in front of his body. The figure's upper arms are adorned with spheres of clay that may represent scarification or another type of body adornment. He wears an elaborate headdress with chinstrap, hollow ear spools, a nose bar, wide necklace, arm bands, loincloth, and sandals. His face and body are covered with black pigment, which is a complex mixture of plant saps, resins, crushed plants, asphalt, and black soot (carbon), frequently used by Veracruz artists to embellish their sculptures. Condition: good.

Museum Collection Fund

Frank L. Babbott Fund

This mask represents Bak’was , a malevolent ghostly spirit, the keeper of drowned souls. He can cause loss of reason and sanity and lures those seeking escape into the night woods with a faint firelight where they experience madness, loss of a sense of right and wrong and lose balance and harmony with the world. Victims may survive by finding minimal sustenance on the forest floor or in the intertidal region. As a spirit, although diminutive, he can stride four times the average man. He has a green, hairy body and a skeletal visage. Souls of those drawn into the forest by him or who eat food he offers are lost forever and become part of his ghostly retinue. A soul could possibly be saved by subduing it with menstrual blood. John Livingston (b. 1951) is an adopted Kwakwaka'wakw carver. He became closely involved with master carvers Henry Hunt and Tony Hunt in the 1970s who gave him permission to carve masks and poles. This particular mask is his version of a wild man mask with deeply attenuated carving outlining the mouth and eyes. Painted in traditional colors of black and red.

Birds are among the most often portrayed animals in the pre-Columbian art of Central America. Their song and ability to fly were greatly admired traits, and whistles like the charming examples seen here would have reproduced a bird’s melodic call almost perfectly. The polychrome whistle on the right has a painted lattice design, and the one on the left is adorned with incised lines, triangles, and circles filled with white pigment. Both types of decoration suggest bird feathers.


Los pájaros están entre los animales más representados en el arte precolombino de América Central. Sus canciones y habilidad para volar eran cualidades enormemente admiradas, y silbatos como los encantadores ejemplos que se aprecian aquí pueden haber reproducido el sonido melodioso de los pájaros casi a la perfección. El silbato policromo a la derecha tiene un diseño de encaje pintado, y el de la izquierda está adornado con líneas incisas, triángulos, y círculos rellenos con pigmento blanco. Ambos tipos de decoración sugieren plumas de pájaros.

Carll H. de Silver Fund

Museum Expedition 1941, Frank L. Babbott Fund

Ella C. Woodward Memorial Fund

Double-spout, bridge-handle vessel with a rounded base and four concave walls. The exterior of the vessel is decorated with elaborate painted images of the "horrible bird" figure displayed within a white oval on each side, surrounded by painted images of plants, snakes, lizards, stars/flowers, and birds. The top of the vessel is decorated with four modeled intertwined snakes surrounded by painted ones. The "horrible bird" is an anthropomorphic raptorial bird, probably a combination of condor and hawk, that represents two of the most powerful forces of the sky (see Donald Proulx, A Sourcebook of Nasca Ceramic Iconography, Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2006, pp.79-82). On this vessel it consists of a profile bird head at top with a open beak consuming a trophy head, a body surrounded by abstract feathers, and another trophy head between two human legs. Condition: good.

Henry L. Batterman Fund