These shield-shaped objects made of commercial copper represent monetary wealth. As coppers are bought and sold by chiefs, their value increases, sometimes to the equivalent of thousands of dollars. They are displayed on ceremonial occasions, and exchanged at noble marriages. Sometimes during quarrels, pieces were cut from them and publicly given to the offender. That person was then obliged in turn to break a copper to protect his own name. The most valuable coppers have been cut and patched many times.

The rivet is copper ore.

The rivet is copper.

The mountain goat horn handles of two-piece spoons usually retain the original form of the horn, a curved, tapered cylinder. This cylinder is attached with copper rivets to bowls of mountain sheep horn. The deep brown streaks in the sheep horn bowl are somewhat unusual in northern spoons, commonly made of the horn of the Dall sheep, which has a uniformly pale amber color. Elaborately sculptured spoons and ladles were reserved for formal occasions when the display of family myths and crests on their handles was appropriate. (Holm, Spirit and Ancestor, 1987)

One of the most characteristic objects of Northwest Coast manufacture is the copper. Superficially resembling a shield, it had throughout the northern coast a place of high regard as an object of chiefly paraphernalia. Among most of the coastal people, and especially among the Kwakwaka'wakw, it was considered to represent monetary wealth. (Holm, Crooked Beak of Heaven, 1972)