Spruce Root Raven Hat, Tlingit, Killisnoo Village, xootsnoow Raven, the northern Northwest Coast Trickster/Creator, is often painted on hats to display the clan crest of the owners. 1800s; Collected by George T. Emmons; No. 989

The grass is natural and purple. The paint is black.

The raffia is dye and yellow.

Woven basketry hat that women would wear.

The Hupa basketry hat (05.588.7464) is on the left in photograph and the Yurok basketry hat (05.588.7515) is on the right. When these hats were collected in 1905 they were treasured items of Hupa women and they remain so today. This basketry hat was collected by Stewart Culin directly from the weaver, Mary, when he saw it in her home.

Gift of Charlotte Elizabeth Dudley

The cedar bark is natural. The cedar bark is dye and brown. The thread is black.

In the Spirit of the Ancestors-Twined spruce root hats were traditionally worn on the northern Northwest Coast and many were made for sale to outsiders in the late 19th century. Today they continue to be important ceremonial wear, displaying the crests of the wearer. The small ring of dyed brown spruce root around the center of the top is the artist's signature.

Haida spruce root hat made by Isabel Rorick, the daughter of Primrose Adams. She learned to weave from her grandmother, Selina Peratrovich. Isabel recently traveled to several museum collections, including the Burke Museum, to study Haida basketry. According to Isabel Rorick, this hat was made in the style of Mrs. Tom Price. Burke Museum cat. no. 2001-8/1, puchased with funds donated by Lawrence Christian.

S'abadeb-Seattle Art Museum This unusual shaped basketry hat was a commission by the Burke Museum, which asked Karen Skyki Reed to replicate an ancient hat unearthed at Wapato Creek in 1976. Reed's grandmother had lived at Wapato Creek in Tacoma, Washington, which was an ancestral home of the Puyallup Tribe. A gifted basket maker and apprentice of Gerald Bruce Subiyay Miller, Reed noted that the old hat was so well preserved that she could puzzle out how the inner hat was made and attached to the outer twined hat. Contemporary artists revel in the opportunity to re-create older artifacts to determine how they were made and how their forms evolved over time. Purchased with funds donated by Lawrence Christian.