Front section of headdress carved of wood with abalone shell inlay. Topknot may be of feather quills with feathers stripped off, or of sea lion whiskers with feathers tied on. Pendants of ermine skins with heads and tails suspended from top of headdress. Tsimshian-like rattle.
Biographical / Historical:
"He was the chief of Teqwedi's Shark House on Khataak Island - the most important man at Yakutat." Died ca. 1890. -Information from Frederica de Laguna.
Photographer: Professor William Libbey of Princeton.
Indians of North America -- Great Plains Search this
Type:
Archival materials
Photographs
Date:
Mar 1834
Scope and Contents:
To: Mr John T. Kursch, Jr. 1339 Willow Road, Baltimore, Maryland. Dear Mr Kursch: Reference is made to your inquiry of September 25 [1961] regarding Indian costume and photographs. Karl Bodmer's representation of a Hidatsa dog dancer certainly is one of the handsomest illustrations of American Indians ever made. I note that it is reproduced in color on the Table of Contents page of the new American Heritage Book of Indians which will appear this month. Tne Smithsonian Institution does not have a set of Prince Maximilian's Travels in the Interior of North America containing colored plates. We can supply 8" x 10" black and white prints of this and the Crow subject about which you inquired. I believe that the New York Public Library has a set of Maximilian's Atlas with colored plates. The cost of reproducing the plate in color may be quite expensive. As for the costume of Pehriska-ruhpa in dog dance regalia, may I state that the picture was made from life in 1834. However, I cannot recall having seen one of these costumes in a museum collection. Possibly none has been preserved. Prince Maximilian describes the headdress as "an immense cap hanging down from the shoulders, composed of raven's or magpie's feathers, finished at the tips with small white down feathers. In the middle of this mass of feathers the outspread tail of a wild turkey or of a war eagle was fixed." He does not mention how the feathers were fixed, although in another place he suggests that they were attached to a red cloth cap. He goes on to state that these leaders of the Dog Society "wore round their neck a long slip of red cloth, which hung down over the shoulders, and, reaching the calf of the leg, was tied in a knot in the middle of the back."
The long war pipe (probably eagle leg bone) and the rattle are also distinctive parts of the costume of this dog dancer. Maximilian describes the rattle as "a stick adorned with blue and white glass beads, with buffalo or other hoofs suspended to it, the point ornamented with an eagle's feather, and the handle with slips of leather embroidered with beads." These beads, I am confident, must have been of the large "pony size" embroidering bead size, being about twice the size of beads in common use among the Plains Indians in the past three-quarters of a century. The leggings are apparently of the old close-fitting skin type decorated with painted stripes and dots (probably in dark brown), and with vertical bands of quill and beadwork. The latter was made on a separate piece of buckskin which was sewed to the side of the legging. The five rows of quillwork and two quilled rosettes appear to have been in red, yellow and natural colored porcupine quills. The quillwork is bordered all around by "pony beads," probably sky blue in color. The moccasins are decorated in porcupine quills only, using the same colors appearing in the quillwork on the leggings. The design pattern was widely employed among the Plains tribes in the 1830's, and has survived in Blackfoot Indian moccasin decoration to the present day. However, the Blackfoot moccasins bear the design in beadwork. Sincerely yours, John C. Ewers, Assistant Director Museum of History and Technology.
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Collection Citation:
Thomas Seir Cummings papers, circa 1824-1983, bulk circa 1824-1894. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Sponsor:
Funding for the processing and digitization of this collection was provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Walton Family Foundation
