Lot 36
UNIDENTIFIED ARTIST, POSSIBLY KWAKWA̱KA̱ʼWAKW
Skull Rattle, c. 1880

wood, cedar bark, and metal, 4 x 4.25 x 7.5 in (10.2 x 10.8 x 19.1 cm)
inscribed in black ink in an unknown hand with an accession / registration number (?), "MKW-1-P".

Provenance
Collected by George T. Emmons in the late 19th century;
Ex Collection Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, Cat. No. 1937.1555;
A New York Collection.

Rattles made in various manifestations of “skullness” were made by the Kwakwaka'wakw, Nuxalk, and other Northwest Coast peoples. Among the Kwakwaka'wakw they were used by ritualists known as ‘heliga’ whose task it was to look after and control the Hamatsa dancers to keep them from attacking the uninitiated of the village. The sound of the rattles is said to calm the wild aspect of the Hamatsa dancers. Through time, the skull-like appearance of these rattles sometimes became diluted into mask-like faces of a more general appearance.

Steven C. Brown

References

For a Kwakwaka'wakw Skull Rattle see Aldona Jonaitis, ed., Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991), fig. 4.12. See also Aldona Jonaitis, From the Land of the Totem Poles: The Northwest Coast Indian Art Collection at the American Museum of Natural History (New York: AMNH, 1988), pl. 62.