UNIDENTIFIED TLINGIT ARTIST
Walking Stick, c. 1870
wood, 30 x 3.25 x 1 in (76.2 x 8.3 x 2.5 cm), measurements reflect dimensions without custom made metal stand.

Provenance
A New York Collection.

This is an elegant, practical object that must have once belonged to an elder of the wolf moiety. One of the most difficult aspects of making this cane would have been finding the right young tree or branch that included the less than ninety-degree angle at the intersection of the carved handle and the vertical shaft. It would have been a light, strong assistant to lean on when necessary. The carving appears to represent a wolf; long snout, low nostrils, laid-back ears. It has captured a human figure in its jaws, with only the victim’s head and arms visible outside the mouth. Both the man’s face and the wolf’s eyes suggest the Tlingit style of sculpture. The little nubs on the back of the wolf’s head appear to have been knots in the wood, retained for the tactile enjoyment of the user.

Steven C. Brown

References: For a somewhat similar Haida example see Karen Duffek, Bill McLennan and Jordan Wilson, Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art, (Vancouver: Figure 1 Publishing / Museum of Anthropology at UBC, 2021), pp. 304-305. There are somewhat similar compositions on two Tlingit amulets of bear and sea bear, respectively, devouring a man, reproduced in Allen Wardwell, Tangible Visions: Northwest Coast Indian Shamanism and its Art, (New York: The Monacelli Press, 1996), nos. 15 & 16, p. 20. Such imagery, Wardell suggests, is associated with shamanic art and “has obvious reference to death, rebirth, and transformation.”