Notes

This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.Source of the information below: Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center Alaska Native Collections: Sharing Knowledge website, by Aron Crowell, entry on this artifact http://alaska.si.edu/record.asp?id=523, retrieved 4-24-2012: Tobacco box. This seamless tobacco box is made from a coconut, an exotic item that could have washed ashore on the British Columbia coast after drifting across from Asia on the Japanese Current. Alternatively, it might have been brought by an American fur trade vessel that had called at Hawaii or other South Pacific port on its way north. The Tsimshian and neighboring coastal peoples cultivated a species of native tobacco before Western contact, mixing it with seashell lime for chewing.