FROM CARD: "54126-35. #54127 - 80 X 44 IN."

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=690, retrieved 4-24-2012: Berry dish or bowl. Wooden bowls held the fruits of the land - crabapples, cranberries, blueberries, and other foods, dried and mixed with seal or fish oil to preserve them for the winter ceremonial season. Potlatch hosts served berries to their guests in carved wooden bowls, large trays, and even empty canoes. Grooves carved at the corners of this bowl mimic the bent edges of birch-bark baskets that Skeena River people used before making their legendary migration to the coast, led by the great shaman Devoured by Martens. "This is a very simple feast bowl, also called a square or high-end bowl. It is made of alder. Carved "wrinkles" at the corners represent folds on the birch-bark baskets that people used in the interior, before they moved to the coast." - David Boxley (Tsimshian), 2009.

Accession file identifies original #99 as 1 fish line made of spruce roots, and two Halibut hooks from Klawark [i.e Klawock] village. The fish line was given catalogue # E20888 and the two halibut hooks were given # E20889. Apparently during cataloguing, only E20888 was identified in the ledger book and catalogue card as Tlingit from Klawock; this information was not listed, apparently in an oversight, for the halibut hooks. The culture/locality information for E20889 has now been been changed to match E20888.

FROM CARD: "[From 19th or early 20th century exhibit] LABEL: "HORN SPOONS. BOWLS, MADE FROM THE HORN OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN SHEEP. IN SOME EXAMPLES THE HANDLES ARE MADE FROM THE HORN OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT. IN SOUTHEASTERN ALASKA, IN CANADA, AND THROUGHOUT THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN REGION OF THE UNITED STATES, THE HORN OF THE MOUNTAIN SHEEP IS USED IN MAKING DOMESTIC UTENSILS. THE HORN OF THE GOAT ALSO LENDS ITSELF TO THE CARVER'S ART, AND BY THE TLINGIT INDIANS IS CARVED AND ENGRAVED TO REPRESENT TOTEMIC IDEAS." (NOTE: THIS LABEL APPLIES TO 60,135-60,141; 10,389)."

From card: "One of the corner posts of last Tlokwali house. Carving (man and whale) represents guardian spirit of owner and builder of house. Newer carving. Carved from a log. Figure carved in relief on slab. No legs. Clasps whale in front of his body. Headdress of feathers set in wood. Painted black and white on face."Per Barbara Brotherton, Seattle Art Museum, 2011, house post Cat. # E299078-0 is similar in form to one illustrated second from left in drawing by Ollie Obi in the National Anthropological Archives - NAA INV08655600, Manuscript 1802, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Caption for drawing: "Totem Poles in the Potlatch Hall at La Push, Quileute Reservation, Wash. drawn in the colors as the[y] appear in that hall."

Provenience uncertain. Catalogue lists locality as Aleutian Islands, but object was later reidentified as Northwest Coast/Tlingit?.Listed on page 46 in "The Exhibits of the Smithsonian Institution at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, San Francisco, California, 1915", in section "Arts of the Northwest Coast Tribes (Tools)".