Headdress and carved wooden frontlet with an extensive ermine trailer. The frontlet’s main figure is an eagle with a small bear head and paws below and a wolf(?) head and paws above. The eagle has shell eyes and many abalone decorative inlays around it. Sea lion whiskers project upward from the top of the headdress. The entire upper head area is covered with eaglet skin with the fine down still attached. A long ermine trailer sewn on red cotton hangs below the headpiece. There is an abalone eagle crest attached on the left side.

CHARLES EDENSHAW. WRIGHT, ROBIN K. AND DAINA AUGAITIS, CURATORS EXHIBITION CATALOG, 2013, Publisher: BLACK DOG PUBLISHING, LONDON, UK NORTHERN HAIDA MASTER CARVERS. WRIGHT, ROBIN K., 2001, Publisher: UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS

Headdress frontlet with a wooden bear crest, set within a frame, and painted red, green, and black. The back is unpainted. The frame as well as the bear's eyes, teeth, and paws have inlaid sections of carved abalone shell. Long ermine trailers hang down the back and sea lion whiskers stick out from the top. The headdress would have been worn for a Welcome or Peace Dance. The face's thick, heavy, black eyebrows help to corroborate this attribution. A fistful of eagle down feathers would be placed inside the center of the frontlet. As the chief danced and bowed and greeted his audience, the feathers would float out of his headdress symbolizing peace and friendship. In Tshimshian this was known as Am-halait or "power from the Sky." CONDITION: The object is in fair and stable condition. Special care in handling the piece should be taken for it was treated with arsenic in the past.

Mammalian tooth, incisor or canine, probably from a whale or sea lion. [CAK 23/06/2009]