Californian Flicker-Quill Headbands in the Light of an Ancient Colorado Cave Specimen

Abstract

ROM MANTLES CAVE, in Dinosaur National Monument, in the northwestern corner of Colorado, Burgh and Scoggin (1948) report a buckskin pouch which contained a remarkably well preserved flicker-quill headband turned up with miniver. The similarity of this ancient ceremonial headdress, apart from its fur trimming, to the ethnographic flicker-quill headbands of California, raises a challenging culture-historical problem. The evidence suggests that the similarity may rest on cultural connections and that the flickerquill headband may be an important key for the understanding of Californian-Great Basin relationships during the first millennium of this era. Burgh and Scoggin (1948, pp. 38-41) have described the archaeological circumstances of the Colorado find in detail. Mantles cave is one of several non-residential caves in Yampa Canyon, containing small chambers dug into the silt or sand of their floors. The culture represented in the caves and open sites has been identified in part with the Fremont culture of east-central Utah, a basically Basketmaker manifestation extending along the Green River and its tributaries, and dating from about 400 to 800 A.D. (Morss, 1931; Lister, 1951). The Mantles cave headband and other Yampa Canyon specimens are now in the Henderson Museum, University of Colorado, Boulder. The Colorado headband merits a detailed description. Fundamentally, the technique of manufacture is the same as that employed in the making of the California specimens: the central tail feathers of the Red-shafted Flicker, Colaptes cafer collaris, have been trimmed of thei vanes so as to leave the red-orange shaft or quill bare for about 8 cm. of the total feather length of about 12.5 cm. The remaining untrimmed 4.5 cm. of the feather at the distal end forms a roughly diamond-shaped tuft. The trimmed feathers, placed side by side, form a continuous elongated mat of quills. The Mantles cave band is 58.5 cm. long, and contains 370 or more feathers, which would have required some 60 birds. The quills are arranged so that their ventral or undersurface portions face the front of the headdress-i.e., the surface not in contact with the wearer's head. The quills are held together by two horizontal threads of sinew, which pass through perforations which pierce each quill at two points below the diamond-shaped tuft. The uppermost of these threads stops 14 cm. from the right end, and 12 cm. from the left end of the band, in terms of the wearer's right and left. The lower thread runs the whole length of the band. The quills are also anchored by the basal binding strips. Along the front edge of the band this consists of a trimming of ermine, made from the pelts of three weasels (Mustela frenata, probably nevadensis) in winter pelage, averaging 2.25 to 2.50 cm. in width. Along the back edge is a buckskin backing strip, of the same width as the ermine band, which would be in contact with the wearer's forehead. These strips hold the bases of the row of quills between them, and they are firmly united by stout sinew lashings a about 1 cm. intervals, both along the lower edge of the headdress and along the upper laptes cafer collaris, have b en trimmed of ir vanes so as to leave the r d-orange shaft 147 HEWES]