Hats from the Nootka Sound Region

Abstract

IN the early days of the New England whaling industry the sailors brought back as mementoes many valuable ethnological objects from the Pacific islands and the northwestern coast of America. Much of this material found its way into the cabinets of the older societies of Boston, Salem, and other New England towns. The Peabody Museum of Harvard University has acquired a number of these old ethnological collections, either whole or in part, including that of the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Marine Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Boston Museum. The few objects in these collections from the northwest coast are of great value, illustrating as some of them do phases of the arts which have become extinct or much modified. Among the objects received from these societies are eight hats of the type illustrated upon Plate I, a style of head covering very rarely found in museums or private collections. It is probable that this form of hat originated among the southern Wakashan tribes, probably the Nootkas, although Lewis and Clark found them on the lower Columbia in I605 at Fort Clatsop and thus described them (p. 768).1 We gave a fish-hook also in exchange for one of their hats, These hats are made of cedar-bark and bear grass interwoven together in the form of a European hat with a small brim of about two inches and a high crown widening upwards. They are light, ornamented with various colors and figures.. . These hats form a small article of traffic with the whites, and their manufacture is one of the best exertions of Indian industry. And again on page 777, writing of the dress of the women: ,The only covering for their head is a hat made of bear grass 1 History of Lewis and Clark Expedition. Edited by Elliott Coues. Vol. ii. 65