Crest Hat
date: label: Accession Date
content: 12 Sep 1903
label: Collection Date
content: 1903
name: label: Collector
content: Lt. George T. Emmons
label: Donor Name
content: Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Twined weaving; totemic whale painted on the body. Raven head carved from wood and painted, afixed to top of hat." For small illustration (hat only, not the raven head carving) see Hat 107, p. 221 in Glinsmann, Dawn. 2006. Northern Northwest Coast spruce root hats. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2006. Glinsmann identifies the hat as of Haida manufacture.
label: Notes
content: Accession record 41512 calls this "Chilkat straw [sic] hat and raven's head", and also, more correctly, identifies it as a painted spruce root hat. See also accession file for Accession 41221, which contains information about objects from several Emmons accessions. It appears to contain information about hat # E221177? It may be the hat referred to on a list at the end of that file as "Spruce root dance hat painted with wooden bird on top from Metlakatla, Annette Island [Alaska]."
label: Notes
content: This object is on loan to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, from 2010 through 2027.
label: Notes
content: 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=296 , retrieved 12-30-2011: Crest hat This woven spruce-root crest hat is topped with the wooden head of Raven, yet the design painted on the crown is the Killer Whale, a crest belonging to the Eagle moiety. The combination of symbols from opposing moieties on a single hat is rare. It might represent trade with the Haida, where this combination is allowed, or mockery of an unpaid Raven debt to social opposites. Even more rarely a child may be given permission to use a crest of his grandfather's clan, always of the opposite moiety, creating a mix of designs.
label: Notes
content: Listed on page 41 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".
label: Notes
content: From 2008 Anthropology Conservation Lab treatment report by Landis Smith: The hat is twined, left to right from the center of the top of the hat, and finished with a braided edge. The top of the hat and sides are woven in a plain twine; the wide brim is woven in a chevron design using a weft over double warp, alternating with weft over single warp. An interior head band was woven into the structure of the hat. This headband was trimmed along the bottom edge with a striped cotton cloth. There is another piece of multi-colored cloth sewn into the striped headband trim, and covers the top of the hat where the crown of a person's head would go. Red tradecloth (heavy flannel) ties are sewn to the interior head band to be tied under the chin. The neck and head of a raven is carved from what appears to be red cedar. The base of the neck is slightly convex to fit on top of the hat. There are pairs of holes visible on each side of the exterior of the base of the neck; these connect to two pairs of holes seen on the base of the carving. Lashings were drawn through these holes to secure the carving to the stop of the hat. The raven is open-beaked with a pronounced tongue, large black eyes and squared off ears: The raven head and neck are painted black with red flecking. The interior of the beak, tongue, nostrils and interiors of the ears are painted red. The eyes are black with white paint around them. There is a band of green across the base of the beak and around the eyes; this area is slightly recessed. There is a white, filled-in U shape on each cheek.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 10 Feb 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Alaska, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Tlingit, Chilkat
label: Culture
content: Haida (?)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 041512
label: USNM Number
content: E221177-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Hat
physicalDescription: label: Length - Object
content: 43 cm