Necklace Of Shell Discs
date: label: Accession Date
content: 4 Jun 1952
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. William N. Fenton
label: Donor Name
content: Bureau Of American Ethnology
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "Consists of long double strands of small flat beads of shell, Marginella (Rehder) and "possibly some of bone". Strung on double thread of white cotton and cross tied with blue and green ribbons. Quotation from Mr. Fenton's memorandum. "50 Necklace of shell discs placed about candidates neck in the Tutelo Ceremony (Published as frontspiece of F. G. Speck, Tutelo Spirit Adoption Ceremony, 1942). Obtained in January, 1941, from Mrs. Charles Silversmith (Cayuga) who is ceremonially an Onondaga of the Six Nations Reserve, Canada, by William N. Fenton, for $25. This necklace is believed by the Cayugas to be one of several which were carried northward by the Tutelo on their migration from Virginia to join the Six Nations in New York State in 1753, and the modern Cayuga believe the beads are made of human bone; actually they are shell. (See Rehder's testimony and slides.)"
label: Notes
content: Illus. Fig. 144, p. 120 in Allan, Stuart, and Sylvia S. Kasprycki. 2013. On the trails of the Iroquois Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 22 March to 4 August 2013 ; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 18 October 2013 to 6 January 2014 ; [on the occasion of the Exhibition On the Trails of the Iroquois ... organized by the Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn]. Berlin: Nicolai. Described on p. 121 as: "Necklace for the Tutelo Spirit Adoption Ceremony; marginella shells, cotton yarn, cloth ribbons, 61 x 3 cm. In the eighteenth century the Tutelo, a Siouan-speaking people from the Virginia-North Carolina border region, fled from their homes and were adopted into the League of the Haudenosaunee "under the wings of the Cayuga." One of their ceremonies, in which the soul of a deceased person is once again brought back and in his stead another person is adopted into the group, has survived into the twentieth century (Speck 1942). The necklace was thought to be one that the Tutelo brought with them from the south."
label: Record Last Modified
content: 7 Jul 2021
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Six Nations Reserve, Ontario, Canada, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Iroquois (Haudenosaunee), Onondaga
label: Culture
content: Tutelo
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 192830
label: USNM Number
content: E391953-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Necklace