Headring
date: label: Accession Date
content: 23 Feb 1895
name: label: Collector
content: Dr. Franz Boas
label: Donor Name
content: Columbia University
notes: label: Notes
content: FROM CARD: "OF DANCE OF GHOST. ILLUS. IN USNM REPT, 1895; FIG. 146; P. 497."
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: Per Dr. Aaron Glass, 2020: The ghosts were/are one of the spirit beings that initiate Kwakwaka'wakw T'seka (Winter Ceremonial or Red Cedar Bark Ceremonies) dancers. The Ghost Dance is not so much a dance enacting ghosts, but by people enacting ancestral encounters with ghosts that bestowed hereditary rights to the dances/songs. Some Ghost Dance rings have carved skulls, indicating the encounter with ghosts (dead humans), and in this sense can be hard to distinguish from Hamat'sa (Cannibal Dance) regalia that also sometimes feature carved skulls. Ghost dancers often cover their faces with shrouds of some kind (the Berlin head ring has a curtain of shredded cedar bark that covers the face), and they also cover their face with their hands as the characteristic choreographic gesture. Though the dancers wear rings and not masks, I have seen contemporary Ghost Dance masks that appear like skulls and have hair covering the faces. The dance is still passed down to some families, though it is not terribly common. Some information on the Ghost Dance can be found in Boas's 1897 "Social Organization and Secret Societies" book (pg. 408: an origin story; pg. 482: description of the dance itself and its regalia and song; pg. 497: figures of the 2 rings in question; pg. 499 has a list of Ft. Rupert dances in ranking order, and it is #44 of 53). There is no specific cultural sensitivity around the dance or regalia due to the association with ghosts, at least that I have ever heard of.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 8 Apr 2022
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: British Columbia, Canada, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw)
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 029057
label: USNM Number
content: E169115-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Head Ring