Scratcher "Kanuga"
date: label: Accession Date
content: 6 Dec 1888
name: label: Collector
content: Mr. James Mooney
label: Donor Name
content: Bureau Of American Ethnology
notes: label: Notes
content: From card: "7 teeth. Their sacred number. Used in ball playing to scratch the limbs to make them supple. Splinters of leg bone of turkey set in a quill. See Mooney Notes on Nos. 135011 and 130484." From old late 19th or early 20th century U.S. National Museum exhibit label filed with card: "Scratcher (kanuga) - Has seven (Cherokee mystic number) teeth, carefully polished, and sharpened at one end. Teeth 1 1/2 inches long. The teeth are mounted in a small square frame made from a turkey quill, and bound in place by cotton cord wrapping. Cherokee Indians, Eastern Cherokee Reservation, North Carolina. Collected by James Mooney. Used to scratch the limbs and bodies of ball players in order to cause bleeding, which is supposed to produce suppleness."
label: Notes
content: Illus. Pl. 17 (top), after page 180 in Krutak, Lars F., and Aaron Deter-Wolf. 2018. Ancient ink: the archaeology of tattooing. Seattle: University of Washington Press. See pp. 200 - 201 in chapter titled "Scratching the Surface: Mistaken Identifications of Tattoo Tools from Eastern North America" by Aaron Deter-Wolf, Benoit Robitaille, and Isaac Walters.
label: Record Last Modified
content: 21 Aug 2023
label: Specimen Count
content: 1
place: label: Place
content: Not Given, Eastern Cherokee Reservation, North Carolina, United States, North America
topic: label: Topic
content: Ethnology
culture: label: Culture
content: Cherokee
setName: label: See more items in
content: Anthropology
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: NMNH - Anthropology Dept.
identifier: label: Accession Number
content: 021450
label: USNM Number
content: E130488-0
objectType: label: Object Type
content: Scratcher