Engraved woodblock of a "Haida medicine rattle": Museum Object and Cultural History

The object in the museum catalogue

This engraved woodblock of a “Haida medicine rattle” was prepared by the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C.; the image was published as Plate XXII.50 (p.189) in an article by William Healey Dall (1845-1927) entitled “On Masks, Labrets, and Certain Aboriginal Customs with an Inquiry into the Bearing of Their Geographical Distribution” in the Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, 1881-82. According to the annual report, the mask shows “the shaman, frog, and kingfisher with continuous tongues.” The image was drawn from a “specimen obtained by J. G. Swan [(1818-1900)] at Port Townsend, W. T. from a Queen Charlotte Island Haida.”

Materials, dates and provenance

• date made: 1884
• publisher: Bureau of American Ethnology
• printer: Government Printing Office
• author: Dall, William H.
• Object Name: block
• Object Type: Wood Engraving
• Physical Description: wood (overall material)
• Physical Description: engraving (overall production method/technique)
• Measurements: overall: 14 cm x 5.2 cm x 2.3 cm; 5 1/2 in x 2 1/16 in x 7/8 in
• place made: United States: District of Columbia, Washington
• Subject: Native Americans
• Subject: Music
• ID Number: 1980.0219.1294
• catalog number: 1980.0219.1294
• accession number: 1980.0219
• Data Source: National Museum of American History

Sources and reuse

Catalogue descriptions and facts adapted from National Museum of American History through the Smithsonian's official Open Access dataset. This record explicitly marks its metadata CC0 1.0; formatting and selection have been changed.