- 18
A Magnificent Tsimshian Polychromed Wood Face Mask
Description
Catalogue Note
For information on the early collection history of Northwest Coast masks see Holm and Reid, 1975, pp. 13-14: “Most of the fine, old pieces...were picked up by sailors between 1778 and 1830 and taken back to England or Boston to become the delight of antiquarians and the wonder of schoolboys.
By 1820, the demand for curios had created a souvenir industry. Great quantities were turned out. The Northwest Coast people had known luxury during the height of the sea-otter trade and were reluctant to give it up. Curios were a poor substitute for sea-otter pelts, but there was little else to trade.
The first serious collector on the Northwest Coast was Captain James Cook who gathered ethnographic materials as part of his general fact-finding endeavors... in 1778.”
Also see, King, 1979, pp. 23, 26 – 31: “A very large percentage of the surviving portrait masks [were] collected before 1870, and their carving and sale must be understood in the context of the rapid disintegration of Indian institutions at this time. Masks were collected in several different ways before 1870, and these activities determine what is known of their manufacture and significance. In the earliest period masks were traded, for instance, to Cook because the Nootka were anxious to obtain metal. With the extension of trade it seems probable that only ceremonially insignificant items were regularly traded to American and European sea captains. No doubt important sea captains were still able to obtain, or were presented with, objects considered significant by the Indians.
The Canadian artist, Paul Kane, made sketches showing masks from a number of tribes at Fort Victoria in 1847; George Catlin perhaps acquired the human face masks for his London exhibition of the 1840s from a similar trading company source. Another sailor who was able to purchase masks on the Columbia River, 100 miles west of Fort Vancouver, was Lieutenant Charles Wilkes who led the United States Exploring Expedition of 1838 – 42. Under those circumstances it is not surprising therefore that masks of this early period are poorly understood by anthropologists. It is this, and the sensitivity of the carving, which has given rise to the frequent claim that many of them are portraits. Franz Boas, the greatest anthropologist of the Northwest Coast, arrived in 1886 with photographs and drawings of masks whose significance he wanted to ascertain. He discovered that it was seldom possible to find the exact significance of individual masks unless he visited the village from which they came. This was partly because masks were made for the use of particular individuals who gave them their meaning, and partly because masks were traded from village to village and tribe to tribe and in this process their meaning was liable to change or become lost.
It was the masks... on which the greatest ingenuity, care and attention were lavished. Of the many different types it was those depicting the human face which were at once the simplest and the most sophisticated. They are simple because the subject-matter is straightforward, and because the technical skill of the carving is apparently uncomplicated. The sophistication of human face masks lies in the understanding of the human form and the artist’s ability to communicate this understanding in a variety of dramatic ways.
Another unusual aspect of these abstract designs when used on masks is that they are rarely symmetrical. This decorative scheme was formalized by the northern tribes, the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian, but its origin probably lies in a little-known earlier art style common to the whole of the Northwest Coast. During the nineteenth century the Southern Kwakiutl, and to a much lesser extent the Nootka, began to adopt the intellectualized design principles of the north.
Facial painting on masks usually represented designs of crests and shamans’ spirits. Among the northern Northwest Coast Indians crests were inherited from real or mythological ancestors in the form of animals. A chief and his family would have a large number of crests, but only the chief would be entitled to wear them all. Most Tlingit human face masks are connected with shamanism rather than with crests and the painting symbolizes, in a very abstract way, an animal or other natural spirit helper. Facial painting, therefore, when transferred onto masks, is another possible way in which portraiture and representation may have been realized.”
Also see Macnair, et. al., 1998, p. 60: “By far the majority of masks collected on the Northwest Coast until about 1850 represent a human face or an animal in anthropomorphic guise…. To date, most of those depicting the human face have been categorized as portrait masks, a term that implies the likeness of the visage of a real person is intended. The sense of skin and underlying musculature evoked by the mask...evokes this as a possibility.
Nisga’a, Gitxsan and Tsimshian masks used in the Naxnox dance series are dramatizations of spirit beings. Many of the masks represent human frailties such as conceit..., pride, stupidity, avarice, sloth and arrogance. Some categorize social groups such as old people, members of rival tribes, intruders or white men. Others depict an array of animals and celestial objects.”
For information on the genesis of the mask carving tradition see Malin, 1978, p. 41: “The earliest European explorers have left their impressions of the masks and their usage among the Northwest Coast Indians. Since the art was well developed by then, we can assume that masks had been produced for a very long time. So when we speak of their beginnings, we are peering back into prehistory, and there are no records to help us.”
pp. 13 – 14
“The flood of trade items which reached the coast in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries gave the Indians easy access to knives, nails, chisels and axes made of iron. Other materials such as canvas, cloth, buttons, and paints also became available. Traditional, laboriously-made tools for carving were gradually discarded in favor of superior implements or novel materials. Metal tools facilitated carving to the point where demand on the artist’s productivity increased, given the competitive nature of the societies. Artists were spurred to innovate, to astonish and awe the viewers of a patron’s history at an important potlatch. Each effort pushed back horizons of the artist’s perception, and they revealed with increasing clarity and skill the nuances of their assignment. Metal tools unleashed the artist’s capacity to produce more easily, to express bold new ideas, and contrive experiments, which fueled the fires of competition between rival tribes.
More and more apprentices flocked to established carvers to take up the challenge of mask making. A veritable explosion of masks followed. Northwest Coast society crystallized into a culture of specialists: those who carved dugout canoes, others who carved totem poles, those who specialized in box making, household items, ceremonial paraphernalia, and masks and costumes."
For information on the use of masks see Wardwell, 1996, pp. 6-7: “Often, however, when faced with certain undocumented masks, human and animal sculptures, storage boxes and other objects, we can only make educated guesses as to whether they were made for use by shamans.
At times, the intended use of an object can be hypothesized with some certainty. For example, the appearance of specific motifs or animal forms often associated with shamans, such as the depiction of skeletal elements, the land or river otter, the bound witch, the devilfish, and the oystercatcher, can be a reliable indicator. Shamanic connections are also clearly suggested by some odd facial expressions on anthropomorphic masks, including those that depict a trancelike state or represent incipient death, often by drowning. The eyes are shown half closed and looking upward, with the irises partially concealed by the lids, the jaw is slack and a swollen tongue protrudes from a partially open mouth. Another clue to shamanic function is the fact that the eye holes on many of the masks used by Tlingit shamans were not cut through. The shaman often did not actually have to see, as he relied on his assistants to guide him during some performances, while at others he danced within a small prescribed area (de Laguna, 1972, pt. 2, p. 692; Vaughan and Holm, 1982, p. 91, no. 55).”
pp. 80-82
“A number of very realistic depictions of the human face are found among these masks. Some may well be portraits (Holm, 1987b, p. 232), particularly the early, naturalistic, and archaic examples collected by Emmons. These are often accompanied with his notes stating that some of the material recovered had passed through as many as five generations of shamans. These objects would date from the first quarter of the nineteenth century if not earlier. Other masks in this series are idealized depictions of young men and women. Numerous masks of highborn women wearing labrets exist from this period, and most are painted with asymmetrical designs that show the sort of face paintings that were applied on ceremonial occasions.
As mentioned, another series of masks represents the onset of a trance state, with obvious reference to the activities of a shaman. In this group are also those showing incipient death by the use of such stylistic conventions as a thick, protruding tongue, closing eyes and a limp jaw. Those that bear bleeding wounds on the forehead and cheeks depict dying warriors, and may have been used to tell of the success of shamans who had accompanied war parties.
Other masks show men in the process of drowning, a death that was dreaded above all others, because if the body was lost and thus not cremated, the soul was fated to wander the earth forever (Gunther, 1972, p. 141). Many of these masks have the same features as those representing trances, although one group actually depicts the various stages of the change from a human to a land otter.
Shamans themselves are represented by those masks depicting trances and by some examples in which the lips are pursed or the mouths are opened in different positions. The pursed lips could suggest the sucking and blowing that the shaman would perform while curing. For the shaman, the use of the mouth was more important in curing than the laying on of hands (Guédon, 1984b, p. 206). Some masks of shamans with pursed lips are said to have been used to blow the swansdown used in shamanic performances (Emmons, n.d., E396). Such an expression could also represent whistling, which was another method of communication between a shaman and a soul and was sometimes used to summon spirits. Other mouth positions show shamans in the act of talking and singing as they performed.”
For more information on Tsimshian mask carving and the use of masks by the Tsimshian see Carlson, 1976, p. 42-43: “Wingert expressed the character of Tsimshian mask sculpture very well when he wrote, “There is also a strong expression of fleshy forms and tightly drawn surface skin over these bony structures.” The effect of the large orb pressing against the eyelid is really beautifully expressed…. Some of the specific formal details characteristic of Tsimshian sculpture are the pyramidal cheeks, the wide, rounded orb and the eyelids without defining painted or carved rim. A profile of a typical Tsimshian mask…shows the aquiline nose, smoothly rounded forehead and forward thrust of the chin, which is relatively short vertically. The three cheek planes converging on a common point are also characteristically Tsimshian.”
Also see King, 1979, p. 77: “The Tsimshian used masks in much the same way as the Haida. Masks were worn at feasts given by chiefs, in ceremonies performed by shamans and in the performance of winter dances which were almost certainly acquired from the Northern Kwakiutl."
And Malin, 1978, pp. 49–51: “A particularly interesting use of ritual masks is found in the secret societies associated with the Tsimshian, northern Kwakiutl, Bella Coola and southern Kwakiutl tribal divisions. Membership in such organizations cut across clan or lineage lines making many people eligible to join them. Ceremonies were centered around winter activities and were strong unifying forces within the tribe. A proliferation of orders and sub-orders of these societies developed, each with masks associated with special uses and kinds of performance. There were healing societies made up of shaman, there were conjuring societies, war societies, and societies for inducting young people or adults as new members. The initiates in all secret societies were induced into trance-like states for communion with spirits, some of which were terrifying.
…of far greater significance were those masks that belonged to the shaman, the specialists involved in the arts of healing the sick. Shaman or Indian doctors cured illness, and maintained the equilibrium of the tribe in times of acute crisis.
Each shaman’s paraphernalia included masks which he used to cure…. Each shaman had his own curing techniques, rituals, masks, even songs that helped to heal. The masks often portrayed special beings, sometimes known as helpers, in the healing arts.
No two shaman used the same masks because their powers differed. They appeared to have carved their own rather than hiring a carver specialist to create the mask for them. Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribal groups commonly employed the masked shaman for healing rituals…."
And, finally, Brown, 2000, pp. 50–51: “Masks were seen as repositories of supernatural power. This is the case of masks used by Tlingit shamans (shamanic art is prominent in the northern province, especially among the Tlingit). Masks carved to represent animal, bird and human spirits that were controlled by a shaman, and whose power gave him the ability to cure illness, predict the future, or counteract the power of sorcerers are among the most dramatic examples of Northwest Coast art. Other shamanic objects – rattles, amulets, robes and headdresses, for example – are equally evocative and powerful. Haida and Tsimshian shamans used similar wonderful objects in their practice. Their images are enigmatic, typical of shamanic objects, with meanings known clearly only to the individual shamans who owned them. In this respect they are similar to the paraphernalia of southern shamans and characteristic of Northwest Coast religious material in general.
The Tsimshian used masks in dramatic portrayals of inherited spirits called Naxnox. These performances resembled some of the masked dramas of the central coastal tribes. Many masks were used, portraying a great range of spirits, including strange or foreign people, animals and aberrant personalities. Striking illusions, again similar to those created in central coastal ceremonies, were part of the Naxnox performances. Like those other ceremonies, the Naxnox portrayal of spirit power was more truly social than religious in motivation and content.”