NUU-CHAH-NULTH HAND CLUB

George Terasaki, New York

Steven C. Brown, Transfigurations: North Pacific Coast Art. George Terasaki, Collector, Seattle, 2006, n.p., pl. 92

Wooden clubs were carved with a wide range of imagery over the entire Northwest Coast and were employed in fishing and sea mammal hunting as a means of final dispatch of the quarry. Some of the oldest surviving wooden clubs were recovered a the Ozette archaeological site on the Washington coast, where a mudslide inundated an ancient village between 300 and 500 years ago. Wooden clubs of many sizes were found there, each with a unique sculptural image in its form. Several of those clubs were carved of Pacific yew wood, as well may be this example. Yew trees have dense and wonderfully carveable reddish heart wood that is an excellent material for such a purpose. The range of sculptural imagery in the ancient Ozette clubs varies from ones exhibiting seal-human transfigurations to another that is either an owl or an octopus head. The wide variety suggests that their individual owners selected whatever depiction was suitable to them, as the range of designs does not seem to reflect images drawn from family lineage prerogatives.

The image of a hand and ball appears in many areas of the world, and has found expression on the Northwest Coast in a number of hunting clubs of this kind. The earliest documented Northwest Coast example was acquired during Captain James Cook’s third voyage, which included several weeks spent in Nootka Sound, Vancouver Island. That club is the same length as this one, but not as stout through the handle, and shows more naturalistic development in the fingers and joints of the hand. It was later housed in the collection of the Leverian Museum, London, until the contents of the museum were dispersed in 1806. Once owned by George Terasaki, that club is now in the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver (acc. no. 2945/1).

The fingers of the hand on this club are much simpler and more archaic in appearance than those of the Cook club. The handgrip end features a small ball that would help to keep the club in the user’s grasp. Both spheres and the hand display the kind of fine tool marks arranged in neat rows that also appear on the Nuu-chah-nulth chest (see lot 52). This centuries-old pan-coastal surface treatment is seen on a wide range of objects, and along with the archaic sculptural style of this club, suggests an early historic period origin.

Steven C. Brown