Tsimshian Headdress Frontlet

Native oral history relates that ermine skin headdresses and their frontlets were first created among the Tsimshian, who also created the first raven rattles and certain other iconic ceremonial objects. Amhalayt is the name for the headdress and frontlet in Simoyget, the Tsimshian language. In addition to being a symbol of wealth and its requisite high social status, the ensemble was a dancing headpiece, not just a pretty hat. The frontlet is made to be attached to a lightweight wooden frame, on which is fastened downy bird skin, white ermine pelts, and upright seal lion whiskers. At the outset of the dance performance, a handful of loose eagle down is placed on top of the headpiece within the circle of whiskers. When the dancer rhythmically shakes their head to the song accompaniment, the down separates and drifts slowly to the ground. This is a sign of peace that prepares the area to receive high-ranking guests in the best manner possible. The performance is sometimes referred to in English as the “Peace dance” or “Feather dance”, and its enactment is a culturally important and solemn event.

The most striking element of this fine old frontlet is the broad rim, textured with finely cut, parallel grooves. This kind of fine grooving is an ancient Northwest Coast surface technique that appears to predate the development of formline relief carving and can still be seen on the rims of some carved bowls and bent-corner dishes. Within the history of headdress frontlets, it predates the proliferation of abalone shell inlay pieces on the rim. Some rare frontlets started out with grooved rims that were subsequently inlaid with shell. This example was evidently made in a time when blue-green abalone shell (Haliotis fulgens), imported from Mexico and California, was still quite rare. Hence only certain places on the sculptural forms received shell inlays; the hands, forearms, knees, eyes, teeth, and nostril flares of the larger figure and the nostril flares, eyes, ears and teeth of the wolf-like subsidiary figure. Some of these locations once had shell inlay that has since fallen out, like the nostril flares and knees of the main figure.

Without inside information, the identity of the primary figure on this frontlet remains unknown. The subsidiary wolf is carved the same way a full-sized mask would be in Tsimshian style, with a long, slim snout and elongated eyesockets. The primary figure, a humanoid form with arms, legs, hands and feet, displays an essentially flat-design style face; surrounded by a broad black formline that dips between the eyesockets, red cheek designs and lips. The center of the face attains dimensionality by the raising of the black nose, while the slightly open mouth bends around to the level of the cheek designs and continues smoothly back to the perimeter formline at the rear of the head. The large cheek designs are simple, unembellished forms, a style seen in box and chest designs of the eighteenth century and earlier; later formline-enclosed cheek designs of the nineteenth century would be divided up further into small formline complexes.

Steven C. Brown