Frog Faces
Frog Faces - Wild-Man of the Woods Costume
The Bak´was performer holds his forearm up to hide his masked face from observers. This particular costume includes carved gloves on hands, lizards down the arm, the Sisiyutł as a belt, frogs on the kneecaps, snakes down the legs. The Bak´was mask to the left completes this costume.
Owner
Arthur Bondsound, Kwikwasut´inuxw (Gilford Island)
Creator
Xi’xa’niyus, Bob Harris
Catalogue Information
Provenance
Owned by Bondsound until its forced surrender to Indian Agent William Halliday on March 25, 1922. Halliday later displayed and photographed the seized pieces at the Parish Hall in Alert Bay. After doing an inventory, he crated the items in June, and at the end of September he shipped them to Edward Sapir at the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). They remained the property of the NMM until their repatriation by the U’mista and Nuyumbalees Cultural Societies in 1979.
Materials
Wood; Paint; Feathers
Accession Number
80.01.161 a&b
Physical Description
Frog kneecap decorations (a, b) for a Bak´was costume. Kneecaps are decorated with carved and painted frog faces. The face is painted mostly black with red lips and green around the eyes, white paint delineates all of the design. The left frog is damaged, a piece of the right side broke off. The feathers attached to the top of the mask are tied on with black string. Green, black, red, white.