Gikamł
Chief's Dzunuk´wa Mask
Catalogue Information
Provenance
Owned by Sam Scow 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 some of them to the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, on long-term loan from the National Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). They remained in the possession of the ROM until the NMM pulled its loan and returned the pieces to the Nuyumbalees and U'mista cultural societies in 1988.
Materials
Wood, Red Cedar; Paint; Fur; Sapling, Spruce; Hair, Human; Fabric; Metal, Nails
Dimensions
31.0 cm x 23.5 cm x 15.0 cm
Accession Number
88.06.012
Physical Description
Gikamł - Chief’s Dzunuk´wa Mask carved from red cedar and mainly covered in black graphite paint. The eyebrows, mustache, goatee appear to be strips of grizzly bear fur. Fragments of bundles of human hair remain along the top edge that were obviously longer strands at one time. Oval depressions on the sides of the forehead represent the temples of the forest giant. Indentations on both outer sides of the eye sockets as well as the cheeks make the face sunken and dramatic. The eyelids, eyes, nostrils, cheeks and lips are painted with red vermilion. The overall mask is coloured with graphite black and must have held a wonderful sheen when it was polished. The back of the mask has a cage that is probably made of spruce saplings to fit around the Chief’s head when in use. This is the old style of rigging for mask-wearing. Black, vermillion.