While in Fort Rupert, Franz Boas hired a photographer to document numerous ceremonies featuring oratory, feasting, dancing, and gift distribution. Plate 10 in the 1897 volume is said to illustrate one particular ritual during which a Copper was sold. Woolen Hudson’s Bay Company trade blankets are piled high as a sign of chiefly status before being paid out to the assembled witnesses. Archival negatives show that the book illustration—a painting by German artist Wilhelm Kuhnert—is actually a composite of four source photographs that may have been taken at different events. Like many of Boas’s ethnographic descriptions, this image represents an idealized view.