This rattle, a contemporary version of one collected by Franz Boas (Fig. 1), represents one of the interpretive complexities of Kwakwaka’wakw art. Boas and Hunt’s collection, publication, and revision records do not always agree as to its significance, and such rattles are no longer in ceremonial use. Stylistically, it seems to be a unique variation on the canonical and regionally widespread raven rattles, which often feature a reclining humanoid figure sharing a tongue with another creature (Fig. 2).¹ Instead, this distinctive rattle has a human skull carved on its back and an iconographically ambiguous face painted on its belly. An oval piece of copper (now missing) was once clearly visible in the raven’s mouth, as indicated by the rattle’s illustration in Boas’s 1897 book as well as a drawing on its extant catalog card (Fig. 3).² Boas also illustrated a very similar rattle collected in 1881 by Johan Adrian Jacobsen, which still retains its copper mouthpiece (Fig. 4). Since some raven rattles from the northern coast are thought to depict the widespread story of Raven stealing the sun, perhaps the copper disk was derived from this narrative element.

Boas likely purchased his rattle in Alert Bay in 1886, during his first coastal fieldwork, and then sold it to Berlin’s Royal Ethnographical Museum.³ Regarding the distinctive imagery of both his and Jacobsen’s rattles, Boas wrote that “the skull indicates that the hamats’a is filled with the desire of eating skulls,” and he asserted that they were used by the Kankalatłala, a female attendant of the Hamat̕sa (Cannibal Dancer) who helps to tame him out of his wild state. Based on consultations at the World’s Columbian Exposition, when Boas likely showed troupe members his own drawing of the rattle (Fig. 5), he also connected it with a particular Kankalatłala song belonging to the ’Namgis of Alert Bay.⁴ Although historic and contemporary Hamat̕sa attendants typically shake round rattles decorated with painted or carved skulls, Kwakwaka’wakw consultants today report no known use of raven rattles in this context.

In fact, George Hunt’s revisions to the 1897 text contradict Boas’s attribution, declaring that these rattles (yadan in Kwak̓wala) were used—in sets of 12 or 24—in a completely separate prerogative known as “The Rattle Dance” (Hayatalał). In his notes written in the 1920s (featured above), Hunt detailed how this dance was transferred in marriage from the Gusgimaxw people of Quatsino Sound to the Kwagu’ł of Fort Rupert; a decade later, Hunt suggested that the dance originated among the Nuu-chah-nulth neighbors of the Gusgimaxw, and he revealed the marriage in question to have been that of Xwani and Malidi—two of the troupe members who went to the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.⁵ What is so striking in both generations of Hunt’s notes is the consistency and expanding detail of his information, although it is not easy to harmonize with Boas and Jacobsen’s (internally confusing) collection data or Boas’s published account. Because skull imagery is common on masks and other regalia used in the Hamat̕sa, Boas may have assumed rather than documented this connection. Or perhaps we have another case where similar material forms spread between villages but were adapted to different, local prerogatives.⁶

Because the use and knowledge of these distinctive rattles ceased in the twentieth century, people today debate its identity and the archival records in order to enable a revival. The Boas 1897 Critical Edition project team is working with Indigenous community members to disentangle the material and textual record. In the meantime, Kwakwaka’wakw carver Wayne Alfred created the version featured here based on photographs of the original. He also worked with young apprentices in Alert Bay to produce additional rattles for the “set” as identified by Hunt. These will enter U’mista Cultural Centre’s Loan Collection for the use of families that can demonstrate historic ties to the Rattle Dance as its history comes into clearer view.

By Avery Schroeder and Aaron Glass