Franz Boas obtained these two masks around the time of his 1894 fieldwork in the Kwagu’ł village of Tsaxis (Fort Rupert). The masks share dark brown and red coloration, flat mouths, flaring nostrils, and recurved beaks or snouts. Boas was drawn to them because they resembled hamsamł (“Crooked Beak”) masks associated with the Kwakwaka’wakw Hamat̕sa or “Cannibal Dance,” which he initially saw performed in Berlin in 1885 (Fig. 1) and in Chicago in 1893, and then first experienced in situ in Fort Rupert.¹ Boas likely purchased the mask on the left (AMNH 16/963) from curio dealer John J. Hart in Victoria in September 1894, before he journeyed to Fort Rupert.² He bought the slightly smaller mask on the right (AMNH 16/1102) from Victoria dealer Samuel Kirschberg in 1896 after becoming a curator for the American Museum of Natural History.³

During and after his 1894 trip, Boas was eager to collect pieces from different groups that practice similar cannibal-themed ceremonies.⁴ He aimed to use such objects, oral histories, and observational data to trace the historical movement of Cannibal Dance forms and ideas between communities, a topic treated extensively in the 1897 book. Boas may have been particularly interested in the first mask because it is Heiltsuk in style. This group, whose territory is to the north of the Kwakwaka’wakw, transferred many Hamat̕sa prerogatives to the Kwagu’ł and other bands through marriage and war.⁵ These findings supported Boas’s theory of a northern origin for the Cannibal Dances.

In the book, Boas includes photographs of the first mask in Plate 30. The caption associates it with Baxwbakwalanuxwsiwe’, the man-eating spirit that possesses Kwakwaka’wakw Hamat̕sa (as well as Heiltsuk Tanis) initiates.⁶ However, Boas’s description for Plate 30 mistakenly includes the length and catalog number of the second, smaller mask. In the AMNH catalog, Boas listed the smaller mask as belonging to the Nuxalk, the eastern neighbors of the Heiltsuk.

The mistake in the bookplate caption underscores the complexities of diffusion that Boas sought to reconstruct. Heiltsuk and Nuxalk Cannibal Dance ceremonies, for example, differ in fundamental ways even though they use similar-looking regalia. Heiltsuk “Crooked Beak” masks represent the hungry supernatural bird attendants of Baxwbakwalanuxwsiwe’, and are worn high on the forehead, as with Kwakwaka’wakw Hamat̕sa masks (see Fig. 1). The dancer clacks the mouth open and shut using a string mechanism, which the Heiltsuk mask on the left features. The Nuxalk, on the other hand, use bird carvings with curved beaks as salhpstas, a type of regalia held at the initiate’s abdomen, not worn on the forehead.⁷ In ceremony, a hinged jaw allows a dramatic simulation of the cannibalistic spirit vomiting consumed flesh.⁸

It is not clear whether Kirschberg knew that the smaller mask came from the Nuxalk or if Boas proposed the attribution alone. If it was indeed used by the Nuxalk, it may have served as a salhpsta, as it lacks the rigging for a dancer to secure it to the head while clacking the mouth.⁹ It also shares some features with a Nuxalk salhpsta that Boas had collected in 1886 and published in the 1897 volume (Fig. 2).

Intriguingly, the smaller mask on the right also has some stylistic attributes that are more commonly Heiltsuk, which may help explain why Boas confused the two masks; in research for this exhibition, consultants from the Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, and Kwakwaka’wakw noted the shape of the mask’s eyes and planes as well as the parallel dashes on the brows and nasal bridge.¹⁰ Since Nuxalk and Heiltsuk people have long been connected through co-residence and intermarriage, and have hired each others’ carvers, the smaller mask could represent a transcultural object.¹¹ Without firm provenance for the two masks, it is difficult to assert exactly what they are or how they were used.

Hunt’s 1920s revisions to the 1897 bookplate raise even further questions. Hunt asserts that the pictured mask is a galukwiwe’, which means “Crooked Beak” in Kwak̓wala (Fig. 3).¹² He also states that it “belong” (sic) to the Wuikinuxv, a group centrally located between the Nuxalk, Heiltsuk, and Kwakwaka’wakw. Oral histories document both the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv as originators of the Cannibal Dance among the Kwakwaka’wakw. Hunt’s comment is unclear; did he mean that this particular mask had once belonged to the Wuikinuxv, or only that rights to such masks trace to these northern neighbors? In the ambiguities involved in these two Central Coast objects, we can see both Boas and Hunt working out problems of transfer and adaptation that still occupy researchers and community members to this day.