ANGLO-EUROPEAN MALE FIGURE (POSSIBLY A MISSIONARY)
Hood Museum of Art | bone, wood | collected between 1820-1860 by "an old sea captain"
Image Credit: Hood Museum of Art
SATIRE AND ITS STAKES
Reading Haida Ivory Carving as Anti-Colonial Resistance
At first glance, this figure appears unhappy. Cold, perhaps? Frustrated? Second-guessing his life choices, maybe?
Listed on the Hood Museum of Art’s web page under “humor,” this object is intended to send a message. Its sturdy base is made of wood, which parts into two ungainly legs, an unwieldy torso dressed in a tightly wrapped coat, and a hood held close to the settler’s unhearing ears. Its head, the blinding white of polished ivory, is carved into a gaunt face, with blank eyes, a severe nose, and the largest possible frown.
Archaeological evidence suggests that, for upwards of a thousand years, ivory has been used in Alaskan Native communities for creating hunting and fishing tools, household utensils, decorative toys, and culturally important figurines (Sheldon Jackson Museum 2018). Obtained by “an old sea captain” sometime between 1820 and 1860 as a gift for General John Hewston, this ivory joke might have gone over the collector’s head. Still, though its dimensions are unlisted, this particular statuette might have been effective as either a one-foot or a one-inch tall object – just imagine the face of a pedantic missionary upon seeing it as he preaches to members of the Haida community!
Consider, too, though, the severe stakes. For instance, though his time in Alaska came after the creation of this imitation of his forebears, Sheldon Jackson, for whom a large museum of Alaskan Native artifacts in Sitka is named, is famous not only for collecting such artifacts, but also for working as a Presbyterian missionary to suppress the use of Indigenous languages (The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica 2022). At a time when boarding schools became a popular method of violently uprooting, Christianizing, and, ultimately “civilizing” Indigenous children (and during the violent precursors to American territorial rule) this humorous depiction takes on new significance.
That the Haida used bone (likely walrus ivory) in order to resist social forces of such magnitude and importance in the mid-19th-century renders it more likely that they and other Alaskan Native communities might have created ivory cribbage boards as something more than a souvenir item in the late 19th century; perhaps these objects of carved animalia, too, are political statements. Maybe the makers of those inscribed boards are saying: even amidst the violence of colonization, we will adapt, inscribing our world into bone and sending it across the globe, creatively applying our skills to thrive even as you attempt to erase and replace us.
REFERENCES
Sheldon Jackson Museum. “October 2018 Artifact of the Month.” Alaska State Archives, Libraries, and Museums, 2018: https://lam.alaska.gov/press/releases/october-artifact-of-the-month
The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica . "Sheldon Jackson.” Encyclopedia Britannica, May 14, 2022: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sheldon-Jackson. Accessed 5 June 2022.here.