Collection: Directories and Documents > Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection

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Title: The Nisenan Photographs of Alexander W. Chase (2016) Collection Type: Directories and Documents Collection Name: Tanis Thorne Native Californian & Nisenan Collection Author: Thomas C. Blackburn Published: 2016 Source(s): Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Vol 36, No. 2 # of Pages: 15 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2024-08-27 14:53:02 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 05:53:18 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 05:53:18

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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322 Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropelogy . Vol. 36, Ho. 2 (2016) The men in the next two figures can neither be identified nor clearly assigned to a specific time or place, although both are possibly Nisenan and both are probably chiefs. I would again argue that early photographers would have been most strongly (and understandably) inclined to focus on capturing images of those individuals—such as chiefs—that held the most clearly recognizable and important social positions in native communities. The young man in Figure 8 is wearing European-style clothing, but is holding a skin quiver of arrows and has what appears to be a rather elaborate cloth hairnet or head covering held im place by a fancy hairpin. In 1978, Palmquist (1978:163) believed this to be the sole surviving pre-1860 daguerreotype of a California Indian. Figure 9 is an 1880 woodcut, clearly based on an earlier daguerreotype, that depicts a man holding a bow and some arrows. He is wearing a necklace consisting of a single strand of beads from which a series of rectangular abalone bangles are suspended, and his hair is covered by a bead-decorated woven net. I find the frequent reoccurrence of particular items of apparel—such as elaborate hairnets, decorated hairpins, and necklaces consisting of rectangular abalone bangles—in these images interesting and suggestive, although certainly not definitive. All of the men depicted are clearly wealthy and important individuals, and most can be identified as chiefs. With the exception of the men in Figure 5, all are shown in more quotidian than formal or ceremonial contexts, so the items of regalia that are being wom were not apt to be reserved for use on special occasions only, though they may have been restricted in their use in other ways. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic data on the subject, unfortunately, are sparse and sporadically distributed in both time and space, although they do provide some useful clues. West of the Sacramento Valley, most of our information on early nineteenth-century Indian dress and adornment comes from visitors to the various mission communities established by the Spanish and tends to be rather generalized; native social distinctions are usually ignored or not explicitly addressed. Extant images from the period, such as those of Louis Choris, tend either to show men dressed in elaborate, formal dance costumes or in everyday mission garb, although both Choris and Mikhail Tikhanov did depict a few group scenes involving more mundane activities such as hunting or gambling. One remarkable 1818 watercolor by Tikhanov is particularly interesting; it depicts the death of a Coast Miwok chief at Bodega Bay and the possible investiture of another (Fig. 10). A man in the foreground of the picture—perhaps the chief-to-be? —is holding an elaborate feather headdress that may have been a symbol of chiefly rank; he is also wearing what appears to be a beaded haimet and hairpin (Hudson and Bates 2015:Fig. 7.6, p. 118). Later ethnographic information indicates that among the Pomo, both men and women commonly wore hairnets and hairpins, although elaborate, beaded hairnets and fancy hairpins similar to those present in early nineteenth-century Russian collections (see Hudson and Bates 2015:126-32) were apparently worn only by members of the secret society on special occasions (Loeb 1926:156-157, 270). For the Sacramento Valley and Sierra foothills, where most of the later mid-nineteenth-century images under discussion originate, we have only a handful of pertinent comments. C. Hart Merriam, for example, briefly noted (1967) that among the Choohelmemsel Patwin, several types of men’s haimmets were recognized and employed in different contexts: Hair net for men. Ordinary kind, kit-te’-ko; for rich people, buk-cher-ro; beaded and very valuable, hisse’cher-ro. During the ceremonies the leader of the dance wears a headdress called poo’-ta, the crown piece of which is of the white down of the snow goose. The occiput piece, called li’-e, projects backward from the back of the head and consists of a dense bunch or large rosette of tail feathers of the magpie, wom horizontally (pointing backward). The leader of the dance also wears on each side of his head a forked feather pin standing out sideways. This consists of two white feathers (sometimes three), each five or six inches in length, attached to a wooden pin [Merriam 1967272]. Among the Sierra Miwok, Barrett and Gifford (1933) also observed significant variations in the use of hairnets and hairpins: The hair net..was worn for dancing, gambling, and when wishing to be dressed up about the house. It was not worn when hunting. Sometimes young women wore the hair net, when dressed for dancing, but it was not worn by old women. The chief might wear daily a hair net, sometimes a beaded one. Other men usually did not wear a hair net daily, as this was regarded as the chief's privilege [1933:223]. The feather plume..consisted of feathers tied upon a stick about a foot long and about the diameter