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

The Nisenan Photographs of Alexander W. Chase (2016) (15 pages)

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324 Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology . Vol. 36, No.2 (2016) Figure 10. Death of Coast Miwok chief at Bodega Bay, 1818 (Tikhanoy watercolor, after Hudson and Bates 2015:Fig. 7.6). Courtesy of the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. of a lead pencil.. The elaborate feather plumes were employed in dances only, while the ordinary ones were worn daily by chiefs and other men of importance. They were usually worn in pairs, being so placed in the hair as to project forward at an angle from the top of the head [1933:227]. Unfortunately, there is an even greater paucity of ethnographic information on the abalone-bangle necklaces present in a number of the images shown here. Abalone bangles in a variety of forms are well represented in archaeological collections, and are present in some numbers in ethnohistoric collections as well (see discussion in Hudson and Bates 2015:152-56). Although Powers discusses them solely as items of wealth, it is quite likely that they had a significant non-economic dimension as well (as the extraordinary abalone gorgets worn by the members of the Lewis family undoubtedly did); their frequent association with the more elaborate hairnets and hairpins worn by men known to be chiefs is again suggestive though not definitive. In our efforts to elicit information from these images, it is tempting to use familiar categories in describing or interpreting what we see, and to talk about articles of apparel, adornment, wealth, prestige, or regalia, but such categories are neither simple nor mutually exclusive. For example, a police officer’s badge, a priest’s cassock, or a king’s crown are all items of regalia, yet their social significance varies considerably, as do the contexts within which they are normally encountered. Thus my suggestions regarding the possible symbolic referents of certain of the items on Powers’ list are nothing more than an initial sketch of possibilities, and a tentative one at best. Other people may very well come to different conclusions, but the data are now available for alternate interpretations.