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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ARTICLE . A New Look At Some Old Data: The Nisenan Photographs of Alexander W. Chase . Blackburn 317 The hawok was all in one string, and contained 1,160 pieces. Tom was very proud of this, and would suffer no one but his wife to be photographed wearing it [Fig. 2]. The kolkol was strung in a double string, the shells lying face to face; it is slightly esteemed. The “red alabaster,” brought from Sonoma, was in the form of a cylinder, about as large as one’s little finger, an inch long, drilled lengthwise, and forming the front piece in a string of shell-beads worn by Captain Tom’s baby. One of the girdles, pacha, was decorated with 214 small pieces of abalone; the hair-net contained about 100. Following is a list of articles of dress and omament worn by the Nishinam, which with a change of names would answer for nearly all the tribes of Central California: (1) The hare-skin robe, often trimmed with ground-squirrel tails, generally used as bedding, but sometimes worn in the rainy season. (2) The breechcloth of hetcheled and braided tule-grass, worn by women. (3) Shek’-ki, a hair-net, made of the inner bark of the milkweed, woven with large meshes, fitting the head like a skull-cap, drawn tight by a string running around the edge. The hair was twisted into a hard knot behind the head, and into this was stuck a plume. (4) Mok’-kus, about a foot long, consisting of a stick wreathed with red woodpecker scalps and having at the end a cluster of pieces of abalone-shell or a little flag of yellowhammer’s feathers. Worn only by the men when going to a dance. (5) To’-lai, the mantle of black, long feathers, eagle’s or hawk’s, often mentioned in these pages, worn on the back, from the armpits down to the knees, only by men and those generally shamans. (6) Pa’-cha, the wide deer-skin girdle, studded with bits of abalone, worn by women around the waist; nowadays generally made of scarlet cloth and covered thick with bead-work. (7) Chi’-lak, the bandeau of yellowhammer’s feathers, laid butt to tip alternately, and strung on two strings; worn by both sexes in the dance. (8) Kak’-ki, the narrow bandeau of fur, worn tight around the head by both sexes in the dance. Seen all over California, nowadays generally supplanted by a handkerchief. (9) Bon’noh, omaments, generally made of a large bird’s wing-bones, with red woodpecker’s down and pieces of abalone at one end; worn thrust through the lobe of the ear or the septum of the nose by both sexes. (10) Wuk’-ter-hin, (“one-hanger” or “single-hanger”), the large abalone gorget worn by men in a dance. The shell-money, often worm by women, has been already described. In the yomussi dance the women carry bows and arrows for ornaments [Powers 1877:335-39]. Much of our information on the nature and uses of such regalia in early Central California societies (as summarized in Bates 1982) comes from the kind of historical photographs presented here, which usually depict individuals engaged in highly formalized ritual activities (Bates 1984). Although the primary focus of Powers’ discussion is on wealth and the economic value of the articles owned by a particular elite family, it should be kept in mind that most of these also constituted important items of regalia, items that had significant social and cultural connotations with nuances that we will probably never be able to fully reconstruct. Some (such as the shell bead money and magnesite cylinder) were primarily articles of wealth with a mostly economic significance, while others (such as the flicker-quill headband, hairpin, and abalone gorget) were certainly articles of regalia indicative of their owner’s social status. The photographs of the Lewis family are somewhat misleading in that every cherished item they possess has been donned for the occasion, probably with the encouragement of the photographer, and combined in a manner that was probably far from traditional. The flicker-quill headband would normally be worn only in the context of a ceremonial dance, while a hairnet or hairpin could also be worn in a secular context, and might very well have had sociopolitical implications as well. While most surviving early to mid nineteenthcentury images of Native Californians (both drawings and photographs) are relatively uninformative with regard to the social status of the individuals depicted or the circumstances surrounding the making of the image, there are a few interesting exceptions. Figure 5, which is entered in the George Eastman House catalogue as “Maidu Headmen with Treaty Commissioners,” by an unknown maker, is almost certainly one of the 300 ‘lost’ daguerreotypes created by Robert H. Vance in California (Palmquist 1978); it was originally listed in Vance’s catalogue as “View of Indian Commissioners, Dr. Wozencraft, Col. Johnson, and clerks, in a treaty with the Indians,” and was made in August, 1851 at Bidwell’s Ranch. The four chiefs standing behind the commissioners are wearing Western-style pants and shirts, but their headgear and ornaments are both traditional and presumably appropriate for such an essentially political occasion. The elaborate hairpins two of the chiefs are wearing are particularly noteworthy. The remarkable, often exquisitely detailed images created by the artist Henry B. Brown in the Sierra foothills and Sacramento Valley in 1851—2 (Blackburn 2006) probably have the greatest potential for supplying us with useful clues regarding symbolic aspects of native regalia. Brown’s drawings, which range in tone