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Mask: Eagle

1800s
(Bella Coola)
wood, pigment, restored eye inlays
Overall: 35.6 x 45.8 x 24.2 cm (14 x 18 1/16 x 9 1/2 in.)
The Harold T. Clark Educational Extension Fund 1956.547
Location: 231 Native North American
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Description

Across the Northwest Coast, native people engaged in renewal rites during the winter ceremonial season. This mask, with a beak that opens and head panels that move, may have been used during such celebrations. In 1998, Robert Joseph, a Northwest Coast chief, recalled that when he donned dance masks like this one as a youth, "all the world is somewhere else . . . I am the mask . . . the bird . . . the animal . . . the spirit. I transcend into the being of the mask."
Mask: Eagle

Mask: Eagle

1800s

Native North America, Northwest Coast, British Columbia, Nuxalk (Bella Coola)

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