HATS FROM THE NOOTKA SOUND REGION. 



CHARLES C. WILLOUGHBY. 



In the early days of the New England whaling industry the 

 sailors brought back as mementoes many valuable ethnological 

 objects from the Pacific islands and the northwestern coast of 

 America. Much of this material found its way into the cabinets 

 of the older societies of Boston, Salem, and other New England 



The Peabody Museum of Harvard University has acquired a 

 number of these old ethnological collections, either whole or in 

 part, including that of the American Antiquarian Society, the 

 Boston Athenaeum, the Boston Marine Society, the Massachu- 

 setts Historical Society, and the Boston Museum. The few 

 objects in these collections from the northwest coast are of 

 great value, illustrating as some of them do phases of the arts 

 which have become extinct or much modified. 



Among the objects received from these societies are eight 

 hats of the type illustrated upon Plate I, a style of head cover- 

 ing very rarely found in museums or private collections. It is 

 probable that this form of hat originated among the southern 

 Wakashan tribes, probably the Nootkas, although Lewis and 

 Clark found them on the lower Columbia in 1605 at Fort 

 Clatsop and thus described them (p. 768). 1 



" We gave a fish-hook also in exchange for one of their hats. 

 These hats are made of cedar-bark and bear grass interwoven 

 together in the form of a European hat with a small brim of 

 about two inches and a high crown widening upwards. They are 

 light, ornamented with various colors and figures. . . . These 

 hats form a small article of traffic with the whites, and their 

 manufacture is one of the best exertions of Indian industry." 

 And again on page 777, writing of the dress of the women : 

 " The only covering for their head is a hat made of bear grass 



1 History of Lewis and Clark Expedition. Edited by Elliott Coues. Vol. ii. 

 65 



