Carving of a fish which has swallowed a man (probably a salmon). Painted red, blue and black.
Donor:
Alaska Commercial Company, Benjamin Bristol, and Older University Collections
Collection place:
Northwest Coast, United States
Verbatim coll. place:
; Northwest Coast
Culture or time period:
Haida and Tlingit
Collector:
W. G. Norris
Collection date:
unknown
Object type:
ethnography
Object class:
Carvings (visual works)
Accession date:
1904
Context of use:
A reference to a myth where a fish saved a man by swallowing him and carrying him to shore à la Jonah and the Whale. There are three Haida myths with parallels to Jonah and the Whale. Notably has the “Tlingit” blue. Haida artists were highly praised and seen as being part of a high class of people. The famous Haida potlatch was outlawed by the Canadian government around the time art for sale was being made. Consequently, ceremonial art that was used in potlatches fell out of fashion. 2-4617 depicts the myth where a young prince is taken aboard a canoe by the Salmon tribe who converted him into one of their own. This myth has multiple versions but usually it is called “The Prince Taken Away by the Salmon” The young prince, now in the belly of a salmon, was caught and cut up by people which revealed him as an infant human, where he escaped the salmon’s body and then resumed his normal life and became his former self. Haida people saw the ocean in a very different way from a Western perspective. They saw the world as being covered by a membrane, known as xhaaidla, that on one side saw animals just as from a Western perspective, as nonhuman beings both in their appearance and their behavior. However on the other side of the xhaaidla, animals become anthropomorphized in their behavior. Such a worldview shaped both the way Haida people hunted, as they learned to find what they could not see underwater through “people of the sea” or taangghwan xhaaidaghai, reading their dreams and the water in order to catch food.
Department:
Native US and Canada (except California)
Dimensions:
length 55 centimeters
Comment:
cf. Barbeau, Marius. Haida Myths: Illustrated in argillite carvings. No. 32. Ottawa: Department of Resources and Development, National Parks Branch, National Museum of Canada, 1953.
Loans:
S1963-1964 #9: UC San Francisco Medical Center (September 3, 1963–October 11, 1963), S1965-1966 #16: California State University, East Bay/Clarence E. Smith (September 17, 1965–November 23, 1965), S1967-1968 #52: Fine Arts Patrons of Newport Harbor (December 28, 1967–March 19, 1968), S1980-1981 #74: University of California, Berkeley (May 25, 1981–June 5, 1981), S1983-1984 #28: SFO Museum (November 17, 1983–May 21, 1984), S1987-1988 #8: Monterey Museum of Art (August 21, 1987–November 25, 1987), S1989-1990 #27: John G. Shedd Aquarium (July 15, 1990–January 24, 1992), and S2002-2003 #6: University Art Gallery (CSU East Bay) (October 15, 2002–February 21, 2003)