TLINGIT DAGGER WITH WOODWORM POMMEL

Edward Baer, New York

George Terasaki, New York, acquired from the above in 1967

Steven C. Brown, Transfigurations: North Pacific Coast Art. George Terasaki, Collector, Seattle, 2006, n.p., pl. 53 (two views)

Topped by an unusual image with a striking expression, this dagger displays one of the emblems of the Gaanaxteidí Tlingit, the story of the "woman who married the woodworm". Said by Native elders to have originated among the Heenya Tlingit from the west side of Prince of Wales Island, the woodworm story evidently migrated with the Gaanax.ádi clan to the Chilkat River valley and the village of Klukwan, Alaska. The story concerns a young woman who suckled a woodworm that lived under her parents' house, and who gave birth to a woodworm child. The woodworm became a nuisance to the village, growing to great size and devouring life and property. The woodworm is still an important crest emblem of the Gaanaxteidí in Klukwan and is depicted on one of the celebrated posts of the Whale House, on the large Woodworm Feast Dish from that house, and on numerous masks and small objects like this dagger.

The mask-like face of the pommel is carved with an intense expression, amplified by the incised line that encircles the iris of each eye. From the top of its head issue the rippled bodies of two plump woodworms, each shown with paired feet and their heads down upon the temples of the human face. They have large round eyes and flattened nostrils, just as they appear on the woodworm housepost of the Klukwan Whale House.

The carved wood of the pommel encloses the tang of the steel blade, and is wrapped over with a tanned hide strip that has greatly darkened with age. A piece of thick copper forms a bolster at the blade hilt. The blade is of the native made, double-edge type, with a narrow, flat backbone ridge down its center. Daggers such as this were carried in elaborately decorated sheaths covered with quill or beadwork designs, but only a few of these have survived with the knives they once protected.

Steven C. Brown