Yéil kudás' (Split Raven shirt)
ca. 1895
Competitive, long-established trade networks between coastal peoples and their neighbors facilitated the exchange of goods later with explorers, entrepreneurs and settlers. In southeast Alaska, there was an influx of European goods after the Hudson's Bay Company gained trading privileges from the Russian-American Company in 1839.
Native people came to barter animal furs for foreign goods like wool and cotton cloth, beads, iron and guns. Women artists readily adapted existing styles of ceremonial clothing from cedar and mountain goat wool to new materials, creating lavish robes from wool blankets that were emblazoned with crest designs in appliquéd red wool and mother-of- pearl buttons. These button robes are now considered to be "traditional" ceremonial attire.
Commercial wool cloth, pearl buttons, glass beads
45 x 63 in. (114.3 x 160.02 cm)
Gift of John H. Hauberg
91.1.81
