In the top-center background of a well known turn-of-the-century photograph, taken of a Taku shaman lying in state surrounded by the at.oow (the "treasured things") of his and the opposite clan, one can recognize a most unusual kind of object to appear in such a collection of Native artifacts: a brass-barreled blunderbuss. A number of flintlock pistols also are present in the object display. The deceased shaman wears a wolf-skin headdress, indicative of his eagle-moiety descent group, the Yanyeidi of the Taku River region, and he is surrounded by button-, bead-, and dentalia-decorated wool garments, two Chilkat-style woven tunics of matching designs, clan headdresses, and two large American flags. To his right is the crest-emblem headdress of the opposite moiety (the Raven-side Gaanax.adi), the Raven-at-the-Head-of-the-Nass headpiece/frontlet, commonly called the Box of Daylight (c.f. Holm 1983b, cover, cat. no. 1 & p. 20). This object is displayed to represent the support and sympathy of his Raven-side relatives (Dauenhauer 1990, pp. 21-22).
The blunderbuss is present presumably because it represents an historic event in the Yanyeidi past, a peace accord, a family bond through marriage, the death of a clan hero, or a similar history-altering crossroad of time. As such it brings with it the spirit and strength of the persons and the time it recalls, a strength that is sought and appreciated by the Yanyeidi descendants in the time of grief portrayed by the photograph. The history of the weapon before the time of the photograph is unrecorded, and the time after is unknown until 1923, when it arrived in England as the treasured curiosity of a new owner.
Ironically, perhaps, the gun had originated in England, manufactured by a weaponsmithing company identified as BLAKE LONDON by the stamping on the barrel, echoed by BLAKE on the lockplate. CS, perhaps an owner's initials, is stamped on the stock. The weapon type and manufacturer's name place its beginnings ca. 1790, but precisely how it came to the Northwest Coast, or how and when it came to have its walnut stock so beautifully relief-carved is something of a mystery. The relief work is done in an early flat-design style, and appears to represent a wonderfully animated wolf on both sides of the buttstock with another wolf (or possibly bear) adapted to the stock's fore-end. In this image, the carver has incorporated the rounded modeling of the stock's lockplate surface to represent the drawn-up knees of the wolf's hind legs. Though the photograph documents the gun among the northern Tlingit in the area of Juneau, Alaska, and it may have been carved by a Tlingit, the style of the surface carving has aspects which also suggest the work of a Haida carver, possibly from the Masset-Kiusta area of the northern Queen Charlottes or among the Kaigani Haida of the southern panhandle of Southeast Alaska. Some of the earliest direct contacts on the northern coast were in the region of the broad strait between Kiusta and Kaigani, known as the Dixon Entrance after a captain of the same name who traded with the Haidas in the area in 1787.
George Vancouver, exploring and trading in the waters of Behm Canal (between the Ketchikan and Wrangell of today), encountered two separate groups of canoe-borne Tlingits on August 23, 1794. The two groups evidently fostered a certain hostility for one another, not uncommon among Tlingit clans of the period, which Vancouver witnessed and observed: "On a nearer approach they rested on their paddles, and entered into a parley; and we could then observe, that all those who stood up in the large canoe were armed with pistols or blunderbusses, very bright and in good order" (Vancouver 1801, pp. 4, 226; Emmons 1991, p. 299) .
Lt. George T. Emmons apparently saw and sketched this blunderbuss in Juneau in 1888, and noted that it belonged to a chief's family for several generations (Emmons notes, Burke Museum archives). Acquired in trade on the Northwest Coast when new, passed perhaps from one clan leader to another, the beautifully personalized gun has traveled a historic path on two oceans. (From the Catalog of the Thaw Collection of American Indian Art, 2nd ed.)
