Painting a hat – Nakoaktok

Description

The painter is clad in a short, seamless, cedar-bark cape, which is worn for protection from rain. That she is a woman of wealth and rank is shown by the abalone-shell nose-ornament and the gold bracelets, no less than by her possession of a “chief’s hat”. These waterproof hats, of a form borrowed from the Haida are made of closely woven shreds of fibrous spruce-roots, and are ornamented with one of the owner’s crests – a highly conventionalized painting of some animal or mythological being.