The peace dance headdress and frontlet tradition began in the Nass River valley, and quickly dispersed to neighboring villages and tribes. As it traveled, each new area soon incorporated their own sculptural styles into the carving of frontlets. Over time, the new styles became defining features of the tradition.

A pentagonal rim developed into a common feature of frontlets made by groups in the Heiltsuk/Nuxalk region of the Central Northwest Coast of what is now British Columbia.

The Heiltsuk sculptural style often includes fairly shallow eye sockets with shallow, conical orbs on which the eye is situated at the peak. This typical Heiltsuk eye form can be seen in both the main and subsidiary faces on this fine older frontlet.

The main image is either an eagle or thunderbird, as indicated by the downturned beak. The lower, smaller face is humanoid in character, but has more of a mammalian snout than a human nose, and is therefore impossible to identify without specific information from the original family owners of this headpiece.

Both figures have iridescent abalone shell inlaid in the irises of the eyes. In the eyes of the lower face the shell forms the entire circle of the eye, while the bird has a narrow band of carved-out area around the inlaid shell. This cut may have once held the edge of a brass washer that was domed out to form the iris of the eye, which was a common technique in Heiltsuk and Nuxalk frontlets. Eyes made in this way produced a special flash of light when the bright shell caught the firelight of the dancing house.

The thin rim of the frontlet is not conceived as a defined border of the central sculptural area, but rather the rim surface continues unbroken up to the edges of each carved face. In the narrow zone between the two faces, small rectangular mortises once held added pieces carved in the form of the bird’s feet and talons.

The outer rim may have originally just been painted with triangular forms pointing inward toward the figures, and small rectangles of abalone shell appear as though they may have been inlaid between them at some later point in time. Three of these pieces have small holes in them, which are most likely remnants of a previous usage of the shell. These were probably once sewn to a garment and later re-purposed as inlay for this frontlet. Two larger abalone pieces flank the humanoid/animal face at the bottom of the composition.

Four sets of small paired holes pierce the outer edges of the rim, through which the frontlet was sewn to the headdress framework. Swanskin, ermine pelts, and upright sea lion whiskers were also attached to the frame, creating the entire ensemble that was the peace dance headdress. Eagle down was placed in the top of the headpiece within the ‘cage’ of whiskers, and was shaken out by the rhythmic head movements of the dancer, to float gently down around the performer in a sign of peaceful intent and friendship.


Provenance: Miguel Covarrubias Collection