Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw Polychromed Wood Mask, Northwest Coast

Private Collection, New York

Sotheby's, New York, Arts Of The American West, May 21, 2014, lot 80 

Daniel Hourdé Collection, Paris, acquired from the above sale

Aspen, Aspen Art Museum, Art of the Ancestors: Antique North American Indian Art, 2004

George Shaw, Aspen Art Museum, Art of the Ancestors: Antique North American Indian Art, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2000, pp. 94-95

In the deep midwinter, in the firelight of the big house, a dancer moves with a syncopated rhythm. The scene is the hamsamala, “the wearing of the face of the man-eating cannibal”, the most sacred dance of the t’seka, the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw winter ceremonial. The mask the dancer wears depicts a long-beaked bird with a glinting eye. It is huxhugwaxtawe’, or “huxwhukw of heaven”, the man-eating servant of baxwbakwalanuksiwe’, “He-Who-First-Ate-Man-at-the-Mouth-of-the-River”, the great and terrifying figure of Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw belief. The dancer crouches before the fire. He sweeps the ground with the beak. The gesture is one of foreboding. He raises his head and pierces the air with a great cry. The initiates present look upon the drama before them. They know what they see and what they hear. The fine details of the bird's beak tell them who is dancing; his cry confirms it. The dancer pulls a cord, and the great jaw of the bird snaps shut. huxhugwaxtawe’ feeds on the heads of men, and he must have his prey. Sated, the huxhugwaxtawe’ dancer moves off. Another enters the fray. This is the context to which this mask belongs. This is why it exists. The great care with which this mask was made is proper to the importance of the hamsamala dance. It had to impress itself upon the psyche of those privileged to see it. Bill Holm thought that “the great masks of the man-eating birds are unsurpassed in dramatic power”.[1] Who could disagree? This mask is ‘nawalakw. It is an object of supernatural presence.

[1] Bill Holm, The Box of Daylight: Northwest Coast Indian Art, Seattle and London: the University of Washington Press, 1983, p. 37, cat. no. 36