An unusual staff with an oval handgrip at the top, carved in a smooth-surfaced, highly personal style. It features four primary figures and one subsidiary image. At the top, an eagle or thunderbird with partly opened wings and its head turned off to one side, an unusual posture in totem style compositions. The bird stands on the back of a whale or dolphin, which is arched over as if breaching across the cylindrical core of the staff. The next figure is another bird, possibly an eagle, with a sharply downturned beak and folded wings with incised lines to represent feathers. The bird is perched upon the back of a subsidiary figure that may be a young wolf, its head and forelegs captured between the tall ears of the bottom figure. Standing on a small box at the base of the sculpture is a tall humanoid image with its hands drawn up bear-like in front of its chest. The little wolf’s forelegs are protruding through the humanoid’s very tall ears. The cylindrical core of the staff continues through the bottom figure to its termination.

Steven C. Brown

References: For information on Nuu-chah-nulth objects, see section 3 in Alan L. Hoover, ed., Nuu-chah-nulth Voices, Histories, Objects, and Journeys, (Victoria : Royal British Columbia Museum, 2000), p. 203ff.