Cloak of powhatan
The cloak of Powhatan ( English : Powhatan's Mantle ) is a cloak made of deerskin and sewn on snail shells, the possession of which was attributed to Wahunsonacock , a chief of the Powhatan and father of Pocahontas , since the early 17th century .
The cloak reached Europe from Virginia as early as the early 17th century . He was one of four other capes that are now lost, the existence of the of John Tradescant the Elder founded Musaeum Tradescantianum , in today London belonging Lambeth . After its closure, the collection formed the basis for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, founded by Elias Ashmole . The Powhatan's Cape is one of the few Virginia artifacts that have survived to this day.
It is now considered certain that the cloak was not used as an item of clothing, but had a ceremonial meaning. The elaborate design is interpreted as a representation of a domain in the sense of a political map, on which the circles correspond to individual tribes of the Powhatan confederation created by Wahunsonacock at the end of the 16th century.
description
The cloak consists of four tanned hides of white-tailed deer cut on both sides and sewn together at the cut edges . At its widest, it measures 2.35 by 1.60 meters. The shells of originally more than 20,000 peripheral snails are sewn onto the leather . The British cultural anthropologist Edward Tylor identified the snails in 1888 as Prunum nivosum ( Hinds , 1844), a species from the Caribbean . This identification resulted in speculations about a possible trade between the Powhatan and the West Indies. In the 1980s a new identification took place as Prunum roscidum ( Redfield , 1860), a species native to the Atlantic coast of Virginia. Deviating from this, the species was determined at the beginning of the 21st century as the fossil Prunum limatulum , which also occurs in the Cenozoic Virginia.
Every single housing was picked up on a beach or taken from the eroded rock of a river bank. Then it was sanded off on one side so that a hole was created to pass a tendon . With the tendon passed through this hole and the natural opening of the snail shell, they were sewn onto the deerskin.
The snail shells on the cape are originally arranged in 34 circles, two animal figures and a representation of a person. In contrast to the snail shells for the circles and the two animal representations, the shells for the human figure in the center were ground on two sides so that they are significantly smaller than the others. The gender of the person depicted in the center cannot be determined. However, the figure is detailed with the means available, down to the thumb and big toes, which are distinguishable from the rest of the fingers and toes. The two animal representations appear similar at first glance. However, the different designs of the tails and feet suggest that they are different species: the left animal has a long tail and round paws with five toes, while the right one has a short tail and simply split hooves. Since the only arthropod found in Virginia was the white-tailed deer, the size of the animals on the left could also be estimated from the proportions of the depictions of the deer and humans. On this basis, only a puma can be considered for the left representation.
conservation
Two circles are completely missing and some others and parts of the depictions of animals and humans are lost to varying degrees. However, the full picture can be reconstructed with the help of the stitching holes in the leather. Since the completely or partially missing circles are predominantly in the lower area of the depiction and the damage to the depictions of animals and humans is also concentrated on the lower limbs, the damage is viewed as vandalism by visitors during the public exhibition of the cloak. There has been no significant damage since 1888, when the cloak was first photographed for publication.
In 1976 the cloak was presented outside of Oxford for the first time in nearly 300 years. To do this, it was cleaned and the leather was treated to make it more supple. The investigation revealed evidence of earlier restorations such as sewn cracks on the edges, which were probably carried out before the 20th century.
function
The production of the cape was extremely labor-intensive and put a considerable strain on the seamstresses, who were already very busy with everyday tasks - the literature uniformly assumes that women are made by women. For this reason and because of the large number of snail shells processed, the Powhatan's cloak must have been an object of enormous value in indigenous society. It is excluded that the cloak was an everyday item of clothing.
The attribution of the cloak to the personal property of Wahunsonacock, which has been assumed over several centuries, is questionable. The cloak comes without a doubt from the immediate vicinity of the English colony of Jamestown in later Virginia . For a long time, the interpretation of the representations was doubtful. It is now considered certain that the Powhatan's cloak is a representation of the social and political relationships within the Powhatan Confederation.
Provenance
The Powhatan's cloak made its way from Virginia to England in the early 17th century. There he was - together with three other cloaks and the Virginian Purse initially for decades - Musaeum Tradescantianum in today London belonging Lambeth shown. The first surviving evidence of the cloak in the Musaeum Tradescantianum is the diary-like notes of the lawyer and later Nuremberg councilor Georg Christoph Stirn, kept in the Bodleian Library . Forehead visited the museum at the age of 22 in July 1638. He mentioned the robe of the King of Virginia among many other exhibits .
A plausible explanation for the origin of the cloak is a 1637 trip by the younger John Tradescant to Virginia. By this point, Wahunsonacock had been dead for 19 years, and the English colonists had been at war with the Virginia Algonquin for almost 15 years . The looting of the traditional treasure houses of the ruling Virginia Algonquin families was part of the colonist-driven strategy of extermination. Tradescant may have acquired the cloak, other items of clothing and other artifacts from older settlers, although the cloak's alleged origin from the possession of the legendary Wahunsonacock would have been a strong argument for a “good” price.
In the catalog of the collection published by John Tradescant the Younger in 1656 , the cloak is listed on page 47 with a number of other garments. The cloak is attributed to Powhatan and is described as studded with shells: Pohatan, King of Virginias habit all embroidered with shells, or Roanoke. The name Roanoke was the proper name of one of the first peoples with whom the English settlers in North America came into contact. The name was contemporary adopted by Europeans for the snail shell used as a decorative element on clothing and other objects or as a means of payment.
The cloak and the Virginian Purse are among those collectibles that Elias Ashmole acquired for his Ashmolean Museum in Oxford . Today, both are among the most important exhibits in the museum and are among the few surviving indigenous artefacts from the early days of the English colonies.
Copy
A simplistic copy of the cloak can be found in the Jamestown Settlement , an open-air museum in the immediate vicinity of historic Jamestown. This copy was apparently the model for a dress that the heroine wears in a scene from the American cartoon Pocahontas from 1995.
In May 2018, the teaching Powhatan Museum of Indigenous Arts and Culture in the historic district of Mount Pleasant in Washington, DC , whose logo is a modified illustration of the cape, a petition for the establishment of a statue of Wahunsonacock a number of deputies of the State of Virginia. The statue is intended to replace the Virginia-donated statue of Robert Edward Lee in the National Statuary Hall of the Capitol in Washington . Although the connection between the cloak and Wahunsonacock is questionable, the proposed bronze statue is said to have a copy of the cloak, according to the petition. A seal with a picture of the cloak is said to be shown on the base with the name Powhatan II .
Individual evidence
- ^ Edward B. Tylor: Notes on Powhatan's Mantle . In: International Archive for Ethnography 1888, Volume 1, pp. 215–217, Plate XX, digitized .
- ↑ a b c d Arthur MacGregor (Ed.): Tradescant's Rarities. Essays on the Foundation of the Ashmolean Museum 1683 with a Catalog of the Surviving Early Collections , Masters thesis, Durham University 1983 and Clarendon Press, Oxford 1983, pp. 130-132, ISBN 0-19-813405-3 , Online PDF , 34 , 7 MB, accessed September 30, 2018.
- ↑ a b c d Helen C. Rountree and E. Randolph Turner III: Before and After Jamestown. Virginia's Powhatans and Their Predecessors . University Press of Florida, Gainesville, FL et al. 2002, pp. 115-118, ISBN 0-8130-2476-5 .
- ↑ Arthur MacGregor (Ed.): Tradescant's Rarities , p. 133.
- ↑ Gregory A. Waselkov: Indian Maps of the Colonial Southeast . In: Gregory A. Waselkov, Peter H. Wood and Tom Hatley (Eds.): Powhatan's Mantle. Indians in the Colonial Southeast . Revised and expanded edition. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London 2006, pp. 435-502, ISBN 978-0-8032-9861-3 .
- ↑ a b Arthur MacGregor (Ed.): Tradescant's Rarities , p. 135.
- ↑ John Tradescant (the younger): Musæum Tradescantianum; or, A Collection of Rarities Preserved at South-Lambeth neer London , John Grismond, London 1656, digitized .
- ^ William Sturtevant: Movie Reviews: Pocahontas . In: Anthro Notes: National Museum of Natural History Bulletin for Teachers 1995, Volume 17, No. 3, pp. 7-9, doi : 10.5479 / 10088/22347 .
- ^ A monument to Powhatan II , Powhatan Museum of Indigenous Arts and Culture, accessed September 30, 2018.