Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
September 3, 1814
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 73
Notes:
The belt pictured here may once have been in the Peale Museum. It is one of the many cultural items that the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, acquired in 1899 from Moses Kimball's Boston Museum. Kimball and P. T. Barnum jointly purchased many of the Peale collections when they were sold about 1849. It may have been either the belt given by Baltus Raser, or the one given by Lewis and Clark on 28 Dec 1809 ("A handsomely ornamented belt, from the Winnebagou's or Puount's").
In his "Walk through the Philad[elphi]a Museum" (1805-1806), pp. 27-28, Peale wrote: "These quills variously dyed, are used by the aborigenes of America to ornament their dresses &c. and although short, are more dangerous than the long ones of the crested Porcupine, for they are barbed whereas the points of the others are smooth."
The donor, Baltus Raser (b. 1749) lived in Germantown, Pa. On this date he also donated an otter bag and a pipe stem.
John D. Godman, in his American Natural History, 2: 153-154, describes one of the methods Native Americans used to ornament their clothing, based on the large collection of such items in the Museum / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/49165857
