Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
September 3, 1814
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 73
Notes:
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, acquired in 1899 many cultural items from Moses Kimball's Boston Museum. Kimball and P. T. Barnum jointly purchased many of the Peale collections when they were sold about 1849. The otter bag pictured here, part of that accession (Object number 99-12-10/53052), has now been classified as a Sauk bag and may be the one donated by Raser. Castle McLaughlin, The Arts of Diplomacy: Lewis & Clark's Indian Collection (Seattle, 2003), pp. 86-92. One of the two otter bags in the Peabody's Boston Museum accession was traded to the Denver Art Museum.
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." Peale wrote of porcupine quills: "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.
John D. Godman, in his American Natural History. Part I. Mastology, 3 vols. (Philadelphia, 1826-1828), 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 Peale Museum / https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/49165857
