Object Status:
Extant
Accession Date:
February 1797
Primary Source Reference:
Object inscription
Notes:
George Turner gave similar beaver bowls in February 1797 to the Peale Museum and the American Philosophical Society. The Peale example, which is inscribed "Indian Sculpture of a Beaver / presented by Judge Turner," came to the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, in 1899 from Moses Kimball's Boston Museum, which acquired many objects when the Peale Museum was disbanded about 1848. It is described as Kaskaskia culture, and carved from root of an ash(?) tree.
The similar APS bowl is now in the Penn Museum, Philadelphia.
George Turner (ca. 1750-1843), a native Briton, served in the Continental Army in South Carolina during the Revolution, became a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, and served as a territorial judge in the Northwest Territory from 1789 until his resignation in 1797. He was an active member of the American Philsophical Society and contributed papers about Native American artifacts and fossil bones of the incognitum.
