Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
September 1, 1812
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 62
Notes:
Great Sitkin Island is one of the Andreanof Islands of the Aleutians off the coast of Alaska in the Bering Sea. Peter Vasyutinsky, a member of the Russian exploring party of 1760-1764, called it Chetkin Island and reported that it was inhabited by 400 familes. Frank S. Simons and Donald E. Mathewson, Geology of Great Sitkin Island Alaska (Washington, DC, 1955), pp. 22-24
The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography, Harvard University, acquired many cultural items 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. This donation cannot be positively identified with a particular extant war club, but it may have resembled the one at the Peabody pictured here.
