TANTOO: Among the Tlingit people of the Pacific Northwest, community healers use dance, song, and sound as medicine to help maintain good health or restore balance for an individual or community. During these practices, a healer might use a rattle similar to this 19th-century example.

Patricia Marroquin Norby, Associate Curator of Native American Art at The Met:

NORBY: This particular rattle is made from copper… In addition to the copper, you can see the abalone shell eyes.

TANTOO: The shell of the abalone—a type of marine mollusk—is also known as mother-of-pearl. 

NORBY: Any time you see shells or metal nails or something shiny that are used for eyes, it’s to activate or get a more lively presence to the facial images.

TANTOO: The color-shifting nature of the iridescent abalone shell may help reinforce the transformational power of this healing instrument and medicinal tool.

However, this type of rattle was traditionally made of wood—not copper like this one.

NORBY: And because of that we know that it was made for sale, for market, during a particular period in the nineteenth century.

TANTOO: Gold had been discovered in the Klondike region of the Yukon in the 1890s, and the Tlingit homelands in present-day Southeast Alaska became a gateway to the Klondike Goldrush.

NORBY: There was a large influx of non-indigenous people to this Klondike region. And it then created a market boom for Tlingit items. And that’s when they started creating rattles like this one out of copper, so that they can make them more quickly and more efficiently for sale to help sustain the community.

TANTOO: Creating items specifically for the tourist or collectors’ market is an economic adaptation that has helped many Native communities survive.

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