The University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology has declared that it intends to return five ceremonial hats to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, in keeping with the terms of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, according to a notice published in the Federal Register on 16 January 2024.
These include a Wolf Helmet (catalogue number NA8507), which was purchased by Louis Shotridge, a Tlingit curator employed by the museum, for US$40.00 in 1918 as one of five objects collectively termed the 'Eagle’s Nest House Collection'. This has now been deemed to be a ceremonial object needed by traditional religious leaders for the practice of religious rites.
The second item to be returned is a Shark Helmet (29–1–1), purchased by from a member of the Kaagwaantaan Clan by Louis Shortridge for US$350.00 in 1929. Shortridge described this as the 'oldest possession' of the clan, and something they had been very reluctant to surrender, noting that he was only able to remove the mask because all surviving members of the clan were quite elderly, and that it would have been impossible to remove the item had any of the clan's warriors still been alive. The mask is made of Walrus hide shrunk onto a wooden base by heating, and then carved to give it its final shape, before being decorated with feathers and Human hair. Shortridge considered that this had been done before the introduction of steel tools to the region, with the hide, which is about 3.8 cm thick, carved with tools made from stone and the incisor teeth of Beavers. This is being returned to the Sitka Tribe on the basis that it is an item of ongoing cultural importance central to the group itself, rather than property owned by an individual.
The third item being returned is a Ganook Hat (NA6864) purchased by Louis Shortridge in 1925 from Augustus Bean, or Ke.t-xut’.tc, who was a housemaster of one of the three Wolf Houses of the Kaagwaantaan Clan of Sitka, for US£450.00. This item is being retuned to the Sitka Tribe on the basis that it is of both important cultural and ceremonial importance.
The final two items being returned is a Noble Killer (or Noble Killerwhale) Hat (NA11741), and Eagle Hat (NA11742), again obtained by Louis Shortridge from Augustus Bean, this time as two of a collection of three hats for which he paid US$800.00, in 1926. These items are again being returned because they are deemed to be of both important cultural and ceremonial importance.
Louis Shortridge, known as Stoowukháa in Tinglit, was born in April 1883 in Klukwan, Alaska, the son of George Shotridge, also known as Yeilgooxu, and Kudeit.sáakw. Since the Tinglit people have a matrilineal system, this made him part of the Kaagwaantaan Clan. However, he was educated at the Haines Mission School, where he was given the Christian forenames Louis Paul, after a Presbyterian missionary, and the surname Shortridge, an Anglicized version of 'Tschartitsch', itself an attempt to render his grandfather's name (kakolah) into German.
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While at the mission he met his future wife, Florence Dennis, known as Kaatkwaaxsnéi in Tinglit, who he married in a traditional ceremony. Florence was an accomplished traditional basket weaver, and was invited to demonstrate her skills at the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon, in 1905. Shortridge accompanied his wife to the exhibition, where he met George Byron Gordon of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, selling him a collection of Tinglit artefacts, the beginning of a career in artefact brokering that lasted until his death in 1937.
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