NORTHWEST COAST RATTLES
Beautifully carved or simple and plain, rattles were an important part of the lives of the people on the Northwest Coast.
This image gallery is meant to introduce the viewer to the beauty of one of the traditional arts of the First Nations of British Columbia, Canada.
These objects are not readily available for study, as they are housed in private collections and in museums around the world. Between 1860 and 1930 many collectors and anthropologists visited the First Nations of coastal BC, and collected rattles and other works of art and craft. Some were preserved in museums and private collections around the world. None of these rattles are housed at the Simon Fraser University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Rather, they are part of a growing slide collection of images of arts and architecture from around the world.
It is our hope that these pages, like the many books on these arts, will inspire a respect for the art and the people who made it. We hope that artists of First Nations heritage will find the images useful in their research into their heritage.
Original web page and photography by Dr. Barbara J. Winter.
Adapted for AEM by Melissa Rollit, 2016.
These artifacts are held in museums across Canada and the US. The SFU MAE holds only the photographs, not the artifacts.