Artifacts find new home in Alberta museum

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A collection of Metis, Cree, Blackfoot, Nakota and Iroquois artifacts will soon have a new home at the Royal Alberta Museum (RAM) after spending a century-and-a half in a Scottish castle.

James Carnegie, the ninth Earl of Southesk, collected the historical artifacts during a visit to western Canada in the mid-1800s. The items were stored away in a trunk in the attic of Kinnaird Castle, the earl's home, for close to 150 years. The collection was put up for auction at Sotheby's in New York City on May 8.

After learning that the items would be up for sale just weeks before the auction date, staff at the RAM worked feverishly to raise the money needed to bring them home to Canada. With letters of support from Aboriginal communities, leaders and Metis and First Nation representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and with financial help from the department of Canadian Heritage, the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation and the Ministry of Aboriginal and Northern Affairs, museum officials placed their bids by phone and managed to outbid other interested buyers on the majority of the pieces in the collection, spending just over $1 million (US) in the process.

The items in the collection are quite rare, but their value is increased because they are in excellent condition and because the history that surrounds them was well documented by Carnegie, who kept a journal about the details of the items, their origins and how he acquired them from each community he visited.

"That's the thing that's just so fantastic. He has the journal, so there's good written accounts," said Susan Berry, a curator at the museum. "But then also they're so early. It's just so rare to have these kinds of things from this part of the world and for them to survive."

Not only does Carnegie provide documentation of the items in his journals but he also describes what he sees as he is accompanied by First Nations and Metis guides and interpreters.

Berry says that at one point in his journal the earl talks about being in the Rocky Mountains and they're all travelling single file. He's in the lead and he stops to look back at the rest of his party. He talks about what they're wearing and says that a lot of them have caps or mitts or pouches that were decorated with brightly coloured silk ribbon.

"He says that was a characteristic of Saskatchewan land by which, I think he would mean Saskatchewan and Alberta," said Berry. "He said that that was really quite different from the more sober aesthetic of Red River."

Berry said she had never before come across anybody describing the contrast that way.

"It's interesting and nice to have these mittens with the bright silk ribbon work," she said. "Again, the information and then the objects have worked together to create an even bigger picture. It just really fills the picture out. Therefore, there can be other collections elsewhere maybe that are of beautiful and old objects, but I don't think that they would speak so eloquently as this collection."

According to Berry, Carnegie started out gathering items in the Red River area, including the items purchased by the RAM-a Metis finger-woven sash and an octopus bag, so named because of the long fingers of fabric that hang down from it.

"The octopus bag is heavily beaded, very intricate beadwork and beautiful," said Berry.

He then made his way across southern Saskatchewan, then up to the Northern Saskatchewan River and on to Fort Carleton. He then headed west to Fort Edmonton and while he was there, he bought a "dag," which Berry said is a pointed steel knife with a handle made of either bone or antler.

"He talked about how he had bought that from one of the hunters who was associated with Fort Edmonton," said Berry. "He also talks about how the hunters who worked out of the fort all had these kinds of knives."

Some of the other pieces that the museum will be receiving in mid-June include a pad saddle with beadwork in the fourcorners and a moose hide rifle case that was made by the wife of an Iroquois hunter.

Four small pairs of hide slippers are also among the museum's purchases. It's believed Carnegie brought them back to Scotland as gifts for his children, although the slippers were never used. Two pairs of the slippers have pink silk ribbon trim and two have blue silk ribbon trim.

But the pride of the collection has to be a woman's dress from the Northern Plains made of sheepskin and decorated with blue and white beads. The museum's successful bid for the dress-$497,600 US-ate up close to half of $1 million it had to spend on the auction items.

Although the museum was able to acquire 33 of the 43 pieces that were on the auction block, they were disappointed they couldn't retrieve all of the rare artifacts.

"We are really very saddened that we weren't able to get the entire collection, that it had to be broken up, because it just speaks to this place and time," said Berry.

"To have these materials of this age from western Canada is so rare. To have these objects in such good condition and to know so much about them because of the journals that the earl kept opens up a lot of other possibilities for future research. If the earl identifies a particular community that an object came from, then work can be done with that community. There are these good records to begin with and that just enables us, scholars and community members, to do so much more with this collection."

When the collection arrives a in Edmonton in June it will have a low-key welcome home reception. A formal exhibit of the items is set to open in March 2007, at which time the public will get a chance to view these new additions to the museum's collection.