Tracing Toucan Featherwork in the Haffenreffer Museum Collections
Alex Lawrence, Doctoral student in Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford
As a visiting fellow at the John Carter Brown Library, I was thrilled to be able to conduct a research visit to the Haffenreffer Museum collections. My project focuses on the Toucan in early modern European culture. Aesthetically appealing, yet bizarre in form, bearing a seemingly impossible beak, the bird inspired a myriad of interpretations following the ‘discovery’ of the Americas. Toucan beaks, feathers, and pelts very quickly entered into a transatlantic culture of curiosity and exchange. They passed through many hands, including — to name only a few — French Capuchins, Italian collectors, Flemish painters, and Scottish nobles.
So many early moderns convey a sense of intellectual wonder following a close haptic engagement with Toucan objects. The specimens inspire a host of critical reflections. The beaks totally disrupt preconceived ideas about bird anatomy. The feathers transform what Europeans know about colour. Objects fashioned of Toucan feathers lead to a new appreciation for Indigenous making techniques. Practically all of these early Americana have now been lost, but by investigating more modern collections, we may obtain a loose referential guide. The Haffenreffer museum houses an impressive breadth of Toucan objects, principally in the Cashinahua collection donated by Kenneth Kensinger in 1968. The purpose of my visit, then, was not to incorporate these objects directly, but rather to try to understand the experience of an early modern, to appreciate why they interpreted the materials the way they did.
When I arrived at the Collections Research Center in Bristol, the objects I requested (alongside several others I had not spotted in the online catalogue) were superbly laid out on a long table. Guided by the expertise of the Curator, Thierry Gentis, we discussed each object in detail: the impressive headdresses, a ceremonial dagger, a wife discipliner, and a Toucan-beak tabard. Our conversation continued in the storage facility- more headdresses, body ornaments, necklaces, and arrows.
I was struck by the vivid coloration of the feathers, by the light refractions and changing pigments. It immediately brought to mind the account of the French cosmographer André Thevet, who stated that he had never before seen a yellow ‘so fine, so pure, and excellent’ as in the Toucan feather. Holding the hollow, and exceptionally light beak, I could see how it confounded natural historians and anatomical analysts like Pierre Belon and Ambroise Paré: what kind of material could be made so light and thin? What sort of bird could have produced such a ‘prodigious’ beak? To accentuate feather movement, Thierry informs me, the Cashinahua use a resinous gum to glue feathers to one another. Jean de Léry’s 1578 account of Brazil talks about a similar substance: the Yra-yetic of the Tupinambá. This sixteenth century group used it to stick Toucan feathers to their cheeks in a ritual named Toucan-tabouracé (‘a feather for dancing’).
The featherworks are kept in excellent condition in the collection. Their colors remain so lucid by lack of exposure to light. I imagine how difficult it must have been to preserve featherworks on long transoceanic voyages in the sixteenth century; I wonder how different the experiences of eyewitness observers in the ‘New World’ and armchair scholars in Europe must have been as a result. I leave the collection with a new set of ideas and questions that will critically inform my project. The discussion was incredibly informative, and I am very grateful to Thierry and the Haffenreffer team for an exceptionally enriching afternoon.
Digitally Printing a Kiowa Flute: The Value of Collaborative Research
Jay Loomis, Doctoral candidate, Department of Music
Over the last two years I have been working on a collaborative research project to 3D print a functioning replica of a Kiowa block flute in the collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. As a flute maker and a practicing musician, I am especially interested in the sounds of wind instruments in museum collections. My project is ongoing and involves Leah Hopkins, Haffenreffer Manager of Museum Education and Programs; Marlon Magdalena, a Jemez Pueblo educator, flute maker, and artist; Professor John-Carlos Perea in the Department of American Indian Studies at San Francisco State University; Professors Emily Dolan and Joshua Tucker in the Department of Music at Brown University; Scott Collins, Imaging Clinical Specialist at the Rhode Island Hospital; Analisa Russo, User Applications Manager at Formlabs; and Professor Robert Preucel, Director of the Haffenreffer Museum.
The Kiowa block flute in the Haffenreffer Museum’s collection is extraordinary and the instrument is featured in Barbara Hail’s publication, Hau Kola! The Plains Indian Collection of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology. Hail identifies the instrument as “Kiowa, 1875 – 1910” and states that it was collected by O. Fulda and acquired by the Haffenreffer Museum through an exchange with George Heye in 1943. The instrument is made from a straight section of red cedar branch that the maker split lengthwise to hollow it out. Hail states that the flute is a courting instrument called a “flageolet, or love flute… [and] its use was widespread among Plains tribes,” including the Sioux, Omaha, Hidatsa, Northern Ute, and others. This type of Indigenous North American wind instrument is also known as cedar flute, Native American flute, and block flute. Indigenous names for the instrument include, tâhpeno (Cheyenne), bĭbĭ’gwûn (Chippewa), ćotaŋke (Dakota), do’mba’ (Kiowa), and Šiyótȟaŋka (Lakota).
Of special interest is the fact that Hail also provides some information about the sound of the block flute. It has a range of about an octave, and the pitches are similar to the Western diatonic major scale. Sometimes known as the warble, “a full vibrating tone would come forth when it was blown with all holes closed.” Hail notes that a well-crafted block flute would allow musicians to adjust the embouchure mechanism of the instrument to achieve the desired timbre.
In October 2021, after covid restrictions were lifted, I examined the Kiowa flute in person at the Haffenreffer Museum to determine whether it would be a good candidate for making a 3D printed, playable replica. I wanted to identify whether it had been used. One encouraging sign was that the wear around the seven finger holes indicated that the instrument had been played repeatedly in the past, so we wouldn’t be creating a replica of a flute that was mainly meant for decoration. I could also see that the embouchure had been carefully crafted to create the sounding mechanism of the wind instrument (the block, the nest, and the ramp). In addition, I did not notice any major cracks in the body, and the overall dimensions were similar to other Native American flutes I had seen and played before. I was convinced that the Kiowa flute was a skillfully crafted musical instrument that had been played in the past, and by making a 3D printed replica of it we could get a good idea of what it sounded like. I was especially intrigued by an unexpected feature of the flute: it has seven holes, not five or six, as is common.
In fall of 2021, Scott Collins scanned the flute using computed tomography (popularly known as a CT or CAT scan). This process provided precise images that revealed detailed information about its condition and construction methods. He provided the imaging data of the flute’s interior, which was required to 3D print the near-exact replica. Now that we have confirmed that it is possible to create 3D printed, functioning replicas of different kinds of Indigenous wind instruments in museum collections, our hope is that copies of pre-reservation period flutes can be useful to Native flute makers, artists, educators, and scholars who want to access Indigenous wind instruments and be able to play them. This can be seen as a form of digital repatriation.
Numerous scholars in Indigenous studies and museology have highlighted the importance of collaborative research and co-curation as examples of decolonizing methodologies. My hope is that our present Indigenous flute replication project can be part of healing efforts, with the sounding object as the nexus that brings Indigenous people and museum communities together to learn about the past and present of Indigenous North American flutes, and innovative performance practices that Native artists are creating today.
Cover photography by Juan Arce