Wood - soft wood (not heavy), rectangular blade made of metal inserted into the outside of the elbow, about 8 feathers attached with cotton twine string.

A spiral line creates appearance of about 15 dark brown parallel bands around the surface, probably made with a stain. Two holes, one at the handle end and the other at the point of the gunstock, where feathers are attached.

The spiral line could represent a coiled snake (Heidi Bohaker has read this - check source)

Rough notes in ROM’s HD files for this object suggest that the dark stripes may have been made by winding the shaft with a strip of bark, and exposing the unwrapped surface to smoke. This process of "fire coloration" is described in further detail in: Frances Densmore, Chippewa Customs, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 86, Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1929 [Reprint 1970, New York: Johnson Reprint Company], p 171.

F. Barlow Cumberland, Catalogue and Notes of the Oronhyatekha Historical Collection (Toronto: Independent Order of Foresters, 1904), p 30,

Item 124. "Council War Club of Chief Shingwauk"

Unknown artist, pincushion. Currently in the Royal Ontario Museum, 911.3.169. Item photographed and described as part of a GRASAC research trip December 2008; GRASAC item id 1567.

GRASAC team research trip to the Royal Ontario Museum, Dec 15-19 2008, funded by SSHRC Aboriginal Research Grant. Participants: Heidi Bohaker, Alan Corbiere, Lewis Debassige, Anne De Stecher, Darlene Johnston, Stacey Loyer, Trudy Nicks, Ruth Phillips

Dec 17, Ethnology Coll team: Lewis Debassige, Alan Corbiere, Cory Willmott, Ruth Phillips, Stacey Loyer, assisted by Tracey Forester