Materials

This container is made of birchbark with quillwork designs.

Motifs and Patterns

The container is decorated with dyed porcupine quills. On the front, there is a stylized heart and two leaves, and on the back, the drawing of a stylized plant motif. The rim of the container is trimmed with decorative stitches. The porcupine quills are white and black.

Additional Context

Width of rim: 10 cm
Lid: 10.3 x 6.5 cm

Other Notes

EXCERPT from France Golob’s “Misijonarji: Darovalci Indijanskih Predmetov (Missionaries: Donors of Native American Objects, Collection of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum),” p. 252:

The vessel (box) was used to store grain, berries, or sugar. The back shows no stitches at all. The vessel displays the whole range of quillwork, that is, decorating with porcupine quills. Native American women first made a drawing on birch bark with a knife point and then perforated the vessel along these lines. Through the holes they sewed various designs with dyed porcupine quills.

Dimensions: 11.5 × 5 × 6.5 cm

Condition: Fair, stable; nearly full loss of quillwork on reverse, areas of loss on front, part of lid missing.

Reasons for connecting this relative with particular times, materials, styles and uses

Museum documentation and Baraga's records.

Current Location: Slovene Ethnographic Museum

Catalogue, Accession or Reference Number: E 2893; NM 1129

Collection at Current Location: Baraga Donation

Date of Acquisition by the Institution: 1837

Who the Institution Acquired the Relative or Heritage Item From: Missionary Bishop Friderik Baraga

Date Relative was First Removed or Collected from its Community Context: 1836

Collection Narratives and Histories

THE BARAGA DONATION: History of its origin and outline

Excerpt from "Misijonarji: Darovalci Indijanskih Predmetov (Missionaries: Donors of Native American Objects, Collection of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum),” France Golob; pp. 218-29.

In 1830, the Carniolan Provincial Museum (founded in 1821) was given new museum premises in the Lyzeum (the former Franciscan monastery) on what is today Vodnik Square thanks to the efforts of Count Franz Joseph Hohenwart." The museum opened on October 4, 1831. A ceremonial presentation of its collections was staged in 1836 when the first guide to the museum's collections was published. The guide mentions that the collections were arranged in five rooms.

Hohenwart, chairman of the museum's board of trustees, certainly did his best to enrich the museum's collections with new acquisitions. It is no wonder then that it was Hohenwart who asked Friderik Baraga's sister Amalia to write to her missionary brother and ask him for ethnographic objects from the Native Americans.

Baraga responded to Hohenwart's request in a letter to his sister Amalia dated July 29, 1833. He apologizes in this letter, writing: "If Mister Hohenwart knew or at least wanted to believe that in spring, summer, and autumn I have so much work to do in my mission that I have no free time at all, except at night (I'm writing this letter between eleven and twelve at night), he would certainly forgive me for not contributing objects to the Ljubljana Museum."

Three years later Baraga informed his sister Amalia in a letter dated February 24, 1836, that he was coming home to gather financial support for his missionary work." On November 29, 1836, he left his missionary post in La Pointe and arrived in Liverpool on November 26, 1836.4% On December 3, 1836, he sent the following message from London: "When you receive this letter, please tell Jožef (her husband) that I sent from Liverpool to his address in Trieste a crate which contains various Indian objects. The London ship Flora will take this crate to Trieste where it will wait until Jožef sends for it. So tell Jožef to write to Trieste immediately and have it sent to him. You can open the crate and have a look at the objects that are in it but you must not give any of them to anybody until I arrive.” This letter proves that the crate Baraga mentions contained the Native American ethnographic objects of which he was to donate the larger part to the Carniolan Provincial Museum.

The exact time of missionary Baraga's donation must therefore have been between his arrival in Ljubljana on April 6, 1837, and the time when a handwritten list of objects was made by cathedral canon and museum curator Urban Jerin. This list was used by museum curator Heinrich Freyer for his survey of new acquisitions dated April 14, 1837.

The principal written sources on Baraga's missionary collection are thus two handwritten lists of newly arrived objects and the draft of a list of the museum's acquisitions. The first handwritten list of ethnographic objects the Baraga Collection consisted of three sheets of paper, size 240 x 228 mm. The list is written in German using Gothic cursive script. Besides the names of the ethnographic objects with commentaries in brackets in the text and in the margins, the names of objects are also recorded in the Ojibwa language. The first sheet bears registration no. 237/213. Top left there is the note, "Additions and corrections in foreign script (Latin cursive script) were added to this paper by Father Friderich Baraga himself.” The signature under this note is that of Jerin Urban, cathedral canon and curator of the Carniolan Provincial Museum. This list is therefore the first written document on the Native American objects, natural items, prayer book, prints, and coins donated to the museum by Baraga.

The document is followed by a draft of the report on the museum's new acquisitions. It was drawn up by the curator of the Provincial Museum, Heinrich Freyer, and consists of two sheets, size 350 x 220 mm. On the basis of this draft, Freyer wrote (in Gothic cursive script, the names in the Ojibwa language are in Latin cursive script) a list of the museum's new acquisitions on three sheets of paper. These sheets are size 350 x 224 mm. The list with commentaries is written with great accuracy and the objects are divided into groups. The "Museum acquisitions" list is registered under no. 237/213 and its translation reads:

"Father Friderik Baraga, missionary of the highly honoured Bishop of Detroit in North America, brought the following objects from the (Indian) tribe of the Otchipwe (correct: Otchipwe):

a) objects made of birch bark: one round vessel /MAKAK/ containing tree sugar; -two little empty vessels; round vessel filled with wild rice /MANOMIN/; - two little round vessels/ONAGAN/; one little canoe/ZHIMAN/ (correct: TCHIMAN, author's note) made of birch bark and cedar; five miniature pieces of birch bark used to cover a wigwam's roof.
b) home utensils and wooden items: two little children's bowls and a child's spoon; -two wooden spoons/ENIKWAN/ (correct EMIK WAN, author's note); - two Indian mats/ANAKAN/; - one bag made of grass fibers; - one cradle /TIKINAGAN/with cover, one pair of snowshoes/AGIMAK/ (correct: AGIM) made by an Indian and strung with a net woven by an Indian woman.
c) clothing items: one pair of bridal shoes /MAKISINAN/ made of deerskin with green silk ribbons; one pair of different shoes of Indian make.
d) Men's gear and war gear: one old copper spearhead /SHIMAGAN/ (correct JIMAGAN, author's note); - two peace pipes/APWAGAN/ (correct OPWAGAN, author's note) cut from red stone; - two pipestems (for peace pipes), one wrapped in porcupine quills; one tobacco pouch made of the raw tube-like hide of a brown weasel, French 'Pecan'; two tobacco pouches made of the light yellow skin of a marten; one tobacco bag decorated with red threads and glass beads; - one beautiful little sheath /MOKOMAN/ (This is the Ojibwa word for knife. A sheath is called PINDIKOMAN); eight arrows and two bows/MITIGWAB/; a battle club made of Indian hardwood/PAGAMAGAN/.
e) natural items: natural colour and dyed porcupine quills; - half the antlers of a large American elk (moose) /ESHKAN/; - several agates and carnelians and a ball of pyrite from Lake Superior; bird feathers /MONENGNANEKA/ (correct MONINGWANE, the Indian word for the lapwing which lives on an island).
f) Books authored by Father Baraga; - The Life of Jesus in the Indian Language, Paris 1837, 8; an Ojibwa prayer book, Otchipwe Anamie Masinaigan, Paris 1837, 8.
g) A copperplate print of the Detroit church
h) three American coins.”

The list closes with the signature and date: Ljubljana, April 14, 1837, Heinrich Freyer, curator of the museum.

In early 1839, the museum's Annual Report 1836-1837 was published, mentioning the ethnographic objects from the Baraga Collection on pages 5, 8, 10, 17, 22, and 27. Illyrisches Blatt published an article on the first exhibition of the Baraga and Lavrin Collections in 1844. The articles states that the objects are exhibited in a cabinet in the third room of the ground floor, the African objects (donated by consul Lavrin) are situated at the back of the cabinet, and the American objects (of the Ojibwa) are at the sides and bottom of the cabinet.

On January 26, 1854, vicar-general Baraga visited his homeland for the second and last time. The Provincial Museum's bulletin shows that on this occasion he donated to the museum a small piece of native copper weighing 75 grams but no further ethnographic objects.

In 1888, the museum's curator and conservator Karl Deschmann published a guide to the Carniolan Provincial Museum on the occasion of the opening of the new museum. The guide contains descriptions of the objects that had been moved from the museum's first premises in the Lyzeum. The guide mentions that free-standing cabinet no. 6 contains the ethnographic collections from North America and Asia. On this occasion the following donors were mentioned: Bishop Friderik Baraga, Franc Pirc, (Janez) Čebul, and Klinar who was a globe-trotter aboard the frigate Novara. The guide's author states that objects nos. 20 to 40 were given to the museum by Baraga. The guide mentions the following ethnographic objects on pages 155 and 156; -24. One pair of snowshoes/OGIMAK/ (correct: AGIM) artistically interlaced by an Indian woman from the Ojibwa tribe; -25. five pieces of birch bark used to cover Indian wigwams; -26. Canoe/TSCHIMAN/ (correct: TCHIMAN) made of birch bark with sail. The framework is made of the wood of an American cedar; -27. Bow and arrows, together with an Indian musical instrument, the shawm (correct: horn, author's note); -28. Two mats/ANAKA/ woven from some kind of rush; -29. Bag/MACHKIMOD/ (correct: MASHKIMOD) woven from some kind of grass; -30. Two wooden table spoons; -31. Two small children's cups with child's spoon; -32. Two peace pipes /APWAGAN/ (correct: OPWAGAN) cut from red stone, one covered with tin foil. One of the pipestems is halfway wrapped in porcupine quills; -33. Industrial objects made of birch bark;- 34. Knife sheath /MOKOMAN/ with minute embroidery wrapped in porcupine quills; -35. Tobacco bag woven from red wool threads. The string is made of glass beads; -36. Cradle/TIKMAGAN/ (correct: TIKINAGAN) with upper end carved artistically and decorated with painted lines; -37. One pair of plain Indian women's shoes; -38. One pair of partly embroidered girl's shoes; -39. One pair of Indian bridal shoes /MAKISINAN/ made of tanned deerskin. The moccasins are decorated with green silk ribbons and rows of dyed porcupine quills; -40. Flat club with drawn ornament. In this second guide to the museum's collections (the first was published in 1836), the names of several objects are written incorrectly in Ojibwa and number 27 refers to a new object, the shawm, a musical instrument.

In 1905, Alfonz Müllner was succeeded by Dr. Walter Schmidt as curator of the Provincial Museum. Schmidt began his work by making an inventory. The inventory numbers on the objects were written with vermilion in delicate handwriting. Dr. Schmidt also rearranged and completed the ethnological collections. On the occasion of this inventory and also due to the errors made by Karl Deschmann in the second Guide to the Carniolan Provincial Museum, significant new errors occurred in the determination of the origin and localities of some museum objects, as for instance with the battle clubs with inventory numbers E 2829 and E 2866. These errors were overlooked by later researchers of Baraga's and Knoblehar's ethnographic objects and were finally corrected by the author's findings which are explained below. The Native American objects were entered in the Inventory (catalogue of holdings) of the National Museum's cultural and historical department for the first time in volume 1, 1895-1914, pp. 42-43. The entries are in German under numbers 1090-1145. The descriptions of the objects are highly inadequate.

In 1923, the Royal Ethnographic Museum was founded, and in 1924 and 1925 the ethnographic objects were transferred from the National Museum to the new museum. This division of the original collections brought an end to the whole that was formerly an excellent collection in the Carniolan Provincial Museum.

The ethnographic objects of the Native Americans which the Royal Ethnographic Museum acquired as a result of the division were entered in the Inventory Register of the Ethnographic Museum II, 1923-1928. The objects from the Baraga Collection were given new inventory numbers. They were entered in the Museum's Inventory on pages 120 to 133 under inventory numbers 2861-2948 but not in sequential numbers. The registrar's descriptions of the objects are unprofessional and inadequate.

Director of the Ethnographic Museum Boris Orel published a report entitled "On the Ethnographic Collections from Africa, America, and Asia in the Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana" in which he mentioned among other things the collection of Bishop Friderik Baraga. This report contains an interesting note (no. 4, p. 141):

"Unfortunately, the archive of the National Museum has no protocols from the former Carniolan Provincial Museum for the period between 1836 and 1853. On this occasion, we suggest to the National Museum that it publish all old protocols of the former Carniolan Provincial Museum held from the period between 1822 and 1888. Moreover, it would certainly do no harm to critically examine all the old inventories and correct various inadequacies, as far as possible, in the protocols and documents held. The Ethnographic Museum will certainly do so on the occasion of the next inventory of ethnographic objects that were transferred to it from the National Museum.”

The author of the report on the ethnographic collections seems not to have known that the National Museum's Archive (in the Museum's library) was excellently arranged and kept in fascicles. The protocols and lists of new acquisitions of museum objects from the periods 1822-1853 and 1853-1888 are in this archive. They contain the basic documents and descriptions (for the Knoblehar collection, dimensions and sketches as well) of the objects written by the donors themselves, that is, Baraga, Pirc, Lavrin, Knoblehar, and Čebul. These annual reports on new acquisitions of the former Carniolan Provincial Museum together with documents, dimensions, and sketches - are the main sources for the professional study of the donated objects, and ethnologists have not made appropriate use of them in the past.

The old Ethnographic Museum's Inventory (volume II. 1923-1928) which contains the entries on the ethnographic objects from North America and Africa is inadequate, unprofessional, and badly arranged. An Ojibwa battle club, for example, is called a “boomerang," a sheath is called a piece of embroidery, and a bark vessel is held to be decorated with boar hair instead of porcupine quills.

In 1927, the Royal Ethnographic Museum presented its collections in the paper Illustrirani Slovenec and pointed out its need for larger premises. Page 381 shows a picture of the non-European cultures in a cabinet in the corridor. The collection of Native Americans was exhibited in a single cabinet. The photograph of the exhibition is probably the oldest pictorial document on the collection.

In 1930, the museum exhibited its non-European collections as part of a missionary exhibition at a fair in Ljubljana. During the Second World War, fear of bombing made the staff move the exhibited collections (including the non-European collections) to a bunker in 1944. They were exhibited again in 1945.

In 1947, the Ministry of Education decided that the Ethnographic Museum was to occupy three exhibition spaces and part of the corridor on the ground floor of the National Museum. The Ethnographic Museum opened its rearranged premises and completed the permanent exhibition. On this occasion the museum's director Boris Orel declared that the museum "had left out the collections of non-European cultures primarily because of the lack of exhibition space.” The collections were put in crates and stored in the museum's depository.

The Slovene Ethnographic Museum opened a special section, the Museum of Non-European Cultures, in the Goričane Mansion near Medvode in 1964, and the collections of non-European cultures, including the Baraga Collection, were moved to the new premises. In 1975 a temporary exhibition was opened in the mansion called The Applied Arts of the Ojibwa Indians in the 19th Century. When the exhibition closed, the Baraga collection was returned to the depository where it has remained until today,

SITES

Baraga arrived at his new post among the Ojibwa on July 27, 1835. The Native American village on Madeline Island was called La Pointe. The island is part of the Apostle Islands and is situated close to the western part of Lake Superior's southern shore. In one of his letters Baraga mentions another Native American village called Fond du Lac some ninety miles away from Madeline Island. He adds that there, too, the Native Americans want to adopt the Catholic faith.

Since these locations are known, we may well say that the Native American objects Baraga donated to the Provincial Museum originate from the Ojibwa of the villages of La Pointe and Fond du Lac. An exception must, however, be made for the battle club bearing the National Museum's inventory number 1144 and the subsequent Ethnographic Museum's inventory number E 2866 (cat. no. 50) since it originates from South America.

AGE

Baraga wrote to his sister Amalia that he had left his missionary post at Lake Superior (the St. Joseph mission on Lake Superior) on September 29, 1836, and was -with several stopovers in the course of his journey on his way home. It is then that he took with him the crate containing various Native American objects. The origin of the Native American objects that were made and collected upon Baraga's request can therefore be dated to the period between February 1836 (the date of his letter to his sister Amalia in which he informs her that he will visit his homeland) and September 29, 1836, when he wrote that he had already left the missionary post and was on his way home.

Taking into account these two incontestable dates, the origin and collection of the Native American objects which make up the Baraga Collection can be dated to 1836. Before leaving his mission, Baraga had the Ojibwa make some of their typical items in miniature: a canoe, five pieces of birch bark used to cover wigwams, two mats, and a bag. It is also worth mentioning that some of the Native American objects from the collection show visible signs of use and are one or two years older. The age of the natural items added to Baraga's Native American Collection - agates, carnelians and the ball of pyrite is of course an entirely different matter.

SCOPE

Friderik Baraga, the donor of the Native American Collection, wrote to his sister Amalia in a letter dated December 3, 1836: "You can open the box and have a look at the (Native American, author's note) objects that are in it, but you must not give anything away until I get home." This request confirms our assumption that Baraga himself distributed the Native American objects that were in the crate. He probably gave some of them to his benefactors and to his sister Amalia's family. According to the "List of New Acquisitions," in 1837, the Carniolan Provincial Museum received fifty-six objects, various dyed and painted porcupine quills, and some agates and carnelians (there is no mention of their quantity in the list). Comparing the present state with that of the list published on April 25, 1837, in Illyrisches Blatt, the Slovene Ethnographic Museum now has in its possession thirty-eight objects while the National Museum holds the two Native American prayer books written by Baraga that are also mentioned in the list. Of the original fifty-six objects (excluding the number of porcupine quills and that of the agates and carnelians) listed in Illyrisches Blatt, the Baraga Collection today numbers forty objects.

In his guide to the museum Karel Deschmann attributed one more object—the shawm (correct: horn), a musical instrument—to the Baraga Collection. In the National Museum's inventory for the period 1895-1914, the following additional objects are attributed to the Baraga Collection: two vessels made of birch bark, one child's moccasin, and one women's moccasin. They were added to the Baraga Collection after the museum's curator Dr. Walter Schmidt carried out an inventory of objects.

Baraga's prayer books (written in the Ojibwa language) are in the library of the National Museum.

Source for Provenance information

"Misijonarji: Darovalci Indijanskih Predmetov (Missionaries: Donors of Native American Objects, Collection of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum)," France Golob. Ljubljana: Library of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, 1997.

Publication History

"Misijonarji: Darovalci Indijanskih Predmetov (Missionaries: Donors of Native American Objects, Collection of the Slovenian Ethnographic Museum)," France Golob. Ljubljana: Library of the Slovene Ethnographic Museum, 1997.

Related language items in the GKS: wiigwaas wiigwaas-mkak naakaans gaaway gaawye

GKS Reference Number: 59225

How to Cite this Item

Maker, Name unrecorded. Birchbark container. GRASAC ID 59225. Slovene Ethnographic Museum, E 2893.

Record Creation Context

This record was created as part of a Great Lakes Research Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Cultures (GRASAC) research trip GRASAC visit to the Slovene Ethnographic Museum (Ljubljana, Slovenia), December 3-5, 2024.

Record Creation Notes/Observations

Researchers present: Maureen Matthews, Cary Miller, Pamela Klassen, and Amanda McLeod.

This record was created by Amanda McLeod, 05/23/25.