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mokuk; birchbark container
mokuk; birchbark container
mokuk; birchbark container
Mokuk made with birch bark, porcupine quills, and black thread. Floral pattern and an eagle on two sides, with crosses above the eagle on one side. Collected by Martin Pitzer. Odawa.
Mokuk is described as a "smaller sugar bowl" in the "Index of Objects and Woks of an American Indian Tribe in the Far North, Together With a Description of the Same" by Martin Pitzer. He writes that the items in this book are from "the north ‐ eastern part of North America, and is called the tribe of the Otawahs, or Ottawas" (35).
Read More About This Relative
Made of birch bark, porcupine quills, splint along edge sewn down with black thread.
One piece sewn with vertical seam on side.
There are floral motifs on one side; and eagle and floral on other with little crosses above the eagle.
Pitzer describes the mokuk as a "smaller sugar bowl," writing that such items would be "filled with... dried sugar. With great effort and undeterred, they preserve this boiled down sugar in their own birch bark vessels."
Martin Pitzer collected this item, possibly when he travelled to the Great Lakes in the 1850s. In 1854 Pitzer published an exhibit catalogue with the items he collected at Arbre Croche and Cross Village.
Provenance
Austrian church painter Martin Pitzer travelled to the Great Lakes region, to "the Ottawa villages of Arbre Croche and Cross Village" in the early 1850s. He collected a significant number of item and brought them back to Austria to be part of an exhibition to raise money for the Ottawa mission.
Pitzer, Martin. "Index of Objects and Woks of an American Indian Tribe in the Far North, Together With a Description of the Same." Printed by the J. G. Weiss University Press Printing Office. Munich. 1854: 11.
Martin Pitzer collected items during his trip to Arbre Croche and Cross Village in the 1850s and displayed them in a travelling exhibition upon his return to Austria. The Pitzer collection later went to the Weltmuseum Wien, Austria.
In 1854 Pitzer published an accompanying catalogue for the show with additional information on each item.
Kasprycki, Sylvia. "The Native American Collection of Friderik Baraga: The Missionary as Ethnographic Collector." Etnolog 8(59). 1998. 331-354: Pitzer, Martin. "Index of Objects and Woks of an American Indian Tribe in the Far North, Together With a Description of the Same." Printed by the J. G. Weiss University Press Printing Office. Munich. 1854.
About This GRASAC Record
Unknown Odawa artist, mokuk. Currently in the Weltmuseum Wien, Vienna, Austria, 131742. Item photographed and described as part of a GRASAC research trip January 2016; GRASAC item id 59024.
In January of 2016, a small team of GRASAC researchers visited the collection to study and photograph it: Ruth Phillips, Lisa Truong, Naomi Recollet (Anishinaabe (Odawa/Ojibwe), Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory) and Wahsontiio Cross (Mohawk, Kahnawake). This GKS record was created in December 2021 by GRASAC RA Amelia Healey.
Created using a spreadsheet with information made by Ruth Phillips, Lisa Truong, Naomi Recollet (Anishinaabe (Odawa/Ojibwe), Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory) and Wahsontiio Cross (Mohawk, Kahnawake).