no. 7895. Per Steve Henrikson, Curator, Alaska State Museum 2/1996: 32. Group of Tlingit Indians in front of Chief Shakes House and Totem Poles, Wrangell. A group of Tlingit Indians, probably of the Naanya.aayi clan, dressed in ceremonial regalia. At far left, several women and children are seated. Then (l to r), two men wearing white shirts decorated with a shark or dogfish design, holding song leaders paddles; man with beaded shirt and apron; man in doorway dressed in Euroamerican suit (probably Chief Shakes VI) holding the killer whale staff, a crest object of the clan (now in the Burke Museum, University of Washington, Seattle, cat #1-1443); woman wearing button robe with two children; man wearing a spruce root hat with potlatch rings and button robe with killer whale design; seated man wearing spruce root hat and button robe; child(?) wearing fur robe and plain spruce root hat. The Naanya.aayi clan has had at least seven leaders with the name Shakes, dating back to the capture of the name Weeshakes during battle with the Tsimshian-speaking Nishga.

In the background, the house of the Stikine Naanya.aayi clan chief Shakes, with two totem poles representing clan emblems. One pole features a humanoid, presumably Chief Shakes, wearing the Double Killer Whale Hat, an emblem of the Naanya.aayi clan. The image on the pole is based on an old crest hat; an ancient hat with the same motif is in the Emmons collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The pole held the human remains of deceased members of the Naanya.aayi elite.

The Bear up the Mountain Pole represents the brown bear that accompanied the Naanya.aayi clan in their escape from the flood, an incident from which the clan claims the bear as a crest. John R. Swanton recorded the Naanya.aayi story as follows:

"At the time of the flood the Nanyaa'ui were climbing a mountain on the Stikine river, called Seku'qle-ca, and a grizzly bear and a mountain goat went along with them. Whenever the people stopped, these two animals stopped also, and whenever they moved on the animals moved on. Finally, they killed the bear and preserved its skin with the claws, teeth and so forth, intact. They kept it for years after the flood, and as soon as it went to pieces, they replaced it with another, and that with still another up to the present time. This is why they claim the grizzly bear." (p. 321, Swanton, J.R. Tlingit Myths and Texts, Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology, no. 39, Wash. DC 1909).

At the base of the totem poles are two carved bear figures, which are decorative sculptures for the large cedar canoe of the Naanya.aayi clan (see PCA 88-54 and 55) for images of the canoe with figures). For related photos in other collections, see 87-115 and 87-117 of the Winter and Pond collection. Another Partridge photo of the poles, with Chief Shakes standing in the foreground wearing the Killer Whale Hat, is in the collection of the Peabody Museum, Harvard University.