Snow Shoes with Provenance

It is always rewarding to find a quality artifact of the material culture of indigenous peoples (such as the First Nations in Canada and Native Americans in the U.S.), but even better when its provenance is known. More often than not the story behind an antique's previous owners is lost in time, but in the case of these snow shoes we know quite a bit about their owner and collection history.

The snow shoes on display in Chris Henne's study, circa 1900.

These snow shoes were acquired by Christian Henne II on a trip to the Klondike in 1897. They were passed down in his family until they were recently sold by his now elderly granddaughter. They are in remarkably good condition, having hung on a wall since they were acquired 118 years ago. Tribal members would reweave their own snow shoes whenever the babiche wore out, but they would reuse the same frames for many years. Since neither the weaving nor frames of these snow shoes show signs of heavy use, they had most likely been recently made when given as a gift to Henne.

What is particularly intriguing about this rare form of snow shoes is that they were made by a cultural group (Tlingit) and within a region (Pacific Northwest Coast) that are not typically associated with snow travel accoutrements. However, the Northwest Coast Tlingit peoples also occupy less temperate regions away from the immediate coast, eastward into the mountainous region of the Yukon, which explains why snow shoes were part of some Tlingit tribes' tradition.

The Snow Shoes

These snow shoes are a style made by Inland Tlingit, which includes the tribes (called Kwáan) Áa Tlein Ḵwáan of the Atlin Lake area, Deisleen Ḵwáan of the Teslin Lake area, and T’aaku Kwáan of the Taku River basin.

Tlingit groups (http://www.ankn.uaf.edu)

They have two-piece birch frames, bent into rounded, upturned toes where the wood is spliced and lashed together.

The frames are dyed red, and the fine weaving is either babiche (strips of semi-tanned hide) or sinew (dried tendons). The middle of the snowshoe where the foot is placed has wider weave, laced with stronger strips of rawhide.

While men usually made the frames, both men and women wove the netted sections of the shoes.

Native woman weaving snow shoes (Library of Congress, circa 1900)

Round tip snow shoes were preferred for breaking backcountry trails where they were less likely to get caught on brush than pointed toe shoes. The large surface area of these snow shoes (47.5" long x 10.5" wide) distributed the wearer's weight to prevent sinking into deep snow.

When we acquired these snow shoes we assumed they were Athabascan because of their characteristic elongated shape, which is similar to other Athabascan snow shoes we've owned, as well as to those shown in this 1906 photograph of an Athabascan woman.

However, the frame shape in the back quarter of the snow shoes as they taper to the heel end have a double indentation, which is unlike any Athabascan snow shoes that we have seen.

One reference titled "Primitive Travel and Transportation," an 1894 publication of the U.S. National Museum (now the Smithsonian) written by ethnologist Otis Tufton Mason, pictures a similar pair of snow shoes collected in the headwaters of the Yukon River (Tagish, Atlin and Teslin lakes), which is a region inhabited by both Athabascans and Inland Tlingit.

An accompanying note states that "a slit is cut in the front crosspiece before the toe section" (shown magnified below).

This treatment is also seen on our snow shoes, shown in close-up below. It allows the babiche to be tucked behind wood and thus protected from abrasion by the toe of a boot in the area of the snow shoe that is subject to the most wear and tear.

So our snow shoes are similar to others from the Yukon headwaters region, but we were still unsure whether they were Athabascan or Tlingit. It was not until we found the photo below of documented Inland Tlingit snow shoes that we could pinpoint the tribal origin of the snow shoes we acquired as Tlingit. The back ends of these snow shoes have the same shape as our snow shoes, which differs slightly from Athabascan versions.

Inland Tlingit snow shoes (Collection of the George Johnston Museum Teslin, Yukon)

The photo below shows the back tips of our Inland Tlingit snow shoes (left) compared to the back ends of a pair of Athabascan snow shoes (right) from our past inventory. The former have a more sweeping and elongated bend from the heel crossbar to the back tips.

The similarity between Inland Tlingit and Athabascan snow shoes is not surprising, even though they emanate from two distinct language/cultural groups. On this portion of a map showing northwestern Canada and Alaska highlighting the historic regions of Canada's subarctic groups of First Peoples, all of the tribes whose territories border the Inland Tlingit region are Athabascan language groups. Yet despite their different linguistic traditions, both peoples' ways of life were shaped in part by the landscape they shared - the mixed spruce taiga subarctic terrain along the large interior lakes and drainage basin of the Taku and Stikine Rivers and at the headwaters of the Yukon River.

Tlingit and Athabascan (firstpeoplesofcanada.com)

In the early 19th century most of the Inland Tlingit lived on the upper reaches of the Taku River. They later moved across the height of land to the Yukon, prompted first by it rich fur resources, then by the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-99. In each homeland, Inland Tlingit intermarried with coastal Tlingit tribes and surrounding Athabascans such as the Tahltan, with whom they also feuded over rights to fish salmon and trap and transport lush furs from the interior to the coast. Although both the Inland Tlingit and the Tahltan Athabascan groups coveted the furs of the region, they were themselves dominated by Coast Tlingit who monopolized access to European fur traders.(http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/inland-tlingit/)

So there is a complex history of cultural competition, trade, and exchange among the Inland Tlingit, the Tahltan Athabascans, and the Coast Tlingit tribes. The story is further complicated by their interchange with people of European descent, from the time of earliest European contact in the 18th century, through the eras of the Klondike Gold Rush, and beyond. The owner of these snow shoes, Chris Henne, played a small part in that history of contact.

A Man of Uncommon Character

Christian "Chris" Henne II (1874-1906) was the son of a prominent American business man, Christian Henne, who was among a group of men credited with building Los Angeles into a vibrant metropolis and center of commerce in the mid-19th century. Chris was born in a gracious old home in what at the time was an aristocratic residential district of Los Angeles, now given way to modern office buildings.

His father owned a considerable amount of real estate in what is now the heart of the Los Angeles business district. Upon his father's death when Chris was just a boy, he inherited the properties, including the valuable Henne Building which housed important offices, such as for the petroleum industry.

The elegant Henne Building built in 1897 at 122 West Third St. in Los Angeles is now nothing but rubble beneath the modern Ronald Reagan State Building.

Despite his inherited wealth, Chris chose to pursue his own interests and became a mining engineer. In 1892 at the young age of 18, he graduated from a celebrated engineering school in Germany. He then returned to California and studied mechanical engineering at Stanford, graduating in the class of 1897. A few years later, in 1900, he was awarded the advanced professional degree "Engineer of Mines" from Columbia University's renowned school of engineering.

Between graduating from Stanford and starting at Columbia, the ambitious young Henne made a trip north to the Klondike. It was 1897, at the start of the great Gold Rush. He was no doubt exploring the potential for applying his mine engineering skills, and may even have been on a specific prospecting mission. Mining in the Klondike was difficult because of the permafrost and the unevenly distributed ore, which would have been nothing but a motivating challenge to Henne.

There were several overland routes of travel to the Klondike, and Henne's family recounts that he traveled the Takou route, at least in part. However, it is likely that he began on the Stikine Route which merged with the Takou Route. This assumption is based on other family information that Henne stayed in Wrangell, Alaska where he befriended members of the Stikine River Tlingit tribe, the Shtax'heen Kwáan. It was the Stikine people who gave Chris these snowshoes.

The Stikine Route to the Klondike began southeast of Skagway at Wrangell. Prospectors paddled, poled and dragged canoes up the treacherous Stikine River to a place called Glenora, from where they portaged their supplies 150 miles, including over a mountain pass, down into Teslin Lake.

Prospectors ascending a pass en route to the Klondike, c. 1898

At Teslin Lake, the Stikine Route merged with the Takou Route which involved crossing the lake then following the Teslin and Lewis Rivers to the Yukon River, which led ultimately to Dawson City, the central hub of Klondike Gold Rush activity.

Dawson City and the Yukon River, circa 1898

The role of Tlingits and Athabascans serving as guides for prospectors making their way through the Yukon to the Klondike seems a likely, although unrecorded piece of history. We do know however, that Chris Henne interacted with the Stikine Tlingit, whose ancestral territory included the inland basin of the Stikine River, as well as the coastal island of Wrangell, Alaska where they are now based, and where Chris stayed over on his journey to the Klondike.

Wrangell, Alaska as Chris Henne would have see it in the late 1800s

Chris Henne was a remarkable person, a congenial and popular man described as having "fine instincts" and "one of the most cultured and polished men of his day." He spoke six languages (including the Chinook tongue of native groups in Oregon and Washington) which he learned by living among the natives of countries around the globe (Europe, China, Japan), and through his deep study of the literature and customs of those places. He also had an inventive mind, known to work hard at perfecting machinery of his own design. Regarded as a leading professional in the field of mining engineering, he was often consulted by his peers.

But the rigors of his mining work, including the radical changes in climate and the difficult conditions of life in the field, contributed to the decline in his health beginning in 1902. He died in 1906, only two years after he had married and fathered a son, as a man with great future promise within his life and profession. He is buried in the Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Native Artifacts in Early 20th-Century Decor

Like other well-educated, aristocratic gentlemen of his era, Chris Henne decorated his homes with the art he collected on his travels. In addition to the snow shoes themselves, we are lucky to have this large (~8" x 10") circa 1900 photograph (taken by C.L. McLure) of Henne's study in his Denver, Colorado home. He displayed these snow shoes (pictured in center, crossed beneath the ram head) among other native artifacts.

Decorating with Native American art was also a tradition in Adirondack Great Camps, such as in this photo of Kamp Kill Kare from circa 1915.

Eventually these artifacts tend to come on the market and find appreciative new owners, as did the Lakota coat and several other pieces from "The Indian Room" at Kamp Kill Kare which sold at a March 2015 Skinner auction.

Likewise, a new owner of Chris Henne's snow shoes will continue to preserve their condition, enjoy their incredible decorative presence, and be reminded of a past way of life in the western subarctic.