The Secret Museum

by Molly Oldfield

  The RGS keeps the things belonging to Livingstone and Stanley in the ‘hot’ archive, which contains artefacts brought back by explorers who had adventures in hot parts of the globe. There is also a ‘cold collection’. The ‘coolest’ object I saw was a Burberry balaclava that once belonged to explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton (1874–1922). He may first have worn it between 1901 and 1904 during the Discovery Expedition, when he and Captain Robert Falcon Scott sledged in Antarctica to 82 degrees south; the furthest south anyone had been at that time. Shackleton was sent home early from that trip on health grounds. Inspired by his first taste of Antarctic exploration, he returned to Antarctica in 1907 as leader of the Nimrod Expedition, in part sponsored by the RGS.

  Nimrod was the name of the boat he took to Antarctica. He set off with it from New Zealand. On board the ship from England to collect Nimrod in the Antipodes, he met a theatre impresario called Frank Thornton who was on his way to Australia to produce a play, When Knights were Bold. The two became friends and Shackleton gave Thornton his balaclava as a keepsake. He wrote a message upon it:

  To Frank Thornton: I give this helmet though it is not of any use in his combat in ‘When Knights were Bold’ it may be liked as it was worn ‘When Nights were Cold’ when the most Southerly point in this world was reached by man. With kindest wishes from E. H. Shackleton 19/01/1907.

  In January 1909, Shackleton made it even further south, just 180.6 kilometres from the pole. He was disappointed not to get to the Pole, but his wife, Emily, later recorded: ‘The only comment he made to me about not reaching the Pole was “a live donkey is better than a dead lion, isn’t it?” and I said, “Yes, darling, as far as I am concerned.”’ In 2010, five crates of Mackinlay’s Rare Old Highland Malt Scotch whisky left behind by Shackleton’s team were found, and Whyte & Mackay, who own the Mackinlay brand, have now successfully recreated it by matching it, using chemical analysis. Frank Thornton’s play went on a successful tour of Australia and Tasmania.

  If you want to see the hats, you can. The Royal Geographic Society is happy to show people their collections. They haven’t a museum, so it’s all in their archive of over 2 million items (including a million maps and half a million images), but they’ll happily retrieve things for you. While you’re there, look out for modern-day explorers planning their trips or regaling people with stories of their latest travels.

  [Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904)]

  His real name was John Rowlands.

  [Victoria Falls]

  Livingstone first saw the falls in November 1855. He named them after Queen Victoria. They already had a local name, Mosioatunya. He was inspired to write: ‘No-one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England…scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight.’

  [Livingstone and Stanley’s hats]

  When the two men met each was wearing a hat, which they doffed to one another. I saw the two hats, side by side, in the archive of the Royal Geographical Society in London.

  [Burberry balaclava worn by Ernest Shackleton]

  He wrote a message on it and gave it as a gift to Frank Thornton, whom he met on the boat out to the Antipodes to collect his ship, Nimrod.

  ‘WE HAVE OVER 600,000 CATALOGUE records – 75,000 of those are ethnographic specimens collected from living people – then there are several million archaeological artefacts, so working out how many objects we have in the collection sort of depends on how you count,’ said the Peabody Museum’s curator, Susan Haskell, as she led me up the stairs to the storage rooms in the roof of the museum building. As the air conditioning hummed, she turned off the alarm that protects the archives, unlocked a low, brown door with a ‘watch your head’ sign above it and showed me into the first room, which was lined with white shelves and ethnographic objects.

  We headed for the Hawai’ian area, to a box that contains a beautiful, rare Hawai’ian feather helmet made in the eighteenth century. It’s in mint condition, all three types of red, black and yellow feathers still carefully preserved on the crested helmet. It lives in storage, where few people ever see it. Susan told me its story.

  Columbia, under Captain Gray (1755–1806), was the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. On its journey, it stopped in Hawai’i in 1789, where the ship’s crew met the royal family. The ship continued on across the Pacific, before returning home to Boston. This was a big deal. Before the Revolutionary War (1775–83), the British did not allow Americans to trade in the Pacific. So, the minute the war was over, the Americans had set off from Salem and Boston and all the ports along the East Coast and headed for the Pacific. The Columbia was the first to make it there and back.

  On the way home, Captain Gray and the Columbia picked up the crown prince of Owyhee (now Hawai’i) and sailed with him to Boston. When they arrived there, a big parade was held in the streets of the city. The crown prince marched up the street, with Captain Gray at his side, and the crew of the Columbia behind them, to meet the Governor of Boston. The crown prince was wearing this feather helmet, and a beautiful feather cape.

  Two years later, his costume was presented to President Washington by the ‘gentlemen adventurers’ of the voyage. He, in turn, gave it to Rembrandt Peale (1778–1860), founder of the Peale Museum in Baltimore, for safekeeping. The helmet was the first deposit in the museum. Years later, the helmet was given as a gift to the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, where it has been carefully stored and preserved. It was once on exhibition, but now it is considered too fragile to display.

  It is exquisite. The helmet was made to fit the crown prince perfectly. It is made of a basket woven from bark fibre and encased by a net, into which the feathers have been pressed. The crest swoops over the top of the head of the helmet, like a Mohican. It looks heavy, but since it is made out of bark and feathers, it is very light.

  Around 10,000 tiny feathers decorate the helmet. They were collected from the three different types of bird by specialist bird catchers. Several hundred people probably collected them – unless they were made from feathers collected over several generations and stored until needed. The red feathers probably come from the Hawai’ian honeycreeper, the yellow feathers from the honeyeater. The bird from which the black feathers came hasn’t been identified yet.

  In the eighteenth century, feathers in Hawai’i were like gold in Europe, or turquoise in Mexico. Birds were believed to be spiritual messengers, bridging the gap between the gods and mankind. So when a Hawai’ian chief wore a piece like this (known as mahiole in Hawai’ian), he was connected more closely to the gods, and believed he could communicate more clearly with them. A helmet like this was worn for sacred ceremonies, as well as in times of danger, like going into battle, or in times of change. It was both a piece of art and a display of prestige, and worn only by Hawai’ian royalty.

  The helmet and the feather robe must have made a huge impression on the locals of Boston as the Prince of Hawai’i strode down the streets of their city. The high crest of the helmet would have stood out, above the heads of the others in the parade. It’s strange to think that more people saw it that day than have ever seen it since, but that is the best way; if it had been exhibited for all those years, it would not be in the perfect condition it is now. I saw a few others in storage that looked worn, and I could see the basket beneath the feathers clearly.

  Offering a helmet like this was a huge step for a Hawai’ian royal. Interestingly, 16 helmets were given to another man, Captain James Cook (1728–79) when he first landed in Hawai’i just over a decade earlier. His arrival coincided with a festival called Makahiki dedicated to the god of peace, Lono. Cook was welcomed and given gifts, and spent a peaceful time on the island.

  Then he set sail to continue his journey. He was driven back to Hawai’i by a storm. This time, he arrived during a ceremony of war. The locals stole one of his boats and he decided to take a chief hostage until the boat was returned. His idea backfired and Cook ended up dead; parts of his body were eaten
.

  One of the helmets presented in friendship by those who murdered him is now on display in the British Museum. Another, which the Hawai’ian chief placed on Cook’s head, is in the National Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa.

  Today, this helmet, the first feathered object like it to come to America, is shown only to those who ask to see it. Most of the requests come from Hawai’ian people, particularly native Hawai’ians who want to learn how to do featherwork. They come to see this beautiful example of traditional work, still in mint condition.

  It is significant that more helmets like this one exist outside of Hawai’i than at home, where they were created. For some Hawai’ians, their featherwork treasures in museums around the world are a potent symbol of all the Hawai’ians lost through their interaction with Europeans from Cook onwards – the final consequence of which was annexation by the United States. They have lost their nation, their chiefs, their way of interacting with the universe. However, those who seek independence from the United States see the feathered helmet and other feathered objects like it as symbols of what could be regained in the future in Hawai’i.

  [Captain Gray (1755–1806)]

  Gray was an American merchant sea captain who led the first American voyage around the world aboard the Columbia.

  [Hawai’ian feather helmet]

  It is in mint condition, all three types of red, black and yellow feathers still carefully preserved on the crested helmet.

  [Mahiole]

  Painting by Rembrandt Peale of a member of the chief class of Hawaii wearing a Hawai’ian feather helmet. Most of the requests to see the helmet in storage come from Hawai’ian people who want to study it as a perfect example of traditional feather work.

  THE LIENZO OF TLAPILTEPEC IS a long piece of cloth covered in glyphic drawings and tiny black footprints that was created by the Mixtec people. The word ‘lienzo’ comes from the Spanish word meaning ‘painted cloth’, and the one I saw, in a back room at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) comes from the village of Tlapiltepec in the Coixtlahuaca valley, Oaxaca State, Mexico. It tells the story of the rulers of the illustrious city of Coixtlahuaca, from their mythological beginnings to around the time the Spanish arrived in Mexico (1519–21).

  The lienzo lives in the archives of the museum in Toronto, folded up, cushioned by pillows and carefully tucked up inside a drawer. It can’t be exhibited because it is very sensitive to light. The once vibrant colours of the drawings have already been burned almost to oblivion by the hot Mexican sun during the years it hung in the Mixtec equivalent of the village hall in Tlapiltepec. The ROM, of course, wishes to preserve what is left of its colours by keeping it out of the light, behind the scenes.

  The day I visited the ROM, Arni Brownstone, who curates the museum’s Latin American collection, had woken the lienzo up. He unrolled the entire history of the Mixtec people and laid it out on a long table for me to see. It’s 3.97 × 1.7 metres, so stretched the length of the room we were in. It is made from three pieces of cloth – each one the breadth of the weaver’s shoulders – that have been sewn together. It is covered in glyphs which represent people, towns, landmarks, Christian churches and historical dates in the native Mixtec calendar, with black and red lines and little black footprints linking the pictures together. We walked from one end to the other, looking at the images, and Arni told me the story of the precious lienzo.

  The tale begins inside the cave of origins known as Chicomostoc. In the drawing, the first one on the lienzo, the cave looks like the open jaws of a monster. Out of the cave appears the god of the Mixtec people, Quetzalcoatl, an Earth-bound snake covered with the feathers of a skysoaring bird. The next drawing is of a kneeling priest twirling a stick on a bone to start a fire. This scene symbolizes the bringing of the cult of the god Quetzalcoatl to the Coixtlahuaca valley and the founding of the valley’s ruling lineages.

  Smoke rising from the point of the turning stick leads the eye to the first lords and ladies. Then, from this first couple run lines of couples, along the length of the lienzo. There are 21 generations of ruling couples drawn in total, and these are the actual rulers of Coixtlahuaca from the eleventh to the early sixteenthth centuries. Their names are written alongside their picture. The names are the same as their date of birth in the ancient Mexican calendar – each birth date is made up of the name of the day plus a number. The numbers are represented by coloured circles, which look a bit like a sign for traffic lights you might draw if you were writing down directions for a friend.

  The red lines and black footprints run across the lienzo in lots of directions; they show rulers’ movements, their spheres of influence and their genealogical ties. One ruling couple’s power was felt all the way to Tenochtitlan, the heart of the Aztec empire, now Mexico City.

  The glyphs of places on the lienzo have been matched up to towns and villages of today, and their arrangement on it corresponds to their arrangement in the actual landscape: the lienzo is also a map. Some of the rulers’ buildings and churches drawn on this one still exist today.

  The whole thing was created by the Mixtec to record the story of their people, to show that their rulers were legitimate, and that their power had been felt in the area right back to the beginning of time. It was created around the time the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the country, in response to the dramatic changes this caused in the region. Neither the Aztec conquest of the region (1458–62) nor the Spanish conquest (1519–21) is drawn on the lienzo.

  Until the Spanish arrived, the Aztecs had ruled over the Mixtecs, demanding tribute from them in the form of gold, turquoise, woven clothing and quetzal feathers. When the Spaniards came, they embarked on a profound reorganization of the native culture, including their religion and settlement patterns. They also brought awful diseases. Recent archaeological research suggests the population of Coixtlahuaca may have dropped during the sixteenth century from perhaps 75,000 to just a few thousand people. (Today, the valley holds only small villages, since many native people have decided to migrate elsewhere.)

  There are 11 extant lienzos from this area of Mexico, painted by the valley’s Chocho and Mixtec inhabitants in the decades after the Spanish conquered Mexico. They were created because the ruling houses were trying to preserve their status and hold their communities together in the face of all the turmoil created by outsiders. This beautiful lienzo, which lives wrapped in pillows, is the largest, most comprehensive and most highly prized of them all.

  When the ROM purchased it from Constantine Rickards, the British consul general, they did not know it had been stolen. It came into their collection in 1919 and for a long time its origins were obscure. Decades later, a music journalist from Toronto, Ross Parmenter, became interested in the lienzo and decided to work out where it was from. He ended up in the village of Tlapiltepec, where an elderly man remembered it having been stolen by a legal assistant who had been working on a land dispute case between the village and two neighbouring villages. The lienzo was key evidence. The legal assistant stole it and sold it for 400 pesos to Rickards, who sold it on to the ROM.

  They recently decided to create a lifesize version of it, as it would have looked, in its original colours, so that visitors to the ROM would be able to learn about the lienzo that lives in storage. This was a tricky task, as the colours have faded so much that today all you can see on the original are the black outlines of the glyphs, drawn in soot made from burnt bones or wood.

  They also used a 1910 tracing of the lienzo they had found in Berlin, and technology developed by NASA called ‘decorrelation stretch’. This software is used to fill in missing colours in pixel images taken from space by exaggerating colour differences. Hidden details of the original painting and rich colour passages were drawn out of the sun-bleached lienzo to create an illustration, close to how the original lienzo would have looked when first painted.

  It turned out that the black outlines were originally filled in with two shades of yellow – a strong yellow for jaguar-headed ser
pents, a light yellow in the reed mats under ruling couples; blue for water and women’s shirts; red for buildings; brown for flesh; grey for eagles and green in the hills. Two copies were made, one for Tlapiltepec, one for the ROM.

  The ROM made contact with the people of Tlapiltepec to find out how they would feel about having their lienzo copied and displayed. Arni explained to me that, given that the lienzo had been stolen from the village, ‘it was a strange situation. I was kind of nervous about the village asking for it back. I kept wondering if there was resentment or animosity there about the lienzo having been taken from them, but there doesn’t seem to be any. They still think of the lienzo as important, but maybe they don’t feel empowered enough to ask for it back. We hope they feel it’s being well looked after here.’

  The new illustration is on show in the ROM, hung vertically on a specially constructed freestanding wall of its own. The people of Tlapiltepec wrote back to say that the ROM’s decision to share their knowledge of the lienzo with the public was to perform ‘activity we consider to be one of the most noble that human beings can realize, and it fills us with pride to know that the lienzo of Tlapiltepec stands among the cultural expressions that are displayed over there.’ While the original slumbers in storage, the colourful copy is being woven into the history of the world.

  [The lienzo of Tlapiltepec]

  The lienzo is covered in glyphs, which represent people, towns, landmarks, churches and historical dates in the Mixtec calendar. Little black footprints and red and black lines link the pictures together. It is 3.97 × 1.7 metres in size.

  [The Royal Ontario Museum]

  THIS INTRICATE SHIELD, MADE FROM 14,000 fragments of turquoise, is one of the most exquisite things I have ever seen. It is quite small, only 31.8 centimetres in diameter (about the size of a pizza), but its impact is impressive. The shield shimmers, even here in the high-security vault in the storage facility of the National Museum of the American Indian.