It’s the real deal, not fake, and now some Indigenous people in South America say researchers should find out more about a shrunken head that’s spent 80 years in a Chatham museum.
It’s the real deal, not fake, and now some Indigenous people in South America say researchers should find out more about a shrunken head that’s spent 80 years in a Chatham museum.
Donated to the Chatham-Kent Museum, the shrunken head wound up in Chatham through the globe-trotting a century ago of Chatham lawyer Doug Sulman’s great-grandfather, who bought it from an Indigenous tribe in the Amazon, Sulman said.
His great-grandmother hid it in her petticoats to get it into Canada, he said.
“There were rumors it wasn’t a human head for years,” Sulman said Thursday.
But using computer scans, researchers at Western University have determined the miniature head, also known as a tsantsa, is made of true human remains and not animal parts or other materials, which is sometimes the case for such museum relics.
“We ended up finding there was a wealth of information via micro-CT scans,” said Lauren September Poeta, an Anishinaabe researcher and project associate in Western’s Office of Indigenous Initiatives.
Poeta is part of an international team, including researchers from Ecuador, who authenticated the tsantsa using digital archeology, part of a global effort to gain better understanding of Indigenous history and work toward decolonization.
Originally created for ceremonial uses, tsantsas became commercially valuable and also were produced for that market as Western culture encroached on South America in the 1800s.
The relics are now common in museum collections.
The Shuar and Achuar people of Ecuador and northern Peru considered them war trophies of their enemies and believed that, with their eyes and mouths shut, their souls would be trapped.
The Chatham museum asked researchers to examine the tsantsa. It was authenticated using two-dimensional imagery scans, from which a three-dimensional image was produced.
“At Western we are very lucky to have all this sophisticated technology that a lot of people don’t have access to,” Poeta said. “We want to help provide those resources if we can.”
Poeta said the best part of the research was “was finding an historical narrative that has been silent in the past because of colonialism.
“Rediscovering those facts help people reclaim their history and learn more about their ancestors,” she said.
With its authenticity verified, researchers at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador, partners in the study, can now work with the Shuar and Achuar people to determine what will happen next with the relic, Poeta said.
They have yet to determine why the shrunken head was produced, and whether it was for ceremonial or commercial purposes.
“For this study, authentication was really the focus. We need to better understand the whole process of tsantsa construction because ethno-historic sources vary quite a bit,” said Andrew Nelson, chair of Western’s department of anthropology.
So far, the Shuar and Achuar peoples haven’t asked for the human remains to be sent back, Poeta said. Instead, they’ve indicated they want more research done.
“We’re happy to help and support any decision for repatriation,” she said. “It’s the Shuar and Achuar people’s call and their decision to make. Not anybody else’s.”
The tsantsa was donated to the museum in the 1940s by the Sulman family.
Doug Sulman’s great-grandfather, George Sulman, a successful businessperson and MPP, traveled the world in the early 1900s when he acquired it and other artifacts, including a mummy, Sulman said.
The items his great-grandfather accumulated from his travels were displayed in a store he owned to help draw in shoppers, Sulman said, adding his grandfather eventually donated both the shrunken head and the mummy to the museum.
Shrunken heads were collected during battle in the same way as warriors collected scalps or skulls, Sulman said.
“Someone might have a string of these in their hut to show what a great warrior they are,” he said.
The results of the study are published in a research paper authored by Poeta, Maria Ordóñez, Eric Fournier and Andrew Nelson.