Child's Salmon Skin Coat

Originally all Ainu garments were made of skin, fur, and feathers, and these types of clothing survived in Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands into the twentieth century. Salmon skin was highly prized for making strong, light, durable waterproof garments. Sakhalin Ainu decorated fishskin garments with delicate appliqué, as did their neighbors in the lower Amur River region. This child's coat has a Sakhalin Ainu cut but was collected in Hokkaido – like people, artifacts often end up far from home. This coat may have come to Hokkaido with Ainu refugees expelled when Sakhalin was turned over to the Russians in 1875. In 1896 it was sold to Mrs. Mabel Loomis Todd, a participant in an Amherst College expedition that came to Hokkaido to view a solar eclipse.

(Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Arctic Studies Center. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History)

M. Todd col. 1896, Esashi, Hokkaido
Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts E3390

Ainu: Spirit of a Northern People. Arctic Studies Center. Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History