On the Trail of W. M. Gabb and His Ancient Lizard Staff 116 By David Bernstein with Dicey Taylor OBJECT history The National Museum of the Dominican Republic, the Museo del Hombre Dominicano, has an object on display that has been on long-term loan from the Smithsonian Institution for more than a decade. It is a large, impressively carved staff published in 1907 by Jesse Fewkes in the Twenty-Fifth Annual Report to the Secretary of the Smithsonian, a memoir that documents some 630 specimens of Caribbean antiquities that Fewkes purchased on behalf of the Smithsonian between 1903 and 1905.1 Fewkes’ report is valuable to scholars because he illustrated not only works he obtained for the Smithsonian but also many already in the institution’s collection as well as others in private collections. Fewkes refers to the staff in question as a Caribbean ceremonial baton collected in Santo Domingo by W. M. Gabb.2 His references to Gabb are brief and, despite Fewkes’ keen interest in the ancient Taíno, the people who inhabited Hispaniola and Puerto Rico when Columbus first entered the Caribbean, he did not understand the imagery of the staff: What animal is represented is unknown, but it would appear to have a long tail like a lizard and a snout resembling that of a mammal. The remarkable feature in this figure is the representation of a bird on the crown of the head. Correspondingly, the staff is given small representation in Fewkes’ publication. Only the top with the lizard with its bird headdress is illustrated, alongside a fairly plain staff shown in complete view. The wooden staff measures about 70 centimeters in height and is about 10 centimeters in diameter. The lizard, an iguana, occupies a good portion of the upper part. Such an anthropomorphized figure of an iguana is not a known Taíno motif and it is not carved in accordance with the art styles of that culture. However, it was of great importance to the Moche culture, which flourished in the river valleys of northern Peru from about AD 100–700. There the important deity known as Iguana is prominently featured in Moche art and is often seen in association with another figure known as Wrinkle Face.3 In Moche canons, Iguana is typically depicted wearing avian headgear, perhaps because iguanas have sensitive hearing and they listen to the calls of birds to avoid predators.4 There are Moche terracotta effigy vessels representing Iguana and even his bird headdress survives from a tomb. Carved from wood, this is a major Moche work deriving from a culture remembered primarily for small objects of pottery and of cast gold and copper. The question is obvious. How did such a rare work of Peruvian manufacture end up in Santo Domingo attributed as Taíno? And why was it published more than a century ago as such? Could it have reached the Caribbean in ancient times through trade with the mainland of South America? Or could it somehow have come later with the slaves that the Spanish transported from South America to the Caribbean? The only real clue to its history lay in the name W. M. Gabb, who gave it to the Smithsonian in 1877. But who was he? Finding the answer proved to be quite an adventure in historical research. Library research in New York City was my first step, which proved fascinating though sometimes fruitless. I found Gabb’s geology report on the Dominican Republic at the Goldwater Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I also found a record of his biography, which was published in Philadelphia in 1909 by William Healey Dall, but the Goldwater didn’t have a copy. The New York City Public Library has somehow lost its copy. Columbia University’s geology department had one but refused to allow me to photocopy it. I finally was able to obtain a scan of it via email from the Linda Hall Library in Kansas City.5 My next destination was Washington, D.C., where I pored through some seventy-five microfiche documents at the Smithsonian Library, including Gabb’s handwritten letters to Secretary Spencer Fullerton Baird (1823– FIG. 1: Iguana deity staff. Moche, Peru. AD 100–700. (previously believed to be a Taíno war club). Wood. H: 70 cm. Ex. William M. Gabb, Philadelphia. National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, inv. #005890/A42664-0. Smithsonian Institution loan to El Museo del Hombre, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Photos courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
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