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Sheldon Jackson Museum December 2025 Artifact of the Month is a pair of wolf skin mittens

The Sheldon Jackson Museum December artifact of the month is a pair of wolf skin mittens (SJ-2025-8-1A,B). Carla Keely generously donated the mittens in September. They were originally collected by Mina Lucile Tidwell. There is more than meets the eye with this example of indispensable winter gear originally collected by a most interesting woman.

The origin and maker of the wolf mittens are unknown, but based on Edward William Nelson’s The Eskimo about Bering Strait, they may be Yup’ik. In his writing, Nelson describes the kinds of gloves and mittens used in various regions and seasons in Northern and Western Alaska, noting that they were commonly used from the Yukon to Point Barrow. According to Nelson, people from the lower Yukon to the Kuskokwim  traditionally used wolf, reindeer, cormorant, or dog skin to make mittens for winter. In the summer, salmon skin mittens were usually worn. Along the coast, hair seal, tanned with hair on, was used to make summer gloves for use in wet weather and at sea. Nelson also writes that all along the coast, hunters wore huge mittens in the winter that reached up to the elbows to hunt seals on the ice. They were made of white bearskin or white dog skin. Hunters would hold one arm in front of their face as they crept up to their prey. The white color of the glove camouflaged the hunter from the seal amidst the snow.

In his Ethnological Results of the Point Barrow Expedition, John Murdoch notes that mittens of northern peoples were predominantly made of deer [reindeer] skin. Gloves with fingers, which were not nearly as warm, were rarer. He posits that it was likely the introduction of firearms that resulted in a wider adoption of gloves.

Ernest S. Burch, Jr., in Social Life in Northwest Alaska, describes typical wolf harvesting methods. Wolves were hunted for their fur, especially for parka ruffs, and not typically eaten. Wolves were more readily found in forested areas than on the tundra. They were sometimes hunted with an isivrugaq or qagruqsaq, a device made of a sharpened sliver of baleen that was coiled tightly, tied with sinew, packed in fat and meat, and frozen into a ball. The ball would be left for a wolf to find. A day or two after eating it, the wolf’s stomach would be pierced by the baleen as the ball was digested, and the dying animal would be tracked and harvested. Wolves were also hunted with deadfalls and spring traps.

In September of 2025, Carla Keely donated the featured mittens and several other items to the Sheldon Jackson Museum. She noted in her correspondence that her mother, Mina Lucile Tidwell, had collected the mittens and other items being donated. Keely was keen to return the mittens to Sitka where she and her family had lived during the 1960s. A little research into Tidwell yielded an entertaining backstory.  

According to her obituary, Mina Lucile Tidwell was a “one-of-a-kind, spunky, fun-loving mom, grandma, great grandma, sister, and aunt” who led a life of adventure and moved in her 20s and 30s “with more than one husband chasing this fiery redhead” to Sitka and Juneau (multiple times), Redmond, Washington, Astoria, Oregon, Omaha, Nebraska, San Diego, and Shelton, California. She co-owned and managed the Potlatch Motel and Canoe Club in Sitka, formerly located on Katlian St. near the entrance to New Thomsen Harbor. TIdwell was also an original member of the New Archangel Dancers in Sitka. Eventually, she and her husband Ted Tidwell moved to Skagway where they operated Sgt. Preston’s Lodge, Irene’s Inn and Restaurant, Skagway RV Park, and Dr. Fun Tours. While in Skagway, she was a volunteer fireman, the town coroner, and the Skagway State magistrate. When it wasn’t tour season and when she wasn’t driving her 1969 blue Corvette, she would “drag Ted into the Yukon, moose and bear hunting, panning for gold and fishing.”

The Sheldon Jackson Museum cares for 20 pairs of full-sized mittens, five pairs of gloves, and several individual mittens and gloves, but this is the first addition of wolf mittens of this kind to the collection. Most of the mittens in the collection are Inupiaq or Iñupiaq and a small selection are Yup’ik or Athabascan. Visit the museum to see the December artifact of the month and other examples of winter garments. 

Except for holidays, the Sheldon Jackson Museum is currently open Wednesday–Saturday, 10 am–4 pm. Admission is $7, $6 for seniors, and free for ages 18 and under and active military and their families.