This stunning, handmade traditional Tlingit octopus bag was made by the late Tlingit artist Anna Beaver. Beaver, known by her Tlingit name Kotgheeshaw, was Eagle/Wolf, or Kaagwaantaan, and was known to be a prolific artist, working in various mediums, most notably beadwork, embroidery, and sewing. Octopus bags, named for their 8 tassles, emerged some 200 years ago as medicine bags in the Cree and Algonquin First Nation tribes of Canada and the US, and were carried through trade to interior Canada, and finally to Southeast Alaska. Through intensive trade, octopus bags became highly commodified and valuable possessions of wealth and trade to the Cree, Algonquin, Athabascan, Tahltan, certain Salish, and Tlingit people. Octopus bags are most widely seen in the floral beaded forms of interior Athabascan people, with whom the Tlingit have traded and intermarried with for centuries.