' BS AMERICAN MUSEUM SCIENCE BOOK PHILIP DRUCKER Indians Of the Northevest pa : > © INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST American Museum Science Books are published for The American Museum of Natural History by the Natural History Press. Directed by a joint edi- torial board made up of members of the staff of the Museum and Doubleday, this series is an extension of the Museum’s scientific and educational activi- ties, making available to the student and general reader inexpensive, up-to-date, and reliable books in the life and earth sciences, including anthropol- ogy and astronomy. The Natural History Press is a division of Doubleday and Company, Inc., and has its editorial offices at The American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York 24, New York, and its business offices at 501 Franklin Avenue, Garden City, New York. Pamir Drucker is one of the leading anthropolo- gists in this country and an authority on the aborigi- nal cultures of the American Northwest. He was born on January 13, 1911, in Chicago, Illinois, and was educated at the University of California where he received his doctorate in anthropology in 1936. From 1940 to 1955 he was a staff anthropologist with the Bureau of American Ethnology of the Smithsonian Institution. Dr. Drucker has done field-work on the North- west Coast since 1933, made an ethnographic study of the Nootka Indians in 1935 as a Social Science Research Council predoctoral fellow, and an ethno- graphic survey of the Northwest Coast for the Uni- versity of California program in “Culture Element Distribution” in 1936. As National Research Coun- cil postdoctoral fellow in 1938, he made an archae- ological survey of the Northwest Coast. He has also made archaeological investigations in southern Mexico. One of his more recent works is a study of the cultural adaptation and acculturation among Indians of the Northwest Coast. Dr. Drucker is the author of many anthropologi- cal studies, among them Rank, Wealth, and Kinship in Northwest Coast Society (1939), Archeological Survey of the Northern Northwest Coast (1943), and The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes _ (1951). INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Philip Drucker Originally published as an Anthropological Handbook for The American Museum of Natural History AMERICAN MUSEUM SCIENCE BOOKS Published for The American Museum of Natural History The Natural History Press GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK Indians of the Northwest Coast was originally published by the McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., in 1955. The Ameri- can Museum Science Books edition is published by arrange- ment with The American Museum of Natural History. American Museum Science Books edition: 1963 Unless otherwise acknowledged, all photographs for this book were provided by The American Museum of Natural History. All the line illustrations were prepared by the Graphic Arts Division of The American Museum of Natural History. Copyright © 1955 by The American Museum of Natural History All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America PREFACE The American Museum of Natural History has ex- ceptionally fine collections from the Northwest Coast of America, particularly from the Indian groups of the northern half of that region, that is, from the coasts of British Columbia and southeast Alaska. A good part of this material was collected in the closing decades of the nineteenth century when the Indians preserved ancient patterns and standards of values to a considerable extent, and there were still many expert practitioners of the rich and distinguished aboriginal art. Portions of these collections were made in connection with expeditions sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History for the purpose of studying the colorful, vigorous native civilization of the area. The purpose of the present work is not, however, to present a catalogue of the collections, nor is it to serve as a simple guide to them in the ordinary sense. Its aim is to sketch in the cultural back- ground of the specimens by relating briefly not only how the various material objects were made _and used, but recounting something of the general way of life of the makers and users. It therefore discusses at some length a variety of aspects of culture that cannot of themselves be displayed in a museum case: social customs, religious beliefs, and ceremonial patterns. The aim is to make the Vill PREFACE specimens on exhibition more meaningful by de- scribing the way in which they formed a part of the lives of the aboriginal people of the Northwest Coast. Only fragments are to be found today of the aboriginal civilizations described in these pages. Many of the Indians of the coast are nowadays commercial fishermen and loggers. Most of them are more at home with gasoline and Diesel engines than with the canoes of their forefathers. Member- ship in one or another Christian church is universal. The ancient art style has very nearly disappeared. Men no longer have time to carve and paint when they have to make a living in the competitive mod- ern society. Here and there a few relics of ancient patterns have been preserved more or less deliber- ately. Some groups occasionally still give festivals and feasts in the ancient potlatch tradition; others retain certain of the ancient social forms, such as the clan organization. A few Chilkat Tlingit women weave the traditional type of robe. Among other groups the women still make basketry or cedarbark mats. But aside from these fragments and the peo- ple’s pride in their identity as Indians, Northwest Coast culture must be regarded as having disap- peared, engulfed by that of the modern United States and Canada. Pamir DRUCKER CONTENTS Preface INTRODUCTION The Land The People Prehistory Physical Anthropology History of European Contacts ECONOMY MATERIAL CULTURE Technology and Materials Manufactures SOCIETY The Structure of Society The Potlatch Marriage Wars and Feuds RELIGION CEREMONIALS CONTENTS THE CYCLE OF LIFE ART Totem Poles SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS Bibliography Index 173 177 189 195 209 213 aPumer Pad T a r PF 1 e CaP LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figures Map of the Northwest Coast area Map of linguistic groupings Plan of a Kwakiutl salmon trap Kwakiutl salmon trap used in narrow streams Types of harpoons . Tlingit and Haida halibut hooks Harpoon heads Diagram of deadfall trap used by the Nootka for deer Kwakiutl woodworking tools Other Kwakiutl woodworking tools Tools used in working with the bark of the red cedar Spoons and ladles Diagram of a Northern house type a. Principal types of canoes on the Northwest Coast b. Two ancient types of canoes Kwakiut] wooden boxes Kwakiutl cradle Wooden feast dishes Basketry hats Wooden comb from the Tlingit Tlingit fighting knives Warclub of whalebone and “slave-killer” weapon Mode of wearing Tlingit armor and arms Tlingit twined-spruce-root baskets Northern designs 102. 183 25. 26. INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Old Southern Kwakiutl wooden sculptures 188 Salish carved stone mortar 189 Photographs Karok dipnetting salmon Haida hardwood clubs Various types of fishhooks Spoons and ladles Mountain-sheep horn bowl and “sopalalli-berry” spoons The old Haida village of Tanu A Southern Kwakiutl village of the 1880s Yurok houses of redwood planks A chief's house in a Bella Coola village A lower Klamath dugout canoe The side of a carved Haida box Oil dish from the Haida A Chilkat weaver putting the finishing touches on a robe An illustration of Tsimshian weaving in the Chilkat technique A robe collected from the Tsimshian or Northern Kwakiutl about 1800 A robe of duck down collected from the Makah A Coast Salish “nobility blanket” A Salish robe of dog and mountain-goat wool An old Chilkat dancing skirt | An old Tsimshian dance legging A Tsimshian chief's headdress Two kinds of Tlingit body armor Wooden rattles Various rattles for musical accompaniment Two examples of “chief’s rattles” LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii A “tambourine” drum An engraved copper from the Haida A Southern Kwakiutl princess of the 1890s Tsimshian and Tlingit shamans’ “soul-catchers” Typical spirit canoe boards A shaman’s rattle from the Quinault The dramatis personae of a Southem Kwakiutl Sha- mans Society performance A Southern Kwakiutl changeable mask A jointed puppet Hupa White Deerskin dance Haida portrait masks Two kinds of tobacco pipes Slate carving comes of age A Southern Kwakiutl Thunderbird mask A Nootkan headdress mask Tlingit shamanistic figurines Coast Salish “sxwaihwai” mask Haida “totem” and mortuary poles on Anthony Island Poles and houses at the Haida village of Skidegate Te 2. i » + als 1 INTRODUCTION The Land Along the shores of northwestern North America from Yakutat Bay in southeast Alaska to Trinidad Bay on the coast of present northern California, lived a number of Indian groups who participated jointly in a unique and rich culture. It is an anthro- pological truism that development of complex, or “high,” culture among primitive peoples is linked with, or, better, results from the notable increase in economic productivity that accompanies the in- vention or acquisition of agricultural techniques, and within limits, the domestication of animals. This can be documented by archaeological evi- dence from various early centers of high civiliza- tion—the Middle East, the Indus Valley, Middle America. The expansion of the economic base ef- fected by agriculture raises the general standard of living, permits increased settled populations, pro- vides more leisure time to cultivate the arts, to elaborate on religious, social, and political concepts, and to perfect the material aspects of culture: tools, dwellings, utensils, textiles, ornaments, and _ the rest. The culture of the Northwest Coast, there- fore, seems to be an anomaly, for it was a civiliza- tion of the so-called “hunting-and-gathering” type, without agriculture (except for a few instances of tobacco growing), and possessing no domesticated animals other than the dog. In other words, the ALEXANDER % ARCHIPELAGO a PRINCE OF WALES #&% orn We On On Ev>,. 42 AN ce QUEEN = CHARLOTTE SR £& ISLANDS (¥° NOOTKA SOUND * VANCOUVER ISLAND CAPE MENDOCINO SAN FRANCISCO Fig. 1. The map shows the Northwest Coast area in re- lation to the surrounding states and also locates the impor- tant cities, rivers, and bodies of water. INTRODUCTION 3 natives of the Northwest Coast, like the rude Paiute of Nevada, the Australian aborigines, and others of the simpler cultures the world over, were entirely and directly dependent on natural products for their livelihood. That they were able to attain their high level of civilization is due largely to the amaz- ing wealth of the natural resources of their area. From the sea and rivers, fish—five species of Pacific salmon, halibut, cod, herring, smelt, and the famous olachen or “candlefish” (this last so rich in oil that a dried one with a wick threaded through it burns like a candle), and other species too numerous to mention—could be taken in abundance. Some of these fish appeared only seasonally, but were easy to preserve. The sea also provided a tremendous quantity of edible mollusks; “when the tide goes out the table is set,” as the saying goes. More spec- tacular was the marine game: hair seal, sea lion, sea otter, porpoise, and even whale. On shore, land game too abounded. Vegetable foods were less plentiful, although many species of wild berries were abundant in their season. In other words, the bounty of nature provided that which in most other parts of the world man must supply for himself through agriculture and stock raising: a surplus of foodstuffs so great that even a dense population had an abundance of leisure to devote to the im- provement and elaboration of its cultural heritage. The Northwest Coast is a unit, not only in its - aboriginal culture patterns, but geographically as _ well. The Japanese Current offshore moderates the climate so that extreme and prolonged cold does not occur even in the higher latitudes. The same ocean stream releases vast amounts of water vapor that is blown onshore by the prevailing winds, 4 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST condenses on rising over the coastal mountains and hills, and produces the characteristic heavy rainfall of the area. Consequently, innumerable streams and small rivers with their sources in the Coast Range flow to the sea, as do the major drain- age systems like the Columbia, the Fraser, and the Skeena, with sources east of the mountains. Like- wise, the heavy precipitation produces a dense specialized vegetation, consisting mainly of thick stands of conifers—Douglas fir, various spruces, red cedar, yellow cedar, yew, and, at the southern tip of the area, coast redwood. Deciduous trees are smaller and more scattered, but include several hardwoods, such as maple and oak, and the soft but even-grained alder. The terrain is of two major types, which grade into each other in the Gulf of Georgia—Puget Sound region. In the north, the Coast Range is composed of towering mountains of raw, naked rock. Deep cafions, gouged out by glacial flow and turbulent streams, cut into them. A general subsidence in ancient geological times has “drowned” many of these valleys and cafions, producing long narrow fiords flanked by sheer cliffs rising hundreds of feet. The scenery is spectacular; travel, except by wa- ter and over a few rare passes, is painful and slow. As one goes southward the terrain changes until, around upper Puget Sound and the Oregon and northwestern Californian coasts, one sees steep but rounded coast hills, not mountains; estuaries result- ing from the building up of sand bars form at river mouths, indicating the gentler gradients of the lower portions of the stream beds. The areal fauna, like everything else, is highly specialized. Varieties and abundance of marine INTRODUCTION 5 forms have been mentioned. The principal large game animals were deer, elk, and, on the mainland from the Gulf of Georgia northward, mountain goats. Where long northern fiords cut entirely or partially through the Coast Range, hunters had ac- cess to subarctic faunal assemblages, including cari- bou and moose. Coastal carnivores included chiefly wolf, black and grizzly bear, and brown bear in the north, mountain lion, and a variety of small fur bearers: beaver, mink, marten, and land otter, among others. The problems related to the distri- bution of land species, especially in the island areas along the Inland Passage are intriguing, though they have little connection with areal culture pat- terns. For example, on the Queen Charlotte Islands there were black bear and a type of small caribou, but no grizzly bear or deer. (The modern deer population has descended from a few pairs im- ported by white settlers some forty or fifty years ago.) On Vancouver Island deer, elk, wolf, moun- tain lion, and black bear, among the larger forms, occurred, but neither mountain goat nor grizzly. A small “black bear” with an all-white coat, known as Kermode’s bear, was found in the vicinity of Prin- cess Royal Island, and apparently nowhere else. Up the coast, nearly every major island from Ad- miralty Island north seems to have its own distinc- tive subspecies of Alaskan brown bear. It is possible that the deer population of northwestern California _ tended to show much greater color variation than in other areas. To return from oddities of distribu- tions to the general faunal picture, the Pacific fly- way follows the coast for a great part of its length, and enormous flights of waterfowl of many species flew along it on their annual migrational round. 6 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Few modern students of human society will sub- scribe to a theory of environmental determinism of culture. Yet, while the geographical background of aboriginal Northwest Coast civilization can by no means be said to have defined the culture pat- terns of the area, it can be shown to have had a certain influence, by permitting, and even induc- ing, development along some lines, and inhibiting that along others. Some of the environmentally af- fected cultural elaborations are included among the patterns that make the areal culture as a whole distinctive, as compared with other native civiliza- tions of North America. It is true enough that in other equally important area-wide patterns no en- vironmental factors can be detected, but those in which the physical setting played a part are worth discussing. | Marine resources may be considered first. We have seen that they were tremendously rich and, in addition, partly seasonal (that is, the “runs” of certain important species of fish, such as salmon, herring, smelt, and olachen, occur for a limited period each year). The abundance of these re- sources made a relatively dense population possi- ble, once techniques had been devised to exploit them properly. Even more basically, it favored the orientation of the areal culture toward the water— the river and sea—with a consequent interest in development of water transport, that is, develop- ment of vessel construction and navigation. In fact, in the northern, more rugged half of the area it seems probable that a certain minimum proficiency in canoemanship must have been essential to the earliest human occupancy. It is difficult to see how people could have survived without it. At the same time, it is possible to interpret the richness of the INTRODUCTION 7 fisheries resource as a limiting factor also: concen- trated, as the “runs” of salmon and the other fish were, at the upper ends of bays and channels, or along the beaches, they may have restricted inter- est in water transport to the foreshore. It is certain that the Indians of the Northwest Coast were not deep-sea navigators in the same sense as the Vi- kings or the Polynesians. They sailed along the coast, from point to point, and hated to get out of sight of land. | Another feature of the natural environment that affected culture growth was the seasonal aspect of the principal “harvests” of fish. This made for pe- riods of intense activity, put a premium on the development of techniques for the preservation of foodstuffs, and, once such techniques had been de- veloped, permitted lengthy periods of leisure. In fact, once adequate preservation techniques had been developed, not only was there opportunity for leisure, but there was a certain force for seasonal immobility; even a large family group is unlikely to favor a nomadic way of life if they have half a ton of dried salmon to lug around with them. This leisure and temporary immobility was utilized by the Indians of our area for the development of art and ceremonialism. Here of course is where the strictly environmental interpretations of culture break down. The particular fields of interest that were seized on were determined by historical and _ social factors of human culture, and not by environ- ment at all. All the environment did was to make possible the development of economic techniques that permitted considerable leisure. How that lei- sure was utilized was not defined by the natural setting—as far as environmental forces were con- cerned it might as well have been spent at studies 8 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST of mathematics or crossword puzzles. The impor- tant thing is that the natural resources were such that they permitted the expansion of some luxury aspects of culture. Another environmentally favored development was that of woodworking. As will be brought out, there were undoubtedly historical factors involved in the original interest in this activity, but the fact that the forests of the Northwest Coast were amply supplied with an abundance of readily worked woods made elaboration of this craft possible, and even might be said to have offered a certain induce- ment to such elaboration. Wood was beyond all question the most abundant type of material avail- able. Moreover, other materials suitable for techno- logical developments were scarce. Some inhibiting factors of the environment may be pointed out. In the northern half of the area, unquestionably because of the roughness of the terrain, land hunting was a luxury activity, not a major field of economic endeavor. Another exam- ple: the mountainous northern coasts were formed of massive blocks of tough igneous rocks; work in stone was of minor importance throughout the area as a consequence, since stone that lent itself to working was relatively rare. There are exceptions. A very tractable form of slate occurs at a few lo- calities in the Queen Charlotte Islands, but given the general absence of a stoneworking pattern, little or no use was made of it until historic times brought new cultural stimuli. Again, the northern half of the area has little land suitable for agriculture and even today agriculture is a very minor form of economy. Even if, in aboriginal times, contacts with agricultural areas had made possible the introduc- tion of the art (as far as we know, there were no INTRODUCTION 9 such direct contacts ), it could never have had much effect on native culture, at least in the north. Even though there was a much-disputed plant—a tobacco or one resembling tobacco—supposed to have been cultivated in the Queen Charlotte Islands, and a true native tobacco was planted and _ harvested along the lower Klamath River in modern Cali- fornia, agriculture could never have reached a point where it would have modified the prevailing fishing and sea-hunting economy of the coast. We may summarize our survey of the natural setting as follows: There were certain permissive factors in the environment that allowed cultural developments in certain aspects of native culture. Some of these—dependence on exploitation of ma- rine resources, elaboration of canoe navigation, emphasis on woodworking—came to be distinctive of the areal culture. Some negative characteristics of the area, such as minor importance of land hunt- ing, very rudimentary development of stonework- ing, and the like, are due to inhibiting factors of the natural scene which did not provide adequate materials. However, many other features of coastal culture that served to mark it off as different from most other Indian civilizations of North America can be traced only to historical factors, or to the selection of certain solutions to problems posed by functional relationships of strictly cultural, not en- vironmental, phenomena. The People Along this rugged but bountiful coast lived a number of Indian nations who differed among themselves somewhat in physical characteristics, differed considerably in language, but shared a rs * P s Pd ‘ ., east ~~ mae S Res, 273 CANADA: A PTLINGIT Sa eo. 2 oe . ae | Ren, ee -) ? f bain 4 fe : / = is? Niska / ie “~ Gitksan 7 TSIMSHIAN 7 AIDA at yr j a hag Coast Tsimshian/ t Haisla / => is BELLA COOLA/ QMuucen Charlotte take Tear, tograph, of »rribve Zhi Hlaida willage <"tnrane ol i eee — NV 7. A Southern Kwakiutl village of the 1880s. The vertical planking on the houses is one effect of the availability of iron nails. The boldly simplified carvings are typical of Kwakiutl art prior to the influence of northern “totem pole” art. 8. Yurok houses of redwood planks. Note the double slope of the roofs on the far side of both houses, which, with the slope nearest the camera, formed the typical “three-pitch” roof of the lower Klamath. A. L. Kroeber photograph. 9. A chief's house in a Bella Coola village (probably Kims- quit), near the turn of the twentieth century. The house com- bines alien influences: the framed doorway and windows are of European source; the false plates and nailed vertical plank- ing are imitations of aboriginal custom. Note the difference in the rather ponderous carving of the crest-display pole as com- pared to the vigorous old-style Kwakiutl carving and as well to the more stylized carving of the north. The gill net drying on the racks in the left foreground is a type of European com- mercial fishing net. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. 10. A lower Klamath dugout canoe. Note the high steep ends, the identical bow and stern, and the rounded hull section that made this craft highly maneuverable in swift water, but cranky on the open sea. The chain painter is a modern addi- tion. A. L. Kroeber photograph. (See Figure 14.) 11. The side of a carved Haida box, reported to have been used by a famous shaman for storing his professional kit. The carving on the box appears to represent a Beaver. The ends of the box were carved in the same manner. These boxes were made in many sizes. 12. An oil dish from the Haida (about 8 inches long), used to hold the grease they dipped their food in. This specimen represents a hair seal, the animal from which the grease came. We hi Rsk, : eur, PES 13. A Chilkat weaver putting the finishing touches on a robe. Note the “half loom” from which the blanket is suspended, the mountain-goat gut bags at the bottom to keep the ends of the fringe clean, and the pattern-board at the weaver's right. INTRODUCTION 25 guished three regional sub-types on the British Co- lumbia coast. He described them as follows: “Northern sub-type” [Haida, Tsimshian]: This sub-type is characterized by tall stature, with rela- tively long arms, short trunks and long legs. The head is both very large and relatively broad, and the face is correspondingly quite broad, and only moderately long. The nose tends to be low, concave in profile, with a low root and broad alae. The Tlingit probably fit in this sub-type, their princi- pal deviation being that of their greater average stature. “Kwakiutl sub-type” [Kwakiutl and Bella Coola]: Medium rather than tall stature marks this group off from the preceding. In addition, bodily propor- tions differ considerably, the trunk being much longer in relation to length of limbs. Chests and shoulders are commonly very broad. The dimen- sions of the head are about like those of the north- ern sub-type. Facial proportions differ sharply, how- ever; faces are not only very broad, but they are also relatively and absolutely extremely long. Lower jaws are massive and wide. The nose form typical of this subdivision is very long, relatively narrow, and highly arched, with a convex profile rarely seen in the north. | There are virtually no data on Nootkan anthro- pometry, but casual observation suggests that they conform to this physical pattern, except that high - convex noses, and low-bridged concave ones, seem _ to be about equally common among them. “Thompson River sub-type” [Coast and Interior Salish]: Boas found no objective means of distin- guishing between the physical type of the Salish of the coasts and that of their relatives of the interior. 26 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST In stature they are medium, ranging to the lower boundary of that category (165 to 162 centime- ters). They also are broadheaded, but their heads are smaller in actual measurement, in both length _ and breadth, than those of their neighbors to the north. Their faces are broad, and proportionately and in actual measurement much shorter than those of the Kwakiutl. Noses are heavy, convex in pro- file, with a heavy long tip. The Salish also all tend to be slightly darker in skin color than the northerners. One interesting feature of this survey is the thor- ough modification of the Bella Coola, who presum- ably once conformed to the physical sub-type of their Salish kinsmen. This fact suggests that not only were their closest contacts and intermarriages with the Kwakiutl, but that they may have main- tained such contacts over a respectably long time period. | Such few archaeological data as are available in- dicate that the situation was not static. In the lower Fraser region, at least, there is definite evidence that an earlier population of different physical type, with relatively long narrow heads and narrow faces, and apparently of short stature, preceded people whose skeletal remains conform to the modern Sa- lish (“Thompson River”) sub-type. Occasional in- dividuals of this ancient lower Fraser type appear as minor elements in historic Haida, Kwakiutl, and Coast Salish series. This probably means that this former population once occupied a considerable portion of the northern coasts. An intriguing problem, which unfortunately probably cannot be resolved after more than a cen- tury and a half of racial mixture, relates to the oc- — currences of a few individuals with definitely brown | INTRODUCTION 27 (rather than the usual “very dark brown”) hair color, and light-colored eyes. Alexander Mackenzie noted a number of such persons, with gray eyes, among the Bella Coola in 1793 (he was of course the first European known to have met this nation). We can only speculate as to whether these physical traits represent local mutations from the normal Northwest Coast genetic traditions, or whether some “Archaic White” strain, such as many human biolo- gists believe occurs among the Ainu (the aborigines of Japan), might have been included in the racial heritage of the Northwest Coast Indians. From western Washington south to northern Cal- ifornia, there are few data on the Indian physical type or types. No studies were made in early days comparable to those by Boas in the north; since that time many small groups have dwindled to dis- appearance, and others have become so racially mixed that it would be impossible to define the aboriginal type. There are a few figures on stature, which show great irregularity, rather than a uni- form trend as in the north. The Puget Sound Salish were in the medium category, with an average height of 165 centimeters—a little taller than their lower Fraser cousins. The Chinook on the Columbia were tall: 169 centimeters. The groups of the cen- tral Oregon coast seem to have been medium, around 165 centimeters; the northwest Californians _ varied from medium to tall. Some physical anthro- pologists have the impression that there was a strong strain of interior type, perhaps similar to Boas’s “northern sub-type,” in this region, which, in southwest Oregon and northwest California, was blended with a distinct longheaded California type. 28 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST History of European Contacts Aside from the apocryphal voyages of Juan de Fuca and Admiral Fuente, the first Europeans to see the Northwest Coast were the Russian crew of one of the vessels of the Dane Vitus Bering, who made landfall in Tlingit territory in 1741. They sent a boat ashore which never returned. Presumably the boat crew was killed by the Tlingit, because a num- ber of war canoes came out to threaten the ship itself, whereupon Bering sailed away. In 1774 a Spaniard, Juan Perez, hove to at a place he called San Lorenzo, which seems to have been Nootka Sound. Some natives came out in canoes and were given a couple of silver spoons. These ephemeral contacts had little effect on the natives, of course. The first really important European contact oc- curred in 1778 on Captain James Cook’s third voy- age of exploration. He entered Nootka Sound where he spent some time before sailing on to southwest Alaska. While at Nootka Sound, some of Cook’s party were given, and others traded for, sea-otter skins. When the expedition reached China, after Cook’s tragic death in the Hawaiian Islands, they discovered that the lustrous brown pelts were highly prized by the Chinese, who were willing to pay—for that period—fabulous prices for them. When this news reached England, it was not long before a number of ships were fitting out for a voy- age to the new land of treasure. Companies were formed in England for this new trade, and the East India Company assigned vessels to it. Hanna, Meares, Dixon, and Portlock were among the first _ ship captains to arrive on the coast. They explored INTRODUCTION 29 hitherto unknown parts of it and then departed for China to dispose of their rich hauls of furs. For the next few years, dozens of vessels visited the coast annually. They combed the bays and in- lets in search of Indians who might have sea-otter pelts. English and American ships, the latter prin- cipally out of Boston, dominated the trade. Before long two other nations who had Pacific interests became alarmed at what they considered a threat to their colonial empires. The Russian-American Company had established its base on Kodiak Island in 1789. Up to that time, and for the next few years, the Russians confined their activities pretty much to the exploitation of the southwestern Alaskan fur trade; but the presence on the coast of so many vessels flying other flags eventually stimulated their expansion into Tlingit territory. Before this hap- pened, however, in 1790, Spanish fear of the threat to her dominions created the so-called Nootka Con- troversy, which nearly brought England and Spain to war. These facts, of course, were of little im- mediate concern to the natives and are mentioned here only in passing. The effect of the fur trade on the native cultures is more important. While Cook was in Nootka Sound, he noted that the Indians were quite familiar with iron, possessed a considerable number of tools and implements of this material, and—what proved of most importance to the later traders—were very anxious to acquire _ iron blades of any sort. For the next few years, the traders who succeeded Cook discovered that flat iron blades and chisels were the best possible trade goods. They filled their holds with pelts worth a king’s ransom in China for a few barrels of adze blades, roughly made knives, and cheap glass beads 30 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST given in exchange. However, they soon glutted the market, and in competing amongst themselves, taught the Indians to set higher and higher prices on their furs. Then there followed a period in which fads ruled the trade. A captain named Ingraham had his ship's armorer make some bracelets and neck rings of twisted wrought iron. These caught the native fancy and for a season or two following, the Indians spurned most other trade articles. The seafaring traders racked their brains to find things that might appeal to the Indians. Before long the Boston skippers came to dominate the trade. Their single great advantage was their ability to sell their cargoes directly in China. British traders could not take advantage of this because the East India Com- pany held a monopoly on trade in Asiatic ports. The Yankee skippers developed an elaborate three- cornered operation. They sailed from Boston to the Northwest Coast, where they traded for furs which they sold in Canton and bought cargoes of tea, spices, and silk which they brought back to Boston. Eventually sandalwood from the Hawaiian Islands was included as a regular item for the Chinese trade. The seagoing traders differed in one very im- portant respect from traders ashore, who estab- lished posts which they planned to maintain for a number of years. The seafarers did not intend to return. The captain’s share from a really successful voyage netted him enough to retire on, or at least enough to set him up in business ashore. Conse- quently, they had no interest in cultivating the good will of the natives. They did not hesitate to cheat or to rob them when they could obtain furs no other way. The warlike nature of the Northwest INTRODUCTION 31 Coast Indians was their only deterrent from out- right piracy. Even at that, there were innumerable affrays. Some traders fired at flotillas of canoes or villages on the beach at the slightest provocation; naturally, the Indians retaliated. If they could not revenge themselves on the attacking vessel, they were liable to assail the next ship that came along, for in their view all white men were of one tribe. As time went on, faddism in trade goods de- creased and utilitarian articles were in greater de- mand, as well as a few luxury items that included exotic foods like molasses, rice, and, of course, rum —the traders’ standby. Firearms came into great demand. Some traders discovered that certain na- tive products were reliable commodities, so they traded for tanned elkskins at the mouth of the Columbia and exchanged these for furs with the northern groups. Dentalia from Nootka territory, slaves from wherever they could be bought, and olachen oil from the Nass were all frequently car- ried aboard Boston vessels as trade goods. Meanwhile, as the traders were stripping the coast of sea-otter furs, other events had taken place. Vancouver, in 1792 and 1793, had made his meticu- lous explorations and surveys and had discussed transfer of the Spanish establishment at Nootka to the British Crown with the Spanish commander Bodega y Quadra. The year 1793 marks the begin- ning of another era—that of the interest in the _ coastal trade that was ultimately demonstrated by _ land-based companies. The Northwest Company sent Alexander Mackenzie overland to search for a route of access to the coast. In 1799, the Russians es- tablished Fort Archangel near modern Sitka, which the Tlingit attacked and destroyed two years later. 32 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST In 1804 the Russians made another attempt and built a new fort near the same site, which they were able to hold. The pattern for the expansion of land-based fit traders on the Northwest Coast came into existence in 1821 with the coalition of the Hudson’s Bay and the Northwest companies. Sir George Simpson was designated governor of the “Northern Department,” which included the Northwest Coast and the adja- cent interior. The same year that the headquarters of the Company was moved across the Columbia to Fort Vancouver, at Simpson’s orders a supply ship was sent to the Portland Canal, which had finally been established as the southern limit of Russian claims in Northwest America. In the course of the next few years, a chain of posts was built along the coast. Fort Langley, in the vicinity of modern Vancouver, British Columbia, was built in 1827; Fort Nass in 1831, abandoned and replaced by Fort Simpson in 1834, and Fort megs in 1834. The purpose of the northern forts was to cut off the flow of furs to the American traders. By this time, the sea-otter population along the whole coast had been reduced to a small fraction of its original abundance. The traders were dealing mostly in land furs, beaver, land otter, and the like, that were obtained in the interior, traded to Indian middlemen on the coast, and by them to the white fur buyers. The fact that the Indians knew a good thing when they saw it was made abundantly clear to the representative of Hudson’s Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden, when he went to survey the possibilities of establishing a post on the Stikine © River. Two Stikine Tlingit chiefs visited him and INTRODUCTION 33 told him, in what Ogden termed somewhat plain- tively in his report “a tone I was not in the habit of hearing,” that they would not permit him to estab- lish a post upriver where it would be in a position to cut off their trade with the interior. A more em- phatic demonstration of their belief in the impor- tance of their monopolistic trade rights is reported to have been made by the Chilkat Tlingit in 1852. This group sent a war party nearly three hundred miles inland on a mission, successfully carried out, of capturing and destroying the Hudson’s Bay Com- panys post of Fort Selkirk, at the junction of the Lewes and Pelly rivers. The captured personnel of the post were not massacred, but humanely re- leased with the stern warning, however, that they should stay out of Chilkat trading territory. To return to the history of the coast, in 1839 the Hudson’s Bay Company leased the mainland coast of southeast Alaska, from Mount Fairweather to the Portland Canal, from the Russians for a period of ten years. They established posts at the mouth of the Stikine and the Taku rivers. For the next few years, the policies of the Company, which involved a minimum of direct interference with native cul- tures—other than supplying the people with trade articles—prevailed for the length of the coast. The Indians were enriched in worldly possessions and free to make such use of them as they pleased. More important still, the nations of southeast Alaska - and coastal British Columbia remained, and re- main to this day, on their ancestral sites and have never been subjected to the demoralizing effects of segregated reservation life. f Breet ig) eae. ut) wy eee ere high : é Wi tee e a 7 ta r ed ’ Berrie in) Mae ch hy | oi) if hay nia seit bn) Pa oi ary J “Uj TEs P eat ain : erate t,))', 5 i ie 4 an n re oe : ’ i) aang phen 2 a “« f : fs a . = +i) rer) PRG pe LE oe ee ' > Wied , eat rinegy BEA F Aawd f ® 7 | : o$} | ; si CLS J Se aes > 4 : 3 we ae ee ‘my e —% oo) tow! 7 > -. : o } eas cy’ : al ye TRE) BOAT by aia re) roe *e ‘> aoe =n pean TA ‘ x Oey ae ear .. j aby | FOVTRE AG mM ee - % ‘4 : ype. ehh ; eee . " i | me ft ee Rp be : es - oi Pies ‘ niall +. 4 .* , mre } a Fs boy - au 4 4 a » - ’ + . 4-4 . ; & =v "ay SS i ‘4 aa ss a. »' > , >i 4h ch icee : £ fa ake ee | P TES oy can , m4 ? rs nt a Bee ~ * ’ f= + ad Avi Ve PZ " : he : Seer AE ee || chia : F ts Re Peel WhiaeS , ei. ~ - £ Jed b> } “ - A * ” : vache ‘yy ai ie day iT + ia a rhewyOrig 2 ECONOMY Fishing was the basis of Northwest Coast economy. The rivers and the sea provided an abundance of foods. There are five species of Pacific salmon, some of which “run” annually in every river and stream along the coast. All of these could be taken in great quantity to be dried and stored for future use. Smelt, herring, and, in the north, the oil-rich olachen or “candlefish” also assembled in vast num- bers during their spawning seasons, and were easily caught by the Indians. A variety of efficient devices was used by Indian fishermen. Traps, constructed like huge baskets, were set up in the rivers and sometimes at points along the coast where salmon congregate. Fencelike weirs of poles were con- structed to turn the fish into these traps (Figs. 3, 4). For olachen, wherever they run, a special type of funnel-shaped net was used from the Kwakiutl area northward. The principal “runs” are in the Nass, the Kitamat, and the Bella Coola rivers, and the main rivers emptying into Rivers and Knights inlets. Ownership of olachen-fishing rights was highly prized, and people from far and near assembled at such places as the lower Nass River where Haida and Tlingit who had no fishing rights came to buy the oil. All the coastal groups made dip nets, that is, bags © of netting attached to a wooden frame on a handle, 36 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST some like large editions of our fly fisherman’s land- ing net, others on a V-shaped frame (Plate 1). These were used for salmon, and, in finer mesh and specialized forms, for smaller fish like herring and smelt. Long sections of netting suitable for seining or gill-netting (a special form in which the mesh allows the fish’s head to enter, but catches under his gill covers when he tries to turn back), or that could be fashioned into huge bags for trawling from ca- noes, appear to have been ancient devices among the Coast Salish and all the groups to the south- Sky ! cae ae SS Sun me SSE Ma ‘Ss =. —— Fs ami BLT) pe a s=-=q ; Le= = UT TTTE gent? =e —— Oe eli il ‘ns eeectes == = seeessee eseaniese =i Mit” === MN Hh: — SS Sys = sae ————— > na PF SSSA IE Fig. 3. The plan of a Kwakiutl salmon trap. (A) is a fence which generally extends some distance beyond the low-water Bibs of the river. Attached to this fence is a box- like structure (B) built of frames tied to stakes and located in the middle of the river. On each side of the box are two short frames with openings that lead into long, narrow fish baskets (C). ECONOMY 37 ward, but not along the northern coasts, with the possible exception of the Tsimshian Niska. The Coast Tsimshian and the Haida claim to have learned the use of the Niska gill nets—in fact, ob- tained the finished nets—from the people of the Nass in late prehistoric or early historic times. The harpoon, a sort of spear with detachable head connected to the shaft by a short line, was one of the principal salmon-fishing devices. The north- ernmost groups used harpoons with a single, one- a ta tee Hin, ~ ) ir ee 4% (SS SS SS SSeS See ES = PY Ye SSS SS SS Was a) ONE | | pee P == \wa Wie is a hy 2). a= SS Naw as a) Des Ra 1 SS ‘ANY sale SN SN 4. sss HAST a ALAS NYE Ss IN SS MAINS Rak he f ni a \8\ a \ D> 4 Ae = =\\—) ie SEAS BRN = \ eZ e es) = RES NANNY AS Or = avers NN WA ~ = ‘ \\Y WAS . \ \ \\ \ —— \\ NN) WY an —— ¥ \ \\ = xA\\ \ ® \ Ne \ —— \ ’ ae —. \ \\ ‘\ = \ Sie, -—VN - 5) t — 4 ‘ — Z = mee) Cs PEE LAY —* nl Fig. 4. Kwakiutl salmon trap used in narrow streams. piece barbed bone or horn point; from Kwakiutl ‘territory to northwestern California two-pronged harpoons, armed with compound barbed heads, were used (Fig. 5). There were many variations on this two-pronged harpoon pattern, especially among the Kwakiutl-speaking groups and the Nootka. Lightweight short harpoons were made for throw- Fig. 5. Types of harpoons. In (A), a Nootkan whaling harpoon, the lanyard from the compound head was at- tached to the shaft at two points with light string, so that the weight of the lanyard and long line to which it was at- tached would not pull the head from the shaft before it was thrust into the whale. (B) is a common type of salmon har- poon, used everywhere except among the northern groups, who used a single tipped implement. The lanyards are joined and tied to the lower end of the shaft. (C) and (D) are examples of sealing harpoons used by the Kwakiutl and Nootka. The spurlike catches on the shafts held the heads in place during the harpoon’s flight through the air. (E) is a Northern-type sealing harpoon with detachable foreshaft. Sometimes the line from the foreshaft was lengthened and attached to a float, rather than to the shaft. The whaling harpoons (A) were from 14 to 18 feet long, the sealing har- poons (D) from 6 to 7 feet long. ECONOMY 39 ing at salmon that swam with their dorsal fins out of the water in the bays near river mouths. Shafts that projected beyond the diverging foreshafts were used for thrusting downward in deep pools; the projecting main shaft served as a buffer, to protect the points from breaking on rocks in the river bot- tom. Leisters—poles with two springy arms fitted with sharp points projecting inward and backward —were common from the Gulf of Georgia north- ward. Nowadays detachable gaffs, made of a heavy- gauge steel hook attached to the shaft by a short lanyard, harpoon-fashion, are popular salmon-fish- ing implements. Angling was another method of fishing. Salmon will strike a baited hook while still in salt water, be- fore the spawning season; cod and halibut will take bait at any time. The most nearly universally used hook was the simplest form, with a straight or slightly curved wooden shank to which a barbless bone or horn point was lashed at an acute angle (Plate 3). The groups living on the Olympic Penin- sula above the Gulf of Georgia—the Nootka and Southern Kwakiutl—used such hooks, baited with fresh herring, in trolling for king salmon. Though a hand-line technique was used, it took no small measure of skill to boat a mature “king” (or “spring” or “Chinook” in colloquial terminology) on one of these barbless hooks. Cod were taken by bottom- fishing with the same type of hooks. Halibut were taken by bottom-fishing, also, from the Olympic Peninsula north, but special hooks were used. The Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and the North- ern Kwakiutl groups, Haisla, and Xaihais, made halibut hooks of hardwood, shaped like a V with one short arm, with a bone barb fastened into the 40 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST short side. The shanks of these hooks were often elaborately carved with crests or figures intended to have magical potency (Fig. 6). Two of these hooks were attached by short leaders to the ends of a cross-pole, to the middle of which a stone sinker was attached. The cross-pole held the buoyant wooden hooks clear of the line so as not to foul it. Large hooks of similar form, but undecorated, were { SID “Vs (ay , Or reSN: AG e Fig. 6. Tlingit and Haida V-shaped halibut hooks. The Coast Tsimshian and Northern Kwakiutl used the same type of hook. used by the Chinook for the huge Columbia River sturgeon. The other Kwakiutl-speaking tribes, the Nootka, the Coast Salish of the Gulf of Georgia and Puget Sound, and the groups of northwestern Washington, made halibut hooks of spruce withes, steamed into U shape, and fitted with a sharp bone barb (Plate 3). The springy arms of the hook spread to permit the halibut to insert his snout to take the bait, then helped set the barb. These hooks ECONOMY 41 were attached to one end of a short rod, the other end of which was made fast to the line, and also supported a stone weight just heavy enough to hold the rod horizontally, and keep the hook clear of the line. Lines were commonly made of the long thin stems of giant kelp. A number of other minor fishing devices were also in use along the coast. The “herring rake,” for example, was a long flat board with sharp bone points set in one edge. While a companion in the stern paddled, the fisherman used the rake with a paddling motion, holding it edgewise, points to the rear. As the canoe glided over the surfacing shoals of herring, the fisherman followed through on each stroke so as to bring the rake over the gunwale be- hind him, shaking the fish impaled on the points into the canoe. According to local traditions, this device was used for olachen fishing by the Niska before they learned to make and use the special funnel- shaped nets from the Haida. In the Puget Sound area and along the Wash- ington coast one’s feet and a sharp stick were all one needed to catch flounders. Parties of men and youths waded about on the mud flats. When the fisherman stepped on a flatfish resting on the bot- tom, he tried to hold the fish until he could spear it with the stick. This sort of fishing was considered something of a lark. The northwestern Californians made a simple _ gaff by lashing a sharp splinter of bone to a long pole, and with this tool hooked out the lamprey eels that run at certain seasons in the rivers. In addition to the many varieties of fish, the sea also provided numerous edible shellfish: clams of many kinds, mussels, small abalones, and, in some 42 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST localities, oysters, and a great host of small gastro- pods such as limpets and periwinkles. Crabs, sea urchins, and the like were also abundant. That the Indians did not disdain these delicacies is proved by the fact that old village sites from Yakutat to Trinidad Bay are marked by great mounds consist- ing mostly of the shells discarded after meals made of the shellfish. Some shells also provided useful ma- terials for tools or utensils. Large mussel shells were ground sharp to form the areally universal woman's knife. Deep clamshells made convenient spoons for sipping broth. Gathering shellfish was generally re- garded as a woman's task, although men occa- sionally aided their wives. Specially made sticks of hardwood were used to dig up the mollusks or pry them loose. While the hunting of sea mammals had a definite economic value, it yielded even greater returns in prestige to its participants. Among many of the tribes it approached a professional status; specific types of sea hunting were specialties of high-rank- ing chiefs. Chiefs of Northern Nootkan and most Kwakiutl tribes had special hereditary rights to the fat and flesh of hair seal taken in their waters, in- dicating the great importance they attached to sealing. Hair seal, sea lion, and porpoise were hunted with the same type of equipment by most of the tribes. Special canoes, slim-waisted, with racy lines, were usually built for sea hunting. The hulls were scorched to remove splinters and sanded down to a glassy smoothness with sharkskin to permit them to slip through the water swiftly and noiselessly. Among the three northernmost groups, the harpoon had a single foreshaft with a long multiple-barbed ECONOMY 43 bone point. Some were made with a detachable foreshaft: the point was connected to the foreshaft by a short lanyard, the foreshaft to the shaft by an- other, and the shaft carried a long line which the harpooner held or made fast to a canoe thwart (Figs. 5C, 7D). These several joints produced a sort of shock-absorber effect when the struck quarry lunged, minimizing the strain on each individual part. The northwestern Californians used a similar harpoon point, set in a socket in a very heavy shaft, to kill sea lions. The line was wrapped about the shaft for its full length and made fast to it so the shaft acted as a drogue, tiring the animal while the hunters followed. Fig. 7. Harpoon heads. (A) Nootkan whaling harpoon head; (B) Kwakiutl-Nootka sealing harpoon with iron cut- ting blade; (C) typical three-piece salmon harpoon head; (D) oe harpoon head used in the north. Most Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian salmon harpoons were of the same general type as (D) but much less ornate. 44 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST The groups living between the two extremes of the area used harpoons with two diverging fore- shafts, on each of which was mounted a three-piece head with a sharp blade bound between two horn barbs. The line was held in place by a catch on the shaft, and extended from there to a coil that the harpooner paid out as he threw, just as a cowhand pays out a lasso in roping. Kwakiutl and Nootka sea hunters, and some neighboring Salish who had learned from them, did not throw these harpoons javelin-fashion, but steadied the shaft with the left hand (which also held the coil of line), and ap- plied the propulsive thrust to the end of the shaft. Some Kwakiutl hunters fitted a butt-piece on to their harpoon shafts, with two perforations through which the hunter put his index and middle fingers; others, like the Nootka, achieved the same end by fitting a little tridentlike finger rest of bone (Fig. 5C, D). These devices, and the whole throwing technique, probably gave better control, and also suggest the possibility that they may be modifica- tions of the Eskimo atlatl, or throwing board. The harpooner struck his prey and played it as a modern fly fisherman plays a husky rainbow trout; finally, he pulled it alongside his canoe, dispatched it with a club, and then boated it. Sometimes a sealskin float would be made fast to the end of the line in sea-lion hunting, and allowed to run until the quarry tired. Small floats made of seal or sea-lion bladders were fastened to the line by Southern Kwakiutl for all sea hunting, while some Heiltsuk used sealskin floats similar to those of the Nootka. In hunting por- poise, floats were always used by these groups, for the skin of the animal was so thin that too heavy a ECONOMY 45 strain would probably cause the harpoon head to draw. Their neighbors did not use these buoys. Sea otter, whose dense, lustrous pelts were so av- idly sought after by European traders, were for- merly hunted like hair seal. With the intensification of the trade, and the dwindling of the sea otter, mass hunts came into vogue, in which twenty or thirty or more canoes made sweeps along the coast, forming up in a circle around any sea otter sighted. Each time the animal surfaced volleys of arrows were loosed at it until it was killed. The efficiency of this broad coverage-and-surround technique is attested by the fact that the sea otter almost be- came extinct by the end of the last century. Fur seal were probably unknown to most North- west Coast Indians in aboriginal times, for the mi- gration route of the herds is farther offshore than the natives ventured. The Haida and Coast Tsim- shian were the main exceptions: they pursued the numerous stragglers from the main herd who came into Dixon Entrance to follow Hecate Strait be- tween the Queen Charlotte Islands and the main- land. American and Canadian sealers began to re- cruit hunters, particularly among the Nootka and Kwakiutl, in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. From that time until the signing of the international conservation treaty regulating fur-seal hunting, shipping on sealing schooners came close to becoming a national industry for those two peoples. The most spectacular sea hunting on the whole coast was the whaling of the Nootka and their neighbors of the Olympic Peninsula—Quileute, Qui- nault, Klallam, and perhaps the Chemakum, all of whom learned the art from the Nootkans. The 46 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST whale harpooner was always a person of high rank, for the tricks of the trade—practical and magical— that contributed to the success of the hunt were cherished family secrets, handed down in noble lines only. Besides, only a chief possessed the neces- sary wealth to have a whaling canoe built, to outfit it, and the authority to assemble a crew. The whal- ing harpoon was a very specialized piece of equip- ment (Figs. 5A, 7A). The harpoon head was made of three pieces: a sharp mussel-shell cutting blade cemented with spruce gum between two heavy elk- horn barbs. A heavy lanyard of sinew twisted into rope connected the head of the 100-fathom-long line laid up of cedar withes. Four sealskin buoys were attached to the line at intervals. In historic times a huge reinforced cedarbark basket, in which the line was coiled, was made fast to the bitter end and served as a drogue, but this apparently was an im- provisation modeled after the drogues of white sea- farers. The crew, with all the gear stowed according to a meticulous pattern so that the line and floats would run out without fouling, paddled out to sea. When they sighted a whale, they tried to approach silently from the rear so the animal would neither hear nor see them. They always came in on the whale’s left side. The canoe had to lay close along- side, for the harpoon was much too heavy to be thrown, and had to be thrust home. The harpooner stood with his left foot on the bow thwart, his right forward on the gunwale, with the harpoon held crosswise in front of him at about shoulder height. He pivoted and struck, aiming just behind the ce- tacean’s left flipper, then ducked down into the for- ward compartment to avoid being struck by the ECONOMY 47 floats or springy coil of line as they paid out and as the whale rolled and thrashed about and the canoe sheered off hard to port. This was the most danger- ous moment. The whale might turn toward the ca- noe, smashing it to bits in one of his blind rushes; a crewman might be badly injured by a blow from a float or the rigid line, or even be caught in a bight and dragged to his death. It was mainly for this mo- ment that the whaler and his crew practiced long drill sessions and carried out arduous rituals of cere- monial purification to forestall any mishaps. On the beach, their families also observed certain rituals for their good luck and welfare. Ritual behavior before and during the hunt was considered essential for all sea hunting, of course, but because of the importance of whaling in native eyes its ceremonial requirements were more elaborate and more rigid than those for any other quest. Usually a second whaling canoe, captained by a kinsman of the chief whaler, accompanied the hunt and often was conceded the privilege of planting the second harpoon. A small, swift sealing canoe might also be brought along, to take the first har- poon shaft back to the village as formal evidence that a whale had been struck. The whaler and his supporting canoe then followed the whale, running in to drive home more harpoons with short lines and floats, until the great creature was so weakened by loss of blood, the drag of the floats, and its titanic struggles that it lay quiet in the water as the hunter came in for the kill. A lance with a very wide chisel- like blade, much like a white whaler’s “spade,” was used to sever the tendons controlling the flukes, so that the cetacean lay hamstrung and helpless. Then another lance with a long sharp bone point was 48 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST driven home behind the flipper to the heart. The cetacean rolled, spouted blood, and died. Holes were hacked through the upper lip and around the lower jaw to tie the mouth shut, so the carcass would not ship water and sink. Then all that re- mained was the wearisome chore of towing the quarry home. If luck was with the hunter, or, as the Indians interpreted it, if he and his crew had been punctilious in carrying out their rituals, the whale, when struck, would turn toward shore so it could be killed close to the beach. But frequently whales headed straight out to sea, so the crew had to pay for their ritual laxness by a day or more of steady paddling. It is interesting to note that much of the impedi- menta of the Nootka whale hunt, including the use of a special large canoe, harpoons with long lines and sealskin floats, the prestige associated with whaling, and many ritual elements to be described below, are very reminiscent of Eskimo whaling prac- tices. Another kind of Nootkan whaler, or better, whale-ritualist, did not even approach the creatures at sea, but magically caused whales that had died from natural causes to drift ashore. Formerly Aleut whalers, in bidarkas, hurled lances with poisoned slate blades into whales, then went ashore to per- form ceremonies to cause the carcasses to drift in. While the Aleut actually killed his whale and the Nootka whale-ritualist did not, the rites each per- formed in secret in some secluded spot were much alike. Both sets of ceremonies involved the use of human skeletons or corpses, who were supposed to call to the whale, or were propped up holding a line attached to an effigy of a whale. The basic idea was that through his rituals, songs, and prayers, ECONOMY 49 each whale-ritualist induced the spirits of the dead to bring the whale ashore. The fact that the Nootka practiced both techniques of northern whaling (al- though such groups as the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian knew nothing of them, even though they were geographically closer to Eskimo and Aleut) suggests some ancient connection between the Nootka and subarctic and arctic cultures. Other Northwest Coast groups, although they did not use the same magical methods for causing whales that died from natural causes to drift ashore, enthusiastically utilized such bonanzas of oil-rich blubber and meat, “high” though the carcasses might be. Only the Tlingit turned up their noses, literally and figuratively, at dead whales washed up on their beaches. Land hunting was practiced to a limited extent only, by most Northwest Coast tribes. It was of ma- jor importance to communities and small tribes liv- ing at some distance up the river valleys, away from salt water. The Chilkat Tlingit, for example, hunted a good deal and staged many caribou hunts on their trading trips into the interior. The Tsimshian divi- sion of the upper Nass River, who in former days are said to have come below the head of tidewater only rarely, are claimed to have been great hunters, as were the related Gitksan on the upper Skeena. Men of the upper Bella Coola villages, the Wikeno of Wikeno Lake above Rivers Inlet, and a few Nootka who lived on Gold River and about Sproat Lake were good woodsmen and hunters of land game. Up the Fraser and on the upper reaches of the rivers draining into Puget Sound lived Coast Salish whose way of life and economy was almost more like that of the Interior Salish than like those 50 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST of their congeners and blood kinsmen downriver and along the coast. Lewis and Clark report that the Upper Chinook hunted antelope on the plains. of eastern Oregon and Washington. The upriver Yurok, the Karok, and Hupa as well, hunted ex-_ tensively. Fig. 8. In this diagram of a type of deadfall trap used by the Nootka for deer, (A) represents a heavy log which drops on the quarry. The crossbar (B) supports one end of the log and connects to the trigger (C) at the other end. The kick lines (D) are attached to the supporting poles and they trip the trigger and release the log. The smaller diagram shows the detail of the trigger with (D) again representing the trip lines that pull the small crosspiece (E) out through the open arms of the forked branch, releasing the line (F) and the crossbar (B) to which it is connected. After a draw- ing from the Smithsonian Institution. Naturally, hunting techniques and equipment varied both according to the game sought and the terrain. In the south, from the central Washington coast down to northwest California, while snares and deadfalls were known, pitfall traps were com- monly set for elk, deer, and black bear. Farther ECONOMY 51 north, where the soils are shallow and rocky, pitfalls were rare, and snares and deadfalls (Fig. 8) were used almost exclusively. The bow and arrow was, of course, the standard land-hunting arm every- where before the introduction of firearms, but pikes were also used on certain large game. Even the or- dinary canoe paddle became a hunting weapon among the salt-water groups. If a canoeman en- countered any land animal—deer, elk, bear, or the like—swimming across the channel, he overtook it, clubbed it with his paddle until he could hold its head under water with the same instrument to drown it, then rolled his quarry aboard, and con- tinued on his way. For waterfowl there were a variety of special de- vices: underwater traps with baited gorges for div- ing ducks, used by most Kwakiutl and Nootka di- visions; small throwing nets mounted on pole frames that could be used from canoes on black stormy nights; spears tipped with many long diverging hardwood points that increased coverage like the spread of shot of a shotgun, favored by the Gulf of Georgia, Olympic Peninsula, and perhaps some Puget Sound groups. Many Coast Salish also made long nets (or perhaps used their long salmon seines and gill nets), stretching them across flyways be- tween lakes and ponds where ducks were accus- tomed to come in low. The northwest Californian deerstalker used a device common to many of his - non-coastal neighbors to the south and east—he _ wore a stuffed deer-head disguise on his head, so that, imitating the movements of a browsing deer, he could move in close enough for a perfect shot without alarming his victim. Certain land animals, within the limits of their 52 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST range, were especially prized for their hides or other parts, and their successful hunting gave con- siderable prestige. Among the mainland groups, from the Chilkat south to the Gulf of Georgia, the - mountain goat was highly esteemed for its “wool,” for even though the Chilkat was the only group of late historic times to weave all-wool blankets, their neighbors all prized yellow-cedar robes with a few strands of woolen yarn run in. The jet-black horns were used to make spoons. The mountain goat is a wary animal, difficult even for the modern hunter with a high-powered rifle and telescopic sights. The Indian goat hunter, with his companions and their trained dogs, sought to climb above the animals and, without unnecessarily alarming them, gradu- ally work them down from the cliffs into the rock slides, and if possible, into some cul-de-sac, or through some narrow sheer-walled pass in which _ snares could be set, or where companions could lie in wait. Such places were very valuable properties and were held by individual chiefs for their line- ages. The usual weapon carried was a short hard- wood pike, sometimes merely sharpened to a point, sometimes mounting a horn or bone blade. Appar- ently if a hunter ever maneuvered the goats to a place where he could get within bowshot, he could as easily close to spear-thrusting distance; besides, in inching along the goat trails on the cliffs and scrambling over rock slides, the more fragile bow and arrows were more liable to be damaged than the sturdy pike. Skins of the whistling marmot were regarded as very valuable, particularly among Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and the northern Kwakiutl divisions. It seems that anciently a robe made by sewing to- ECONOMY 53 gether many of the small soft-furred hides was about equal in value to a sea-otter robe. Hunters from the mainland groups climbed high above tim- berline to set deadfall traps around the marmot dens. Bone “triggers,” carved with figures believed to have magical power, were made especially for these traps. In northwestern California, the prize of prizes was an albino deer. The hide of such an animal, decorated with scarlet scalps of the pileated wood- pecker and mounted so that it could be carried on a pole in the wealth-display ceremonies, was a treasure of tremendous worth. The lucky hunter who brought down one of these deer thereby took a major initial step on the road to greatness for him- self and his family. Over the larger part of the area, vegetable foods were comparatively few and unimportant in the na- tive diet. North of Puget Sound there are few plants that produce and store large amounts of starch in seeds or tubers. The rather spindly roots of a kind of clover, and the tough fibrous ones of bracken fern, were dug occasionally to lend some variety to the diet. The “inner bark”—apparently the cambium layer—of various trees was scraped and eaten by most groups, from the Kwakiutl northward. All in all, however, few sources of starchy foods were available. It has even been suggested that the great emphasis on oils and fats in the northern Northwest _ Coast dietary may have developed to compensate _ for the dearth of starches. Certainly these Indi- ans had no innate dislike for starchy foods: they promptly acquired a taste for white men’s bread, flour, and potatoes, and since early historic times have planted potato patches on ancient middens 54 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST whose alkaline soil seems well adapted to this crop. Berries of various kinds were fairly abundant, and they were utilized by all the tribes. The berries were eaten fresh, either plain or mixed with olachen or whale oil, or preserved. For storing, the berries were cooked to a pulpy mass, poured into rectangu- lar wooden frames lined with skunk-cabbage leaves, and dried into cakes. Another storing technique was to stir them into a mixture of year-old olachen grease and cold water. In the southern part of our area two plants that stored starchy materials in quantities were abun- dant enough to become staple foods. One of these was camas (Camassia quamash). On the upper reaches of rivers lowing into Puget Sound, and from western Washington down the Oregon coast, “camas prairies” occur, and the Indians dug quantities of the roots for food. Farther down the coast, in southwest Oregon and northwest California, native _ housewives collected acorns in the oak groves, soaked and hulled them, ground them to a meal in shallow stone mortars with basketry hoppers, leached the bitter tannins out of the meal, and cooked it into a nourishing, if rather tasteless, gruel. In addition to being boiled in watertight boxes or baskets, food was steam-cooked in large shallow pits filled with hot stones by placing it on the stones and covering the whole affair with leaves and mats, then pouring water through to the stones. Fish and meat were also broiled over an open fire, or over a bed of coals. That the cooking techniques were few and simple does not mean that the native diet was monotonous. Around the turn of the century, a Kwakiutl housewife recorded some 150 different recipes for an anthropologist and there is no indi- ECONOMY 55 cation that her repertoire was exhausted. The long feast mats were unrolled to serve as tablecloths, From the Olympic Peninsula northward, dishes were larger and more elaborately carved; some- times four, six, or eight men would be seated at a single dish. Ladles for serving food and oil were also decorated with crests of the host’s family, and spoons of mountain-goat horn, carved and spread open by steaming, were distributed among the guests. The three northernmost tribes made huge decorated ladles of mountain-sheep horn, traded from the interior. For napkins, bundles of softly shredded cedarbark were prepared and distributed. 38 MATERIAL CULTURE Technology and Materials From the northern to the southern extremes of the area, the Indians utilized wood as a primary mate- rial for most of their manufactures. The products of their carpentry were distinguished by neatness of finish and, among the northern groups, by elabo- rate carved and painted decoration. This typi- cal excellent workmanship was accomplished with what would strike most of us as a rather limited tool kit (Figs. 9, 10). Chisels of tough stone such as nephrite, or of elkhorn, or of the dense shell of deep-water clams, mounted in hardwood hafts, were driven with unhafted pear-shaped stone mauls for felling timbers. The three northern nations—the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian—sometimes used heavy chopping adzes in their aboriginal logging. Big logs were split, or sections were split from standing trees, by driving up sets of wedges—usu- ally of hardwood, such as yew, with grommets of tough spruce root wrapped around the butt ends to prevent splitting. The northwestern Californians and their immediate neighbors made wedges of elk- horn. The unhafted maul (Fig. 9) was usually used for driving wedges, except in the north, where heavy hafted stone mauls were used by the three northernmost divisions, and by some of their Heilt- suk and Bella Coola neighbors. Besides the heavy splitting adzes just mentioned, three types of small 58 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST — 2 = x ie? 9) - \ " ah ber AL oS WED A Fig. 9. Three examples of Kwakiutl woodworking tools. On the left is a chisel with a bone blade (about 7 inches long), center, a stone hand hammer (about 6 inches high), “rel se a wedge made of yew wood (about 11 inches igh). adzes served for the fine work. Although their dis- tributions overlapped slightly, the “elbow adze” in which the cutting blade was lashed to a T-shaped wooden handle was essentially northern, used by all the groups from Tlingit through the Southern Kwakiutl. The “D-adze” (Fig. 10A), in which the handle, of wood or whalebone, was shaped some- thing like one of our handsaw handles, was com- mon in the central region, used by the Southern Kwakiutl and the Nootka and their neighbors down the coast of Washington. South of the Columbia a “straight adze,” which looked more like a chisel with a slightly curved handle, was in use. The In- dians did a great part of their carving with these MATERIAL CULTURE 59 adzes, planing rough wood to smooth, flat, or curved surfaces, or to a decorated fluted finish. For the very finest carving short curved blades mounted in wooden handles, something like the Eskimo “crooked knife,” were used. Selina "yp UM Fig. 10. Other Kwakiutl woodworking tools are (A) an adze with a bone blade (about g inches long over-all, (B) a metal-bladed knife (about 8 inches long) shown with its fawnskin sheath, and (C) a drill (about 12 inches long) with a bone point used for carving. Anciently, the blades may have been of ground- down beaver incisors, but for many years, even be- fore the coming of Europeans, iron was used. At Nootka Captain Cook noted that most of the knives and chisels were iron-tipped, and iron was eagerly sought after by the natives whom the early fur trad- ers encountered from Tlingit territory to Trinidad Bay in California. Some ethnologists and historians — have suggested that this pre-European iron may 60 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST have been found in the form of spikes, etc., from the wreckage of ships washed up on the beaches by the Japanese Current, and there is evidence that such “drift iron” was used in early historic times. However, few vessels in which iron spikes and bolts were commonly used were sailing the western Pa- cific before Cook's day. It is more likely that the same Siberian Iron Age center that provided the Punuk culture of the archaeologically ancient Alas- kan Eskimo with metal was the ultimate source of prehistoric iron tools on the Northwest Coast. Sim- ple drills, with a short cutting bit fastened into the end of a wooden handle that the carpenter rotated between his palms, were used for drilling holes. Fire was an important woodworking tool, strange as it may sound. The Indians had effective tech- niques for controlling burning, and were able to hollow out large logs with fire in the manufacture of canoes and the large troughlike feast dishes. Only the Kwakiutl and Nootka claim to have scorned use of this method, for they hollowed out their canoes, etc., with adzes and chisels. The softening effect of hot water on wood was well known; it was a com- mon practice to widen the beam of a new canoe by filling it with water, throwing in red-hot stones until the water was almost boiling, then carefully driving in thwartlike spreaders from gunwale to gunwale. The Kwakiutl even had a device for softening small pieces of wood to bend and shape them that came close to the steam box of the modern boatwright. © They also made molds in which steam-softened pieces of wood—for example, the shanks of the curved halibut hooks—were forced and left to set into the desired shape. To achieve the typical smooth neat finish on wooden articles, fine sand- MATERIAL CULTURE 61 stone, and then sharkskin, were used in lieu of sand- paper. In a sense, the natural environment favored de- velopment of the woodworking craft, for the tow- ering forests of the Northwest contained a number of useful and readily workable woods. The red ce- dar (Thuja plicata), which splits easily into wide straight planks, served a multitude of purposes (in northwest California the equally tractable coast red- wood [Sequoia sempervirens] was used for the same purposes ); yellow cedar (Chamaecyparis nootkaen- sis) and alder (Alnus sp.) were the sources of mate- rial when soft, easily carved wood without marked cleavage planes was needed, as in the manufacture of dishes and masks. Where tough, resilient wood was desired—for example, for bows, harpoon fore- shafts, and the like—few better woods could be found than yew (Taxus brevifolia) or, in the south- ern part of the area, maple (Acer sp.) and oak (Quercus sp.). Only the more northerly Tlingit groups—those residing north of modern Wrangel on the mainland shore, and from Admiralty Island northward offshore, beyond the limits of distribu- tion of red and yellow cedar—had to make shift with less easily split hemlock for planks, and tough but untractable spruce for canoe hulls, when they could not trade for good cedar from their southern kinsmen. Another important material, particularly from the Columbia River northward, was the inner bark of the red cedar and, to a slightly lesser degree, that of yellow cedar. Even the northerly Tlingit, in whose territory neither red nor yellow cedar grew, found it necessary to import quantities of the bark, as well © as of the lumber, of the two trees. One could very 62 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST nearly describe the life of the individual Indian in terms of cedarbark: as an infant, he was swaddled in the bark, shredded and haggled to a cottony con- sistency; his pillow and head-presser were pads of the same material; woven robes and rain capes of shredded bark protected him from rain and cold throughout his life; checkerwork mats of red cedar- bark were his principal household furnishings, serv- ing as tablecloths at mealtimes, as upholstery for seats, and as mattresses for his bed. With the begin- ning of European contacts he learned to use sails on his canoe and, when he was unable to acquire imported canvas, he made sails of heavily woven bark mats; old worn-out mats served to protect his canoe from the checking effects of the sun on bright days. On ceremonial and festive occasions he wore turbans and arm and leg bands twisted and woven of shredded bark. He stowed his carpentering tools in a basket woven of the same bark. The Nootka whale hunter kept his precious harpoon heads in neatly made pouches of the same material. In his- toric times, our typical Northwest Coast native found shredded cedarbark to be an ideal gun wad- ding for the muzzle-loader he acquired from the white trader. And when he died, the chances were that unless he were a chief and entitled to special treatment, his body would be wrapped in a cedar- bark mat for burial. Most of this bark was stripped off standing trees. It is interesting to note that there was a conscious ef- fort at conservation: only rarely was a tree stripped completely; instead, only part of the bark was re- moved, to permit the tree to recover and continue its growth. Long strips were pulled off, starting from a horizontal cut made near the base of the MATERIAL CULTURE 63 tree. Then the outer bark was peeled off and the inner bark rolled up into bales for carrying home. When dried, the red cedarbark was split into strips for mat and basket making, or shredded by feeding it across the edge o'f an old paddle blade and hag- gling it with a heavy blunt chopper of hardwood or whalebone (Fig. 11). The bark of yellow ce- dar was treated by soaking it alternately in salt and fresh water, drying it, then pounding it with a whalebone or stone hammer until the fibers sepa- rated. The Salish groups from the Gulf of Georgia south- ward, and their Chinook neighbors along the lower Columbia, substituted sewn mats of tules, or reeds, for the cedarbark mats of their northern neighbors. They passed a strand of twine through a flat row of reeds with a long wooden needle resembling an oversize sack needle, then crimped the reeds down with a special tool (Fig. 11) to prevent the stems from cracking where the needle had split them. The use of this technique spread during historic _ times to adjacent Kwakiutl and Nootka who had access to stands of reeds around lakes and muskeg swamps; such mats are softer and more resilient than those of cedarbark. The regional flora provided a variety of materials for basket weaving. The same red cedarbark used for mats served for flexible but strong baskets, woven with flat strips; for more rigid, tighter con- struction the same material was spun into stiff cord. Spruce roots, from which long wiry segments could be split, were widely used also. The bark of a “wild cherry” (Prunus sp.), various tough grasses, and a glossy black fern stem were frequently utilized for © decorative paiterns. Fig. 11. Tools used in working with the bark of the red cedar. At the top, a hardwood shredder (about 24 inches long) used by the Kwakiutl. At the upper right is a whale- bone shredder used by the Nootka (about 7 inches long) and below that a Coast Salish mat creaser. Also shown is a wooden needle, approximately 30 inches long, used by the Coast Salish in making mats. ple NLVAY : j A\WAAW ANY en VAN Ni y \ OW é i) ’ YLT), Vi YY dij Vj (/ iLL) Yyf ' Vy 44 Sf, tf) ‘ “ oy SO > 9 ~~ ~~ S 2 8 = ne 8A... Sse ~ & 5's we 8 5 we ess CBS 3 9 8 ese Sls 2 3 Ww ao § @ a oS ER bMS S's? 2.2 es 4 Oo SZISBPES g Ewes Svods S es Fs ee SG ... = 2 We ee os 8988 +5 ee GS Y SF HHS oe VO 8 eos oe. SST SS WE > ~ Swe ss "SS -s S&S Ons SS ee ae Se 8 ~ JS ap as um oOo 2 (on) +3 ¢ UR Sine ES ec NS oo 8 & ° 4 OTD © oe a ie Ss “XS es = © —~ ~oe ou k en P< isgs Sak Ba Ss NS SSL oVOS © ses rN SSeses 8 ee G'S Courtesy of the Peabody Mu- ty 1 ilkat blankets few old Ch seum, Harvard Univers ina 16. A robe of duck down, collected from the Makah, who learned to make such textiles from their Salish neighbors. The warps, which run horizontally, were made of hanks of bark fiber into which quantities of down were caught. The down conceals the widely spaced cedarbark wefts. The predominant color is the rich brown of mallard down, with a few strips of white; the robe is remarkably light in weight, but soft and warm. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. a —— = ree ae SSS —————— 17. A Coast Salish “nobility blanket,” collected by Lieutenant Wilkes, U.S.N., on the lower Columbia River about 1841. The colors are chiefly native dyes: various tones of yellow and brown on a white ground, with a little black, blue, and red. The weave is plain twining; slanting design elements are formed by actually changing the direction of the weft ele- ments from horizontal to the desired slope, and the undulating lines of the lower zone are formed by working the wefts in curves. The central panel, with the three broad stripes on the white ground, was apparently woven separately and sewed in along the sides, reminding one of the “panel weaving” of Chilkat blankets. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. eR ert hve eget eT AP eae yy ~- 18. A Salish robe of dog and mountain-goat wool, collected in the 1840s, which combines two very different weaves. The central portion is woven in the twilled checker technique, and could have been made on a two-bar loom. The sides are closely woven in a plain twining, with wefts slanted to pro- duce diagonal lines, as in the “nobility blankets.” This speci- men proves that the Salish utilized two distinct weaving complexes; the side strips are not mends, but integral parts of the original manufacture. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Insti- tution. 19. An old Chilkat dancing skirt with a design area, woven of mountain-goat wool in the Chilkat blanket style, representing a Beaver. The design is mounted on a buckskin backing and the jinglers on the fringe are puffin beaks. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. 20. An old Tsimshian dance legging which covered the leg from the shin to the ankle. Made of buckskin, the design is porcupine-quill embroidery and the jinglers are puffin beaks. Some leggings of this type were made with a design area woven of mountain-goat wool and mounted on buckskin. 21. A chief's headdress, consisting of a mask of wood with abalone-shell inlays, and a trailer of cloth covered with ermine skins. The forehead masks in concept, though not in style, are reminiscent of some Western Eskimo ceremonial regalia. This example represents a Hawk and is from the Tsimshian. The mask rests on the forehead and the trailer extends mid- way down the back. 22. Two kinds of Tlingit body armor: above, a painted moose hide with a design representing a Bear and, below, hardwood rods which were twined together with cord and wrapped around the wearer's midsection. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. MATERIAL CULTURE 65 For textiles, in addition to the yellow cedarbark already noted, a few animal fibers were used. From Vancouver Island northward, mountain-goat wool was in great demand for weaving. The Salish groups of the Gulf of Georgia and on the shores of the Straits of Juan de Fuca had a special breed of little dogs whose wool-like hair they clipped to make into yarns for robes. However, the amounts of these animal fibers used were very small in com- parison with those of vegetable origin. Fig. 12. On the left, a Tlingit ladle of shaped and carved mountain-sheep horn (about 17 inches high). On the right, Yurok spoons of elk antler, showing typical lower Klamath decoration. (See Plate 4.) Other materials were used for special purposes, of course. Cutting blades made of stone and shell have been mentioned. A tough, hard, bright-green nephrite found in southeast Alaska and along the Fraser River was extensively used for adze blades. : 66 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Horn and bone were ground down for many pur- poses. The use of the heavy shafts of elkhorn for wedges in northwest California has been noted. In the same region, neat little purses for shell money were carved of sections of elkhorn, as well as spoons for acorn mush, decorated with geometric designs (Fig. 12). Both horn and bone, particularly the compact hard material from the cannon bones of elk and deer, were used to make harpoon and ar- row points, and perhaps in pre-iron times, served for the blades of adzes and other tools. Along the northern mainland shore, horn of both mountain sheep and mountain goat was used for various pur- poses, after being softened in boiling water to per- mit shaping and molding. Some of the horn spoons and ladles of the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and Heiltsuk (Fig. 12, Plate 4), with their elaborately carved decoration, are veritable works of art. The Chinook, who acquired mountain-sheep horn from some distant source tapped by their trade connec- tions, made very distinctively shaped dishes of the same material. Stoneworking was definitely a minor art on the Northwest Coast. Chipped stone was uncommon, except in the southern part of the area. There, along the Klamath River, huge, flaked blades of obsidian, as evenly and finely worked as any in the world, were made—not for utility but as valuables, com- parable to crown jewels. Delicately flaked arrow points of chalcedony and agate, tiny and jewel-like in their perfection, were used by the Chinookan groups of the lower Columbia, but were trade ar- ticles made by the upriver interior tribes. Farther north, ground slate blades are found in archaeologi- cal sites, where, at the dawn of history, ground shell MATERIAL CULTURE 67 knives and harpoon blades were more common. In addition to the stone adze blades, mauls both hafted and unhafted, and the large, flat pile drivers with prepared grips used by the Kwakiutl and Bella Coola for driving stakes for fish weirs, a few stone vessels were made—paint-grinding mortars, “oil dishes,” and in the extreme south, shallow mortars used with basket hoppers for grinding acorns. The lower Klamath River groups also made pipe bowls, set in tubular wooden stems, or, rarely, tubular stone pipes for smoking their tobacco. Manufactures Of the materials just discussed, wood served for houses, canoes, storage vessels, dishes, cooking uten- sils, cradles, and even—in the south—for pillows. The areally typical wooden houses fall into a series of regional subpatterns. In the north, the Fig. 13. A diagram of a Northern house type, showing joined construction, after a drawing from the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania. 68 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and the Northern Kwa- kiutl-speaking Haisla built large rectangular gabled- roof houses, the elements of which were joined together. Heavy horizontal members, or plates, ran from corner post to corner post. These timbers had deep channels or slots cut into them—the ground plates along the upper side, and the roof plates on their lower sides—into which the ends of the verti- cally placed wall planks of cedar fitted (Fig. 19, Plate 6). Huge ridgepoles were supported by heavy posts at front and back; these in turn sup- ported the overlapping layers of roof planking. The doorway, in the gable end facing the beach, was often in the form of a round or oval hole cut through the center post. Particularly among the Haida, an elaborately carved exterior post that extended high above the roof was set up in front of the house, and the gaping mouth of some crest figure formed the entrance. In many of these houses a deep pit was dug some feet inside of the walls. In fact, traditions tell of houses of renowned chiefs that had a series of four or five benches or steps. Across the back of the house, on the bench at ground level, if it had a deep central pit, and sometimes along the sides were the sleeping compartments of the important families occupying it. These were small cubicles built of planks—miniatures, even to their gabled roofs, of the house. The front of the house-chiefs compart- ment was sometimes painted with elaborate de- signs. Farther south, among the remaining Kwakiutl di- visions, the Bella Coola, and the Nootka, houses were made according to a different structural plan. Heavy posts supported ridgepole and side plates, on which the roof planks were laid. So low was the MATERIAL CULTURE 69 slope of the two sides of the roof that some early sources described the houses as flat-roofed. Some- times a double ridgepole was used. The siding of the house was erected separately, only secondarily tied into the framework; that is to say, pairs of poles were set up just outside the corner posts and roof plate, and planks were placed horizontally, slung on withes tied between each pair of poles (Plate 7). These houses were particularly adapted to a custom of their owners, who commonly had house frames standing at various fishing stations, and would strip roof and siding off the house to take with them each time they moved. Elaborate crest designs were often painted on the house fronts. The Kwakiutl divisions, in recent times at least, copied the practice of the northern tribes in construct- ing plank-walled sleeping compartments inside the house. Among some of the Bella Coola and Kwakiutl divisions, and the Coast Tsimshian and possibly among the ancient Tlingit, if descriptive ancestral house names may be taken as evidence, a special- ized variant form of house was made by groups living on very narrow strips of beach in the steep- walled fiords. These were pile dwellings, built partly or entirely over the water. Alexander Mac- kenzie describes in some detail the Bella Coola houses of this type that he saw on his historic trip in 1793. A modification of the pile dwelling, known, on the basis of archaeological evidence, to have been used by some Tsimshian, and according to traditions by certain Kwakiutl, was the house raised above high-tide level on a cribwork foundation of logs and poles. In brief, regardless of which basic house type they used, these northern tribes had 70 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST sufficient mechanical ingenuity to adapt their dwell- ings to any peculiar local need. The Salish groups living around the Gulf of Geor- gia and Puget Sound, and their neighbors in north- west and western Washington, built houses of the same plan as the Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, and Nootka, with horizontal siding structurally separate from the house frame, but usually with shed, that is, one- pitch, roofs rather than gabled ones. Wide raised shelves that served as beds and for storage ran along the walls. These houses were somewhat nar- rower than those of the gable-roof type, but some were tremendously long—a whole village or tribelet might occupy a single house of this kind. It must be added that there was some overlapping of these two related house types: some Southern Kwakiutl and Southern Nootkans used the shed-roof type as well as the gabled roof; a few of the Gulf of Geor- gia Salish built both gabled-roof houses and those with roofs of a single slope. At times, at camps and temporary stations, the Salish groups also built mat lodges like those of their interior cousins. On the lower Columbia and along the Washing- ton and Oregon coasts another house type pre- vailed. Although similar to those already described, it was a variant of the areal pattern of rectangular plank structure. A deep rectangular pit was dug and lined with vertically set planks. Corner posts and ridgepole posts supported long timbers on which the roof planks were laid to form a steep- sloping gabled roof, the eaves of which were just above the ground. Raised plank shelves like those in shed-roof houses were used as beds. The doorway was at one of the gable ends; one entered and de- MATERIAL CULTURE ye! scended a notched log ladder to the floor level. The Washington coast groups (except the Makah who built shed-roof houses), the Lower Chinook, and most Oregon coast groups had dwellings of this type. The Athapascan groups of southwest Oregon and the northwest corner of California built the same type of house, but with a pit only a foot or so deep, or without a pit, so that the house stood mostly above the ground. The groups of the lower Klamath—Yurok, Karok, and Hupa—built still another kind of house. In some respects it was more like the structures of the ex- treme north of the area. The house had a deep cen- tral pit, but the walls stood back away from it, leav- ing a step or bench at ground level that served for storage space, as did a narrow anteroom between the double front walls. Poor men might build a house with a gabled roof, but a man of means and pride would have a three-pitch roof. A round door- way, just big enough to squeeze through, was cut through a big redwood plank on one side of the gable end (Plate 8). There were few special structures in the area. The northwest Californians built large rectangular sweathouses that served as men’s clubhouses. Cer- tain features of these structures, as well as their use—the exit tunnel that also served as a flue for the fireplace, their use as a men’s clubhouse, the direct fire-sweating rather than steam-sweating—strangely enough recall both the kashim or men’s house of the western Eskimo and the kiva of the Pueblo tribes of the Southwest. The groups around Puget Sound and some of their Gulf of Georgia relatives made small domed mat-covered sweatlodges, in which they took steam baths by sprinkling water on hot 72 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST stones in typical Plateau fashion. In this, as in so many other traits, they reflected their close ties with their Interior Salish kin. Along the mainland shores of the Gulf of Georgia from Point Grey to Bute In- let, semisubterranean lodges of pure interior type were known and occasionally constructed. Tradi- tions of both Bella Coola and Tsimshian refer to similar structures as having been used by their an- cestors long ago. It has been remarked previously that the Indians of our area preferred water travel to any other method of transport. While, unlike the Polynesians, they did not make long voyages over the open sea, many of the northern groups were sufficiently com- petent mariners to cruise coastwise on voyages of several hundred miles. Kwakiutl and Haida raided the villages around Puget Sound sailing down Queen Charlotte Sound and the Gulf of Georgia in their huge war canoes. In the north, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, all the Kwakiutl divisions, and the Bella Coola used a type of canoe with high projecting bow and stern, a sharp vertical cutwater or forefoot, and a rounded counter (Fig. 14A). The projecting elements, which served to repel wave crests that would otherwise swamp the craft, were separate pieces, scarfed and fitted to the hull, and sewed tight with withes threaded through drilled holes. Elaborate designs were painted on the bows and, anciently, carved figures representing family crests were sometimes mounted fore and aft on the bowsprit-like project- ing pieces. Some of the large canoes—for example the Haida dugouts made of the tremendous clean- grained red cedar of the Queen Charlotte Islands —were more than fifty feet long, and seven to eight MATERIAL CULTURE 73 feet in beam, and could carry a considerable quan- tity of cargo or a large number of warriors. While all the northern tribes made both large and small canoes of this style, the Haida canoe makers were especially esteemed for their craftsmanship, and the mainland groups sought to buy the Haida-built craft when the tribes assembled at the olachen-fish- ing grounds on the Nass River every spring. Gulf of Georgia and Puget Sound Salish constructed what was essentially a small low-sided variant of this type (Fig. 14A) for cruising their more shel- tered waters. The Nootka were also renowned canoe makers. Craft built by their experts were traded far and wide among their Salish neighbors, and even to the Chinook of the lower Columbia and the tribes of the central Oregon coast. The Nootka canoe differed from the northern type in having a low vertical sternpost, and a graceful arc from the sharp-edged forefoot to the projecting prow piece (Fig. 14A). The bottom of the hull was flat and the sides were sheered, that is, flared outward to the gunwales, through a set of varying curves neatly calculated to ward off the seas instead of allowing them to come aboard. The graceful and practical lines of the Nootka canoe made it one of the finest seagoing vessels built by any primitive people. Some mari- time historians believe that the flowing curve from forefoot to prow and the bold sheer of the bows of - the Nootka craft inspired the New England de- signers of that queen of the seas, the American clip- per ship, whose racy bow lines were nearly iden- tical. While dugout canoes were built on the lower Klamath, as in all the rest of the area, a special 74 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST local pattern was evolved. These vessels were pri- marily river craft, round-bottomed, straight-sided, with high freeboard, and with blunt, uptumed ends that made them exceptionally maneuverable even in swift currents (Plate 10). Nonfunctional yoke- like pieces attached to the blunt prow and stern suggest atavistic survivals of the separate prow and Fig. 14A. These are the principal types of canoes found on the Northwest Coast. All are shown with the bow to the right, the stern to the left. At the top is the “Northern” type and directly below, that of the Nootka. Beside each is a cross-section amidships, showing the important structural dif- ferences. Both these canoes were made in various sizes and proportions. For example, a seal-hunting canoe intended to carry two or three men swiftly and silently over the water would have the same ccateal outline but be smaller and narrower than one intended to carry large quantities of freight or a war party. The third example is a Coast Salish version of the “Northern” type with low bow and_stern, for travel on sheltered waters. The last is a small “shovelnose”’ canoe used by many groups for river travel. MATERIAL CULTURE 75 stern pieces of the northern and Nootkan dugouts. Coast Yurok and their Athapascan-speaking neigh- bors immediately to the north put to sea in these craft, but for short trips only, for the canoes were better suited for river travel than for the deep sea. The foregoing were the principal varieties of Northwest Coast canoes, but are far from complet- ing the roster. A widely, if sporadically, distributed river canoe with round bottom, narrow, straight lines and bluntly pointed ends is usually called the “shovelnose” type (Fig. 144A). Most of the Coast Salish made and used these craft for river travel, even the groups living on the seacoast who had Fig. 14B. Two ancient types of canoes which have not been made for many years are (top) a war canoe made by the Southern Kwakiutl and perhaps by some neighboring Coast Salish and (bottom) a variant of the “Northern” type probably made by the Haida and traded to their neighbors. The high, wide bow piece on the top canoe served as a shield to the warriors and paddlers when landing on an enemy beach. The canoe on the bottom has, on the other hand, a deep boardlike bow which was usually elaborately painted. These craft may have been used principally for ceremonial occasions. {See Plate 10.) | 76 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Nootka- or northern-style canoes for use on salt water. In another part of the area, Lewis and Clark observed huge bluntly pointed dugouts, apparently oversized shovelnose models, with large carved figures mounted at bow and stern, among the Chi- nook of the Columbia. Farther north, the Southern Kwakiutl and a few Nootka and Gulf of Georgia Salish who traded with Kwakiutl had canoes with a wide, entirely vertical prow piece, and short verti- cal stern like that of the Nootka type (Fig. 14B). In the extreme north, the Yakutat Tlingit made a variant of the northern-style canoe with an under- water projection, something like the ram of an old- fashioned dreadnought. This feature may have served to protect the hull from the salt-water “scum ice.” The Yakutat and their Chilkat relatives knew and occasionally used Eskimo-style umiaks—large open vessels of hide stretched over slender ribs and wood framing. Except in the extreme south of the area, all these canoes were propelled with paddles, usually with a lanceolate blade and cross or “crutch” handle. There were, of course, minor variations within the areal pattern. A Nootka sea hunter used a paddle that tapered to a very slender elongated tip, six or eight inches long, that was supposed to allow the water to run off the paddle blade quickly and quietly instead of letting the drops spatter noisily with each stroke to frighten the seal or sea otter. In the north, especially among the Haida, paddle blades were often elaborately painted with family crests. Southward, many Coast Salish and Chi- nookan groups had special paddles for river travel with deeply notched instead of pointed tips. The MATERIAL CULTURE 77 purpose of the notch was to enable the canoeman to brace his paddle against snags, roots, and boul- ders. In northwestern California, a combination pole and paddle, that is, a pole with a slightly wid- ened, flattish end, proved most practicable for river use. After a few years of European contacts, the In- dians began to step masts in their seagoing canoes, and rig sails of heavily woven cedarbark mats or of canvas. Before that time, however, they knew noth- ing of sailing. Even after they learned to use sails, they could only sail with the wind well astern, for otherwise the keelless canoes made too much lee- way, and could not possibly beat into the wind. Other canoe appurtenances include bailers, of a variety of local forms, and neatly made tackle boxes shaped to fit snugly in the narrowed spaces at bow and stern. Household furnishings consisted chiefly of arti- cles made of wood or woven of cedarbark. Wooden boxes that served a host of purposes were made from Tlingit country to the coast of Washington. The Indian carpenter selected a suitable thin plank of red cedar, cut it to a width corresponding to the height desired for the box, then, after carefully measuring with a set of measuring sticks, cut three channels as wide as they were deep across the board, a good three-fourths or even more of the way through. Then, using his steaming technique for softening wood, he bent the board into a right angle at each cut (Fig. 15). The two ends were scarfed and either pegged or sewed together with withes of spruce root. A rabbet was cut along one long edge of the board so that the bottom of the box could be fitted in snugly. Holes were drilled through 78 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Fig. 15. Kerfed (cut) and bent wooden boxes from the Kwakiutl. The “hunters boxes” (lower right) tapered from top to bottom to permit stowage in the bow or stern of a canoe. As shown in the detail, the cuts in the wood were made on a slant. The boards for the box on the left (ap- proximately 9 inches by 12 inches) were cut straight. sides and bottom, and dowel-like pegs were driven up hard to hold the bottom firmly in place. A box properly made in this fashion was absolutely water- tight. It could be used as a cooking vessel by bring- ing water in it to a boil by dropping in a few red- hot stones, picked from the fire with wooden tongs. Fitted with lids, of the overlapping type in the north, or rabbeted among Southern Kwakiutl and Nootka, these boxes served for storage. In them were stowed all sorts of possessions: masks and ritual paraphernalia, valuables, furs and clothing, trade blankets in historic times, and even the prized oils rendered from candlefish and from whale blubber. In the north, the usual crest designs were painted on these boxes, and the Haida often carved these designs into the box fronts and sides (Plate MATERIAL CULTURE 79 11). The northern storage boxes tended to be both squarer and squatter than those of Southern Kwa- kiutl and Nootka, who decorated their high narrow containers with tastefully spaced rows of fluting and inlays of sea-otter teeth and sea-snail opercula. There were many other uses for these boxes; they were made in different proportions according to their purpose. Very long narrow ones were slung from the rafters at ceremonials to serve as drums; small square boxes were made for water buckets. Quivers, babies’ cradles, and trinket and tackle boxes were all made in the same technique (Fig. 16). The groups from the Chinook southward, who did not make these boxes with one-piece sides, made storage boxes by hollowing out big blocks of cedar or redwood and fitting snug lids to them. Dishes were usually made in troughlike form, hollowed out of blocks of alder, The Kwakiutl and groups to the north of them often modified the Fig. 16. The sides of this Kwakiutl cradle were kerfed and bent like a wooden box. The cradle was padded with finely worked mats and shredded red cedarbark and the baby was lashed in securely so that he would not fall when the cradle was being carried or suspended: from a rope and swung. Cradles of chiefs’ children were often elaborately carved or painted. | Fig. 17. Some examples of wooden feast dishes. The sec- ond from the top represents a Beaver and is probably of Tlingit origin. The remaining three are Kwakiutl, the top one about 27 inches long, the second from the bottom about 18 inches long. | MATERIAL CULTURE 81 basically simple dish shape into human or animal forms, especially in the case of the huge feast dishes (Fig. 17). While elaborately carved and painted backrests were made in the north, only the people of the lower Klamath made seats—simple but neatly fin- ished redwood stools. Elsewhere people sat on the ground, or on the ubiquitous checkerwork mats of red cedarbark. These mats should really be con- sidered furniture too: as has been remarked, they were used to sit on, as mattresses, and as table- cloths. The Salish groups and their neighbors to the south used mats of tules for the same purposes. The Northwest Coast dress styles were very dis- tinctive. As in almost all other aspects of the culture of the area, even most of the minor regional varia- tion that occurred was within the limits of the basic patterns. Fitted or tailored garments were not used, except by the northern Tlingit divisions. The Chil- kat division and perhaps their kinsmen who trekked over the mountains into the frigid interior often wore one-piece trousers-and-moccasins of buckskin, and fringed buckskin shirts trimmed with porcu- pine-quill embroidery, typical garb of Athapascan neighbors. Elsewhere, when the weather permitted, men went about nude—except for the Tlingit, whose breechcloth was a type of garment almost surely borrowed from the interior. Women wore one- or two-piece skirts of buckskin among Tlingit and - Tsimshian, of shredded cedarbark among their neighbors to the south, and of strands of shredded maple bark or buckskin in northwestern California. Tlingit women wore their skirts over a rather shape- less buckskin slip, at least on cold days. In north- west California, a close-fitting, neatly made twined 82 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST basketry cap was customarily worn by the women. On Puget Sound and among the Upper Chinook, women wore basketry caps of truncated conical form, identical with those of the Nez Percé and other Plateau groups. Throughout the area both sexes usually went barefoot, although nearly all the groups knew how to make rude moccasins for wear on the rare occasions when they traveled back into the mountains in winter. A number of early historic sources comment on the way in which the Indians walked about barefoot in the snow with no appar- ent discomfort. Whether this resistance to cold was due to conditioning from childhood on, or to the oil-rich diet, or to a combination of both, is un- known. For rainy weather the Indians from the Columbia northward slipped on flaring conical capes, woven of shredded cedarbark, that covered Fig. 18. Basketry hats are (top) a Kwakiutl-type with painted design, (left) a Nootkan chiefs hat with woven design, and (right) a Haida example with painted design. MATERIAL CULTURE 83 them from neck to elbow but allowed considerable freedom of arm movement. Tsimshian and Tlingit relied principally on robes, and the Haida, Kwa- kiutl, and Nootka used rectangular rain capes of cedarbark matting. A tightly woven, wide-brimmed basketry rain hat (Fig. 18) completed the costume, although in cold weather a woven robe, twined- woven of shredded yellow cedarbark, might be worn under the rain cape. A robe of black bearskin, sea-otter pelts, marmot skins, or other warm fur was sometimes worn instead, especially by chiefs. The woven robes of yellow cedarbark just men- tioned were manufactured principally by the Noot- kan and Kwakiutl groups, and perhaps by Coast Tsimshian, but were traded widely both to north and south. They were of a distinctive shape, being straight along the top and sides, with a curved lower edge that made the robe longer in the middle than on the sides. These garments were made of soft loosely twisted hanks of the inner bark of yel- “low cedar. To make a robe, the weaver hung the hanks of bark fiber, doubled over a cord suspended from a loom bar, and “twined” them together. In “twining,” the wefts, or horizontal elements, were doubled, and each pair was crossed over about each suspended hank (or “warp” as the vertical ele- ments in weaving are called) in turn, across the width of the blanket. The wefts were widely spaced, so that the surface texture was mainly that of the - soft warps. In ordinary robes of this type the wefts were simply thin cords of tightly spun red cedar- bark, but in better-quality products some wefts of mountain-goat wool were used. An added touch of luxury was given at times by sewing narrow strips of sea-otter fur along the borders of the robe. 84 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST A technically more elaborate robe, but one which in form, technique, and type of loom on which it was made was closely related to the cedarbark robe, was the so-called “Chilkat blanket” (Plate 14). This English designation was given the gar- ment because for many generations—perhaps the major part of the historic period—these robes have been woven only by Chilkat women. There are indications that formerly some other Tlingit divi- sions may have made them, however, and that the technique may have been borrowed from the Tsim- shian. According to one Chilkat tradition, the Tsim- shian formerly made dancing aprons and _half- leggings in the same technique. A Chilkat bride of a Tsimshian chief learned the art. At her death, a dance apron she had woven was sent to her home, where her relatives studied the weave, loosening and unraveling it bit by bit till they understood how it was done. They then began to make robes in the same fashion. This is of course not the only evidence of Tsimshian priority in the craft; some very old specimens, differing somewhat in style from recent Chilkat examples, have been observed among the heirlooms of Tsimshian chiefs. Also, as Lieutenant Emmons pointed out in his classic study of the craft, the Chilkat robes are decorated with the typically compact multi-element decorative patterns of the Tsimshian, whereas “dance shirts,” a purely Chilkat development in the same tech- nique, bear the more spacious and slightly more realistic Tlingit designs. These robes, which are outstanding expressions of northern coast textile art, are woven by the women of yarn spun from mountain-goat wool (the warps are of goat wool with a core of yellow cedar- MATERIAL CULTURE 85 bark twine; this latter material must of course be imported by the Chilkat). Men hunt the goats that provide the wool, make the “half-loom” on which the weaving is done (this is a loom with a single bar from which the warps are suspended with their lower ends free), make various measuring sticks and other devices, and paint the pattern boards from which the weaver copies her design. After months of spinning and dyeing her yarn, she is ready to set up her loom. First the warps are care- fully measured and cut, so that their lower ends form the proper curve (in some specimens, the lower edge forms a shallow V rather than a true curve ). Then she binds the warps together at the top with several rows of twined weaving, using a special variety of that technique. Her next step is carefully to measure the design panels of the pat- tern board, and to measure and count them off on the warps. Each lot of warps that will form a panel is tied into a bundle, and usually tucked into a container of dried mountain-goat or bear gut to keep it clean (Plate 13). One of the unique features of this weaving technique is that the robe is not woven as a single piece, but into separate panels which are joined together with sinew or wool-and- bark cord as the work progresses. These joints are concealed with a three-element false embroidery, which is also used to border each color area within the panel. Within the panel the weaving is done in a “twilled twining” technique; that is, the wefts seize two warps at a time, each row splitting the pairs of the previous one. The colors used are four: white, the natural color of the carefully washed wool; black, blue, and yellow. The three last-named were produced by soaking hemlock bark, copper, 86 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST and lichen imported from the interior, respectively, in mordant solutions of urine, then dipping the yarns. The borders of the robe at sides and bottom are not woven, properly speaking, but are finished off in a sort of braiding technique. The long ends are left free to form a fringe, which is thickened by tying in additional strands. The “dance shirt,” a knee-length, unfitted tunic, usually sleeveless, has been mentioned as a pe- culiarly Tlingit garment. It may be a replica of an ancient type of moosehide armor. Authorities are not in agreement as to whether it is itself an ancient form, or one recently developed by the Chilkat. The methods of weaving used are identical with those used for the robe; it is simply woven on a higher and narrower loom. The dance aprons and leggings woven in the same technique are now quite rare. They have not been made for many years, perhaps since the Tsimshian abandoned the art. It is interesting to note that the “Chilkat blanket” (and dancing shirt) is one of the very few ancient artistic products whose manufacture is still carried on. After a brief period of experimenting with cheap, imported colored yarns, the Chilkat weavers returned to their aboriginal materials and methods, which they use to this day. The chief innovation is that commercial dyes, particularly for blue, are often used. The robes and shirts are rarely sold to tourists, however, for they are extremely expen- sive. The purchasers are traditionalist Tlingit, who buy them to have at hand for sentimental reasons, to display at feasts, and to be buried in. There are a few museum specimens collected in early historic times, either from the Tsimshian or MATERIAL CULTURE 87 perhaps slightly farther south, in which weaves used and type of design vary from that of the more recent Chilkat robes. The most well-known exam- ple, collected about 1800 somewhere along the coast, is distinctive because of its purely geometric patterns and the amazing variety of weaving tech- niques utilized (Plate 15). Probably in former times there were a number of local varieties of this same basic type of textile in the northern part of our area. The Salish groups along the shores of the Gulf of Georgia and the Straits of Juan de Fuca possessed three distinct textile weaving complexes. This is one of the very few fields in which they could dem- onstrate technologic superiority over their northern neighbors. They also used a greater variety of ma- terials in their robes. Not only did they spin yarn of mountain-goat wool, but they kept a special breed of small woolly dogs which they sheared at intervals, just like domestic sheep. The fine down of ducks and geese, and, as well, the “downy” pap- pus of cattail reeds or of “fireweed,” was mixed into and caught up with the long hanks of vegetal fibers and wool to make yarn. Yellow cedarbark was used little if at all by these groups. Some or all of these materials were beaten together with a special clay that cleansed them, carded with the fingers, and spun into a thick yarn on a long hand-twirled spin- dle with a large decorated spindle whorl of hard- wood or bone that served as a flywheel to maintain - an even tension on the yarn as it was spun. One of the Salish weaving complexes—that me- chanically most elaborate—involved the use of a “full,” or two-bar, loom, with the single continuous warp stretched over two horizontal bars set one above the other in a frame and looped over a string. 88 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST When the blanket was finished, the cross string was cut and withdrawn and the two ends of the robe came apart. The robes were woven in a twilled checker (over two, under one) technique, like the rabbitskin robes of many Plateau and Great Basin Indians of the interior, from which they differ only in use of the loom. Probably the basic method is a heritage of the Plateau-Great Basin cultural an- cestry of the Coast Salish. The other principal blanketmaking technique, which was used for two quite distinct products, utilized simple twined weaving similar to that of the Kwakiutl-Nootka yellow cedarbark robes. We have little or no information on manufacturing pro- cedures except for what may be deduced from study of the finished specimens. Probably the work was done on the same type of “half-loom” or sus- pended warp loom as was used by Kwakiutl and Nootkan weavers, and the makers of the northern Chilkat robes. The Salish twined-woven robes are typically rectangular in form, lacking the curved or shallowly pointed lower edge of the yellow cedarbark robes and the Chilkat blankets. The two principal varieties of this Salish twined weaving were very different in appearance. One consisted of robes of wool and/or eiderdown warps with widely spaced cedarbark wefts (Plate 16). The major difference between these and the yellow cedarbark robes of Nootka and Kwakiutl neighbors was in the materials; a secondary difference was that the twining was usually done transverse to the long dimension of the robe, rather than parallel to it as by Wakashan weavers. The other variety of twined weaving, the so-called “nobility” or “organ-_ ized” robes, was one in which wefts were closely spaced, so that they, rather than the warps, formed MATERIAL CULTURE 89 the surface of the finished robe. Some of these blankets in museum collections, acquired around the middle of the nineteenth century, include yarns of European make obtained from traders, and some strands of native materials colored with non-native dyes, but most of the materials and dyes seem to be of Indian origin (Plate 17). There are two char- acteristic features of the weaving that deserve men- tion: first, in a number of specimens a separately woven central design panel suggests relationship to the panel weaving typical of the Chilkat blanket; second, diagonal lines in design were produced by slanting the wefts (pulling the warps to one side or the other) rather than by stopping a series of rows of a color one space shorter or one space longer than the preceding, as is ordinarily done in textiles and basketry. This is a most unique method of achieving the desired slanting effect. One might appraise the two major kinds of weaving as prod- ucts of two distinct cultures, were it not that in a few specimens both techniques, twilled checker and simple twining, were sometimes incorporated in one and the same object (Plate 18). Some belts and tumplines, collected from Coast Salish in the middle of the nineteenth century, were made with the same techniques as the “nobility blankets.” These Salish and Chilkat robes, and even the Kwakiutl-Nootka ones of yellow cedarbark that had a few strands of mountain-goat wool yarn woven in, were highly prized, and were traded widely along the coast, as far south as the Columbia River. Such luxury apparel was not worn daily, of course, but was reserved for festive occasions. Other arti- cles of dress used by the three northernmost na- tions for special functions include dance aprons and knee-length leggings woven in the same tech- ee go INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST nique as the Chilkat robes (Plate 19). Dance aprons of buckskin and half-leggings, painted and, — at times, ornamented with a little porcupine-quill embroidery, were found among the same northern groups (Plate 20). They also used elaborate head- gear composed of a maskette mounted on a head- band, set with sea-lion whiskers, and with stream- ers of ermine skins down the back (Plate 21). Necklaces of various shells, especially the tusk-like dentalia regarded as highly valuable and dredged from a few offshore beds by the Nootka, were highly prized. In addition there were endless varie- ties of masks, carved helmets, and the turban-like rings of cedarbark that were the insignia of the dancing societies, in use among all the tribes from Tlingit territory to the Olympic Peninsula. (The Salish of the Gulf of Georgia had fewer masks and less in general of the elaborate festive equipment than their neighbors to the northwest and west; those of Puget Sound had few or none of such luxury items. ) In historic times the “button blanket” became a popular garment for formal wear. This was either a trade blanket or other piece of heavy cloth to which many large pearl-shell buttons were sewn, the usual design being the outline of a family crest. Occasionally appliqué designs in red flannel were also sewn on trade blankets. The Oregon and Californian participants in the areal culture had different kinds of equipment for festivals, but, as in the north, much of their para- phernalia consisted of articles deemed to have an intrinsic value. Thus, the dentalia shells prized by the more northerly peoples, on the lower Klamath attained a status approximating that of money among ourselves. Many-stranded necklaces of these MATERIAL CULTURE O1 shells were worn in the Californian dances. Huge beautifully flaked blades of red or black obsidian, another form of wealth, were carried by certain performers. Headdresses were wide bands of deer- skin attached to which was another form of cur- rency, the scarlet-feathered scalps of the pileated woodpecker. In fact, it has been said that in the festivals of the lower Klamath the individual danc- ers were of slight consequence—they were little more than mannequins who modeled and displayed the wealth and treasures of men of importance who sat by as spectators. Personal ornament was somewhat varied, al- though ear pendants and nose pins (passed through a hole made in the nasal septum) were widely used. Clusters of dentalia were favored for wear in the ears; in historic times squares cut from the iridescent shell of the abalone, brought from the central California coast by white traders, came to have great vogue. Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Haisla, and Heiltsuk women wore labrets—elliptical plugs of wood or bone, grooved around the edge like a pulley wheel. These were inserted in perfora- tions through their lower lips. Young Kwakiutl and Nootka women wore tight-fitting anklets, and some- times bracelets of bands of sea-otter fur, to improve their appearance. Face painting for every day was usually for cosmetic purposes—an all-over type for protection against sun, wind, and cold. Elaborate - and multicolored designs were usual only on festive occasions, although among nearly all the tribes gay young dandies adorned themselves with showy patterns for no reason but vanity. In the northern half of the area, ceremonial face-painting patterns usually referred to the family’s heraldic crests. Ap- parently only the Tsimshian had mirrors other than 92 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST a basket or box of water or a tranquil pool. They made keystone-shaped mirrors of ground slate, with constrictions at the middle. By pouring a film of water on the smooth surface, a vain Tsimshian could contemplate his or her reflection. On serious ritual occasions, Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, and Nootka washed their hair and bathed, using stale urine as a detergent. Haida and Tlingit followed the same practice at times. Combs—some of them very ornate —were made for hairdressing, but were not worn (Fig. 19). Fig. 19. A wooden comb (about 62 inches high) from the Tlingit. The carving shows a bear sitting on its haunches with a fish resting on its knees. Some tattooing was practiced by most of the groups. The designs were often simple; the opera- tion was casually performed. Crest designs, how- ever, were tattooed on young persons of high rank in the north, particularly among the Haida, who used the most elaborate and extensive patterns and applied them on ceremonial occasions—that is, major potlatches. A high-ranking Haida man or woman was considered fully tattooed when the backs of the hands, both arms from wrist to shoul- der, the chest, thighs, and lower legs, and upper surfaces of the feet bore crest designs. Sometimes ah MATERIAL CULTURE 93 the cheeks and back were also decorated. At the southern end of the area, girls’ chins were tattooed with broad vertical lines; no representative designs were used. Along the lower Columbia and northward, newly born infants’ heads were flattened by binding a padded board at an angle against the forehead. This produced a wide, flat form of deformation, sometimes referred to as the “Chinook” type, but also found among the Coast Salish. The Nootka and Kwakiutl used head pressers that produced an elongated, tapering head form, sometimes called the “Koskimo” type, after the Kwakiutl tribe who carried this type of deformation to its most extreme form. A third variety, known as the “Cowichan type,” was found among the Gulf of Georgia Salish, and was more or less intermediate between the other two forms. The northernmost tribes did not practice head deformation. The arms used in the area before the introduc- tion of European muskets and cutlasses were: bows and arrows; spears, or rather pikes, handled like fixed bayonets, not thrown; slings; and a variety of clubs and daggers for attack at close quarters. The same type of bow, in fact the same bows, were used interchangeably for war and hunting. The typical bow was made of a short, rather heavy stave of yew or other hardwood. It was worked _ down to a cylindrical grip at the middle, which gave into wide arms that varied from flattish to triangular cross-section, and was strung with a heavy cord of twisted sinew. In the extreme north, among the Tlingit, the upriver Tsimshian, and the Bella Coola, and in the south, among the Chinook and the Oregon coast and northwest Californian tribes, sinew-backed bows—that is, bows whose 94 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST elasticity was increased by fastening a layer of dried sinew to the back or outer side—were used by some hunters and warriors. This trait clearly reflects influence from neighboring groups of the more arid interior. In the humid climate of the Northwest Coast, a sinew-backed bow, despite its lighter weight and greater potential driving power, was not a very practical weapon. It needed special care to prevent the dampness from making the sinew backing, which should give the bow its extra springiness, soggy and unelastic. A few Tlingit used long straight bows with wooden string guards, modeled after a common northern Athapascan form. The bow, whether “self” or backed, was char- acteristically held in a horizontal position that probably was better adapted to use from a slim- waisted, cranky, sea hunter's canoe than was a vertical grip. The arrows used were commonly foreshafted, with ground bone or shell points. Chipped-flint projectile points were rare north of the Columbia, except for archaeological occurrences of relatively late prehistoric date around lower Puget Sound and the lower Fraser River, where interior influences extruded on the coast. The pikes used in warfare were usually short and heavy, tipped with bone or horn points or metal blades. In an emergency, of course, a man might defend himself with his fishing or his sealing harpoon, either of which would be a dangerous weapon in the hands of one accustomed to wielding it from boyhood. Before firearms were acquired in quantity, slings are said to have been used in warfare from Van- couver Island northward. A flexible basketry pocket made of spruce root was fitted with long cords of some strong fiber, such as that spun from nettle MATERIAL CULTURE 95 bast, and was used to throw good-sized beach peb- bles. In war legends it is claimed that an expert could crack the hull of an attacking war canoe with a sling-thrown cobble. Today, though the weapon has become a toy, lads develop sufficient accuracy to kill sitting birds and small animals with their slings. The first European explorers to visit the northern tribes found double-bladed iron daggers, with one long and one short blade on either side of the cen- tral grip, in common use (Fig. 20). The fur trad- ers had quantities of these daggers made by their ship's armorers for bartering purposes. Conse- quently, most of them now in museum collections are of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century workmanship. Many are of steel, but the basic de- Fig. 20. Left, a double-pointed iron Tlingit fighting knife (approximately 24 inches ne, and right, a single-pointed Tlingit fighting knife with an elaborately decorated haft (about 18 inches long). 96 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST sign has an Iron Age appearance that fits well with the hypothesis of an eastern Siberian Iron Age source for Northwest Coast pre-European metal. These great daggers, with the short blade above the handle for backhand passes, must have been very effective arms at close quarters. From Vancouver Island south to northwestern California heavy clubs carved from whale ribs were in vogue, and were duplicated in iron by machete- like knives. Vicious-looking weapons, usually like short-handled picks in form and commonly referred to as “slave killers,” were found along most of the coast (Fig. 21). Pig. 21. Left, a sword-like warclub of whalebone. Weap- ons like this were favored by Nootka and Kwakiutl war- riors and were often heirlooms whose names and bloody histories were widely known. Right, a weapon of the “slave- killer” type (about 25 inches long). These implements of hardwood, antler, bone, and even of stone, some one-piece, some composite, were used by many Northwest Coast groups. Their name in English comes from the fact that they were often used to dispatch slaves on ceremonious occasions. MATERIAL CULTURE 97 Various kinds of armor were also used. Wooden helmets, often elaborately carved, with separate visors, also of wood, and cuirasses of tough withes twined together or of short flat rods joined by sew- ing with sinew or tough rawhide, were used by Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian warriors (Fig. 22, Plate 22). Northwestern Californians also used Fig. 22. Mode of wearing Tlingit armor and arms, from a catalogue of a collection of specimens made in 1867-1868. While the accuracy of old drawings is sometimes suspect, that of this one cannot be questioned. The specimens shown —wooden helmet and visor, cuirass of slats of wood twined together, and the weapons—are in the collections of the Pea- body Museum, Harvard University, and are just as shown except that the designs carved on the helmet and visor are in conventional Tlingit style rather than in the sketchy man- — ner of the drawing. The eye-holes can just be seen as shallow notches cut into the upper rim of the visor. The model was of the Chilkat division to judge by his fringed buckskin shirt and trousers with attached moccasins. 98 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST armor of the twined-rod type. Cuirasses of heavy hide, such as elkskin, caribou, or moosehide, traded from the interior, were used by the northernmost groups. Farther south, warriors wrapped themselves with wide strips of elkhide so that they were cov- ered from armpits to hips. In the field of textile arts, the various types of robes woven of cedarbark, mountain-goat wool, and dog “wool” have been described, and the many uses served by mats and baskets have been noted. A survey of the present type is not the place for a detailed technological account of basket and mat making, but a summary of outstanding traits is of interest. The red cedarbark mats were woven principally in a simple checkerwork, that is to say, with the wefts, or crossing elements, being brought over the warps in an over-one-under-one sequence. Each weft, of course, reversed the sequence of the pre- vious one, going under the warp that the previous weft had crossed over, etc. Decorative patterns were made, especially on borders, by “twilled” checkerwork, which is like the twilled twining of the Chilkat blanket, in that each weft goes over two warps and under the next one or two. In addi- tion, patterns were made by dyeing strips of bark and working them in. A black color was usually produced by burying strips of bark in mud; red, by boiling the bark in water along with a quantity of alder bark. A variation in mat-making technique consisted in weaving mats in a diagonal (simple) checker- work. To do this, strips of cedarbark were folded over at the middle so that one half lay at right MATERIAL CULTURE 99 angles to the other end. Usually the folded strips were bound together by twining a light cord about them at the folds. The elements—in this case it is impossible to say which are warps and which are wefts—were interwoven in checker fashion, over one and under one. The point to making mats in this fashion was that new elements could be added in at the edges, where they would not create zones of weakness. While an expert could strip off very long pieces of bark from a tree, there is a limit to the length of a piece that a mat maker can handle conveniently. Therefore strips of bark were ordinar- ily cut to standard lengths. The length of the strips used as warps in an ordinary vertical-warp-hori- zontal-weft mat determined the length of the mat. Splicing in additional strips to lengthen the warps was unsatisfactory, for the strips would slip apart, unless they were knotted or twisted, which would create rough unsightly areas on the mat. By using the diagonal method, however, additional strips, ‘caught in at the edge and doubled over to hold them in place, would not form a transverse zone of weakness at which the mat was likely to break in two. All the feast mats, some of them twenty, thirty, and more feet long, were woven in this way. Strips of red cedarbark were woven together in the same simple checkerwork techniques to make baskets, also, from the Olympic Peninsula north- ward. Pieces of cedarbark were cut to a length that included the two sides and bottom of the basket to be woven. They were worked together in a sim- ple checker weave at the midsections, forming a small mat with long loose ends at top and bottom and both sides. A light cord was ordinarily woven Er —— 100 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST about the elements in a twining technique to hold them together, then they were all bent at right angles to the surface of the “mat,” to form the “warps of the sides of the baskets. Additional ele- ments were then woven in, using the same checker- work method, to form the sides. Sometimes finely woven, flat wallet-like baskets were made of cedarbark in the diagonal checker- work technique. The reason for making them this way was not to make them especially long, as in the case of the feast mats, but because the diagonal weave, like cloth cut on the bias, did not bulge and sag out of shape. The best basketry on the coast was that made of thin segments of spruce root, or spruce root and cedarbark cordage woven in a twined technique. (This is the method in which the two parts of a doubled weft are crossed over each other each time they pass across a warp strand.) These baskets were so finely and closely woven that they held water. The elaborate ring hats of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, and the Nootkan chiefs’ hats decorated with whaling scenes, were all woven of these ma- terials and in this way. The Northwest Coast, areally speaking, was the heartland of the development of twined weaving in North America. Technically, the groups at the extremes of the area—the Tlingit and Haida in the north, the Yurok and their close neigh- bors in the south—excelled in this craft, although the Nootkan women who wove the chiefs’ hats, known from early historic times but not made for many a year, were not far behind in skill. (Only the Aleut, in all the continent, wove finer and tighter baskets, and Aleut culture, as will be shown, MATERIAL CULTURE 101 was related to that of the Northwest Coast.) How- ever, most of the groups between the geographic extremes made twined basketry, except for the Coast Salish. These folk, in basketry as in so many other ways, continued an inland tradition. Their better baskets (some of them had learned to make twined baskets for special purposes) were made in the typical, and technically quite distinct, method of “coiling.” Coiled basketry is, properly speaking, not a weaving technique at all, but consists in sew- ing together the rings of flat or ascending coils of rods or fibers. It is a method of making baskets which was especially characteristic of the Plateau, Great Basin, and Southwestern culture areas. In quite recent decades, some Nootkan groups who have had close contacts with Salish neighbors, through working alongside them in the Fraser River canneries and in the hop fields of the Puget Sound region, have learned to make this type of basketry, but they did not know the method in aboriginal . times. The well-made twined basketry was not left plain. Patterns were woven in, chiefly by a tech- nique called “imbrication,” which consists in laying flat strips of colored material over the weft elements to produce patterns. Angular, geometric designs were developed, for the most part, but a few of the better Tlingit and Haida basket makers were skill- ful enough to work in crest designs (Fig. 23). Twining and coiling were both techniques that could be modified for special purposes. A compe- tent weaver can not only make a basket that will be watertight, but, if the occasion demands, can also make an openwork one that will permit venti- 102 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Wf | f = S SSS SS. SSSssszz,: y won Se eeeeag--: Sea Tleesbsrt si ites see - oe - ars, LbASLY <= ~ Fig. 23. Tlingit twined-spruce-root baskets, noted for the fineness of the weave. The decorative patterns are created by what is called “false embroidery” done in bleached and dyed grasses. lation—for example, for the storage of dried salmon —in either technique. There were a number of special openwork techniques in common use also, along the coast, for making baskets for carrying shellfish, smelt or olachen, and the like, where drainage or aeration were desirable. Wrapped twining, in which one pliable weft element was given a round turn about not only each warp but also around a rigid weft laid across the warps, served to make quite sturdy yet open containers. Ordinary twined weaving, in which thick weft ele- ments, widely spaced, were used, of course pro- vided a simple openwork technique. A_ three- element checkerwork, in which the warps were crossed at each passage of the weft, was, so far as present information goes, peculiar to the Nootka, MATERIAL CULTURE 103 Southern Kwakiutl, and the Aleut, in all western North America. Musical instruments consisted principally of per- cussion instruments: drums and rattles (Plates 23- 26). The tambourine drum, made by stretching a piece of rawhide over a narrow frame bent into circular form, was used only by Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian on the coast, though many groups of the interior, and Western Eskimo as well, used the instrument. The same three tribes of the northern coast, and all the groups to the south as far as, and including, those of Vancouver Island, made long narrow boxes of kerfed and bent cedar boards, which, slung from the roof and pounded with a sturdy fist wrapped in shredded cedarbark, boomed out the beat for dancers. Drumming with hard- wood sticks on a long plank raised a few inches off the floor was another way of beating out time. The Chinook and southern Coast Salish reversed this: they used long poles, sometimes carved, and _ equipped with clusters of deer hoofs (so that they were also rattles), and thumped the ends against the roof boards overhead. Rattles were varied in form. Groups with considerable interior influence— Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Coast Salish, Chinook, and northwest Californians—made considerable use of clusters of deer hoofs. The first three nations mentioned also used rings of withes from which puffin beaks, animal teeth and claws, and the like were suspended. Elaborately carved rattles of wood, the halves hollowed out and fitted together, were common from Cape Flattery northward. Rat- tles of mountain-sheep horn and of baleen, steamed and folded over and fastened to wooden handles, 104 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST were used by Kwakiutl and Nootka shamans (“medicinemen” ). Gulf of Georgia Salish danced to the accompaniment of rattles made of clusters of large pecten shells on a cord. Whistles of wood, some with and some without reeds, were associated with the major ceremonials of the Nootka and Kwakiutl, where they repre- sented the voices of supernatural beings, as did the bull-roarer, a flat stick whirled at the end of a string to make a booming noise. The northwestern Cali- fornians were the only peoples of the coast to have multi-toned instruments. They made simple little flutes, on which a man could tootle a plaintive tune, to amuse himself or to serenade a lady-love. Gambling was a popular pastime among all the coastal groups except the Wakashan-speakers, abo- riginally, and these folk became enthusiastic dev- otees of such games in late historic times. The most popular game was one or another form of “lahal,” which consisted in guessing the relative positions of a marked and an unmarked stick or disk concealed in the hands of a member of the opposite “team,” who sang lustily to confuse the guessers. Frequently two players on the same side each held a pair of these objects. The opponents had to guess the positions of all four pieces at once. Dice, made of sets of four beaver incisors, were tossed in a different type of game. Other contests, sometimes bet on and sometimes not, included wrestling, shooting arrows or throwing lances at marks, foot and canoe races, tugs-of-war, and vari- ants of shinny. Youngsters played most of these games also, and like children the world over, many games of make-believe that were patterned on the MATERIAL CULTURE 105 activities of their parents. Myths were told both for education and entertainment. Of an evening, some old person would regale children and adults as well with the long, often humorous tales of the adventures and misadventures of such picaresque characters as Raven and Mink, or at times with the serious and important family traditions. The cultivation of tobacco had a very peculiar distribution on the coast. The northwest Californi- ans, probably most of the Oregon coast groups, and the Chinook sowed little plots of tobacco for smok- ing. Since the plant was widely used in aboriginal California, its occurrence along the lower Klamath is not surprising, although most California Indians did not cultivate it, but collected wild species. The reported use of a long-stemmed pipe with a stone bow! at right angles to the stem, among the Lower Chinook, hints most broadly at a trans-montane source for their tobacco and smoking habit, if they had not acquired the complex from the Californians before their ramified trade connections tapped sources so far east. However, the most mystifying and most isolated usage of tobacco was found among the Haida, where a plant, apparently a kind of tobacco, was sown and harvested and, mixed with lime, was chewed. Its cultivation was aban- doned so early in historic times that we have only extremely meager information about it. Trade to- bacco for smoking was obtained from white traders; its use became prevalent on the coast early in the fur-trade period. The dog was the only animal domesticated on the coast. The dogs from which the Salish obtained their wool for weaving seem to have been a small, 106 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST highly specialized breed; other dogs had no special attributes. Some hunters, particularly those who climbed the rugged mountains for mountain goat, trained their dogs to assist them in working the quarry within range. 4 SOCIETY The Structure of Society Superficially, the Northwest Coast presents a pic- ture of considerable diversity in social organization. Some groups were divided into social units based on matrilineal descent; that is, membership in the social divisions, and also the inheritance of social position and of worldly goods, came to each in- dividual from his mother and her side of the family. Other groups had no formalized unilateral divisions (social divisions based like the above on relation- ships through one side of the family only), but nonetheless stressed patrilineality (kinship through one’s father) in group membership and inheritance. Still others followed a bilateral reckoning of de- scent, with, at most, a slight preference for trans- mission of position and rights in the male line. As regards the relationships of these varying social units to each other, among some Northwest Coast Indians the basic social units—a group of relatives, their spouses and children, aligned according to any one of the three methods defined above—were po- litically autonomous. Among others, several of these basic social entities were formally united into what may be designated a “tribe.” In a few parts of our area, a number of such tribes might be confederated into larger groupings for social and political pur- poses. In the northern half of the area, roughly speaking, a system of hereditary rank and chief- 108 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST tainship prevailed; in the south, possession of riches nominally gave one social ascendancy. However, when these apparently varied patterns are analyzed, it becomes clear that fundamentally all derive from a few basic concepts and societal forms common to all the peoples of the Northwest Coast. The two basic principles of areal society are, first, that the fundamental social unit (aside from the biologic family consisting of a man, his wife, and their children) was the autonomous local group consisting of a lineage (a formalized, named group of relatives who trace descent to a common an- cestor exclusively through one line—in our area, through the maternal line), or an extended family (a social division less rigidly formalized and de- fined, in which descent may be reckoned through either line, or both). As will be shown, it made no difference whether formal alliances were made with similar social divisions, for while such units united at times for purposes of common defense or for ceremonial ends, they never surrendered certain highly important rights. Second, social status, in- volving the so-called system of rank, derived neither from heredity alone, nor from wealth, but from a combination of the two. As an introduction to a group-by-group survey of socio-political organization, it must be re-empha- sized that there were no true national entities among the Indians of the area. We have mentioned © “the northern nations” and so on, but only after stating specifically that the term, in this usage, had no political significance, but referred only to lin- guistic units. That is to say, in these pages “the Tlingit nation” is a substitute for the clumsy phrase, “all the people of Tlingit speech.” Terms like “Tlin- | SOCIETY 109 git,” “Nootka,” “Yurok,” and the rest are really lin- guistic designations, referring to all the independ- ent political divisions whose members spoke those languages. The Indians themselves recognized that certain neighbors shared both the same language and the same culture, but felt no unity or common interest on that account. The matrilineal type of organization just men- tioned was found among the northernmost linguis- tic groups: Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and Haisla. Among the Tlingit and Haida there were two major subdivisions to one of which every individual was assigned at birth, on the basis of the affiliation of his mother. Such twofold divisions of a national or tribal group are called “moieties,” that is, halves. These divisions were “exogamic,” to use a technical term which means that it was compulsory that each individual marry a person of the opposite division. Since membership was matrilineal, or through the mother, this meant that a man and his own children were inevitably in the opposite moieties. The Haida, for instance, were divided into two moieties, desig- nated by the Indian terms for “Eagle” and “Raven.” A man who was a member of the Eagle moiety had perforce to marry a woman of the Raven “side” (as the Indians express the term in English). The children of this couple automatically took member- ship, at birth, in the moiety of their mother; in other words, they had to belong to the Raven division. The same man’s sisters’ children, however, accord- ing to the same principle, of necessity belonged to his side—they were Eagles, and were considered to — be, therefore, that much more closely related to him. The system is strictly comparable, though the ee 110 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST mode of reckoning is reversed, to our own inherit- ance of surnames. Among ourselves, when Mr. W. T. Door marries Miss Sally Doe, their offspring will all take the surname Door (patrilinear inherit- ance instead of the matrilinear system of the Haida and their neighbors), no matter whether the Does are more socially prominent or not. The fundamen- tal difference between our system and that of the Haida is that among us all the population is not divided into the Doors and the Does, each group with formalized rights and duties. The Haida and Tlingit no more disregarded paternity than we dis- regard maternal rights and relationships despite our insistence on transmission of the paternal surname only. A Haida’s or a Tlingit’s paternal relatives had both rights and duties of great importance that af- fected him (or her) all life long. Members of the Tlingit and Haida moieties shared, as well as the moiety designation, the right to use certain “crests’—representations of animals or supernatural beings that were reputed to have assisted the legendary ancestors of the social di- vision, or, in some cases, were said to have been the original ancestors. These crests are sometimes called “totems.” Actually, they were more like the heraldic devices of European nobility, used for dis- play to show one’s ancestry. We shall return to this subject of crests, for they were one of the most distinctive features of native culture in the north- ern part of our area. The next smaller unilateral social division is the “clan.” By definition, a “clan” is a formal, named, exogamic, unilateral societal unit, whose members trace their relationship from a legendary common ancestor. Clans may exist with moieties (as sub- a — Ee. ——?_~= eee ee SOCIETY 111 divisions of them) or without them. The Tlingit moieties, for example, were subdivided into clans. The Tsimshian, on the other hand, had no moieties, but had three, and in some places four, clans. Despite all this variation, however, all these matrilineal societies were built up around “line- ages,” the basic units. A “lineage” is once more a unilateral group, consisting, among our matrilineal northern nations, of a nucleus of men related ma- ternally. That is to say, the Tlingit, Haida, Tsim- shian, and Haisla lineages were composed of, for example, a group of brothers and maternal cousins, their sisters’ sons, and the sons of the sisters of the second generation. The sisters themselves also were members of the group, but since as a rule they lived apart from it, being married to men of other line- ages (and other clans and/or moieties, according to the rule of exogamy ), they participated in its func- tions only occasionally. The wives of lineage mem- bers, belonging as they did to other lineages, had only limited participation in lineage affairs. The men’s own children, of course, belonged to the line- ages of their mothers. This social unit, among the northern nations, was ordinarily politically independent. Even where, as among the Tsimshian, it had entered into formal alliances with other lineages, it retained its impor- tant economic possessions—fishing stations, hunting areas, berrying grounds—had its own house or houses, its own chiefs, and operated socially—and, as a rule, ceremonially—as an independent unit. It had its own crests, in addition to those to which it was entitled through clan and/or moiety member- ship. Innumerable ceremonial prerogatives were also vested in the lineage. 112 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Haida social structure shows this basic lineage pattern most clearly. As has been remarked above, there were two great moieties among the Haida, the “Ravens” and the “Eagles,” each with its set of crests and origin traditions. (Curiously enough, the Raven itself was a crest of the Eagle moiety.) Each moiety consisted of a large number of named, localized seg- ments, sometimes incorrectly referred to as clans. Each segment was a lineage, which held title to its lands of economic importance, occupied a separate village consisting of one or more houses, had its own chief and lesser chiefs. Each lineage waged war or made peace, staged ceremonials, and tended to its various affairs independently of any other. Such a Haida lineage-village varied considerably in size. The shrinkage of population through the historic period, coupled with the tendency for sur- vivors of decimated lineages to abandon their home villages and assemble at more populous centers, has obscured the picture somewhat, but early writ- ers speak of villages of several hundred souls, as well as smaller ones consisting of one or two houses with forty or fifty inhabitants. It must be owned that these early figures are very rough estimates in- deed, but we would probably not be far wrong if we used as an average thirty to forty persons per house. This would mean that there were anywhere from four to eight related adult males, about the same number of maternal nephews (sisters’ sons), and a sprinkling of elderly widowed sisters or ma- ternal aunts, in the average house. The other resi- dents would be wives and children of the adult males of the lineage, plus a slave or two; these peo- ple of course were not lineage members. A large village, of eight, ten, or more houses, of course con- Rie SOCIETY 113 sisted of several sub-lineages, who still retained memory of their common relationship. The evi- dence indicates that in the course of time, if they prospered populationwise and economically, the sub-lineages tended to split off and become separate independent units, although retaining their feeling of relationship. For instance, the names of a num- ber of traditionally related lineages on the Queen Charlotte Islands contain the term “Gitins.” This word is meaningless in Haida, but it may contain the Tsimshian stem “Git-” or “Kit-,”’ which means “people of.” This linguistic hint is corroborated by the traditions of these lineages which agree that they are all descended from a single matrilineal family unit that came from the mainland later than the rest of the Haida, and may well have been of Tsimshian origin. Each Haida village had a chief, who held that position by virtue of being the highest-ranking member of the lineage, and one or more house chiefs. The village chief (who was also the house chief of his own house) had a special title, the vari- ous versions of which translate either as “village master,” “village owner,” or “village mother.” Each village was economically independent, owning its own village site, salmon streams, cod and halibut grounds, berrying and hunting tracts, and of course the camping sites that went with them. _ The superficially similar structural pattern of Tlingit society differed slightly. There were two great moieties, named after the Raven and the Wolf. A slightly confusing feature was that, among. the northern Tlingit, the Wolf division had many names and crests referring to the Eagle, and was commonly referred to as the Eagle moiety. In one 114 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST of the southernmost groups, a small lineage called “Nexadi’ (“Ne-hii-dee”) also had many Eagle names and crests, and was regarded as a third di- vision; that is to say, its members could marry into either Raven or Wolf groups. The origin of this little group is not known, but it is believed that it is probably of relatively recent alien source. Pos- sibly an interior Athapascan or Niska lineage mi- grated to Tlingit territory and became Tlingit in language and culture. Many other Tlingit clans, ac- cording to their traditions, came originally from places outside Tlingit territory. However, these minor deviations in nomenclature and in accretion to the basic pattern cannot obscure the fact that the Tlingit had a true moiety system. The first difference from the Haida pattern is to be found in the fact that the two moieties were divided into “clans.” Some clans, like the Ganaxadi (“Ga-na-hii-dee” ), the Kiksadi (“Kik-sii-dee”), and the Kagwantan, to mention a few of the larger ones, had a number of localized subdivisions, which were actually lineages exactly like those of the Haida. Al- though these local segments shared certain crests and traditions with the parent clan, they were po- litically and economically independent. There were also “clans,” equated with the aforementioned units in the native mind, that consisted of a single local lineage group. Some of these were survivors of once larger units, whose other divisions had become ex- tinct; others were clan subdivisions that, for one or another reason, had split off from the parent clan and, as it were, struck out on their own. In some cases traditions recall the original relationship; in others, that relationship has been suppressed or for- gotten. These can be referred to as “clan-lineages.” SOCIETY 115 Traditions of many of the clans indicate that their ancestors originally came from the south, near the mouth of the Skeena River, apparently prior to the arrival of the Coast Tsimshian, while others came from the interior, from what is now northern British Columbia. In connection with these traditions, it must be pointed out that while the Indians had no written records and had to rely on oral transmis- sion of their clan and family histories, the traditions of all the groups from Vancouver Island northward are so specific and consistent—and, insofar as they can be checked, so correct—that there is little doubt that for the most part they are historically accurate, except for the occasional supernatural events that they recount, which we may regard as a sort of literary trimming. The Tlingit were divided into fourteen named territorial divisions, or loosely confederated “tribes.” Each tribe included one or more lineages (local segments of clans ) of each of the two moieties. Dur- ing the historic period, along with the decline of population, there has been a consistent trend to- ward consolidation of the “tribes” into unified vil- lages. However, the evidence suggests that formerly each lineage had its own village, physically separate from those of the others of the tribe. Thus, one source reports that as late as 1880 there were eight villages of the Stikine tribe, five Kake villages, and so on. While the lineages of each tribe recognized certain mutual interests, there was no real unity. There was, for example, no tribal chief or over-all authority; each lineage had its own chief. Each line- age retained possession of its lands of economic im- portance, and exploited them individually. The line- ages of a tribe might cooperate to make war, or 116 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST for common defense, or they might not—they were under no compulsion to do so. The Indians insist, - for example, that it was only certain of the Sitka lineages that attacked and razed the Russian fort in 1801, not the entire “tribe.” Similarly, the lineage was the basic ceremonial unit. In other words, de- spite the nominal confederation of lineages in each region, Tlingit socio-political organization was quite like that of the Haida. The most important differ- ence was that the Tlingit house-group, in cases where a lineage was of considerable size and had a number of houses each occupied by a sub-line- age, was somewhat more important than the com- parable unit among the Haida. Traditions show that when a house-group prospered and grew, it tended to split off from the parent unit, move elsewhere, and become a new autonomous lineage. The Coast Tsimshian and the Niska had a four- fold division, instead of the moiety or twofold di- vision of Haida and Tlingit. Such divisions are some- times referred to technically as “phratries,” but we shall refer to them as “clans,” since they were com- parable to the major clans of Tlingit. These clans were named after the Eagle, the Raven, the Wolf, and the “Blackfish” (the killer whale and the black whale). The names of these divisions are interest- ing. Two of them, “Laxsgik” and “Laxgebu,” mean “People (of the) Eagle” and “People (of the) Wolf,” or “Eagle-people” and “Wolf-people,” re- spectively. The names of the other two clans are meaningless in Tsimshian. The Raven clan is called “Qanada,” a word probably derived from the name of the Tlingit clan “Ganaxadi” (and “Ganaxtedi’), which refers to a Tlingit place name and phrase, “People of (the village of ) Ganax” (“Ganax” is also SOCIETY 117 the name of a traditional Haida village site in the Queen Charlotte Islands). The designation of the “Blackfish” clan, “Gicpodwada” (gish-pod-wida), cannot yet be analyzed, except that the first sylla- ble, “Gic-,” is a variant of the previously mentioned Tsimshian “Git-,” meaning “people” or “people of.” The probable Tlingit (or Tlingit-Haida) origin of the name of the Tsimshian Raven clan points up the fact of the local shifts and migrations of popula- tion units back and forth across linguistic bound- aries, especially frequent in the north. For example, one important Eagle clan among the Niska is known to have been of Tlingit origin; some ten or so gen- erations back their ancestors, just before the epoch of European contacts, moved from Prince of Wales Island to the Nass, where they not only joined but adopted language and customs of the Niska. Sev- eral Tlingit clans can trace their genealogies to Queen Charlotte Islands Haida sources. Not only did some interior groups move out to the coast, but a few coast groups moved inland, up the Skeena, to join, and become Gitksan. The Tsimshian origin of one Haisla clan has been mentioned. Such popula- tion shifts of course must have been especially im- portant in cultural transmission, and in leveling off the originally probably diverse culture patterns of the northern nations. To come back to the Coast Tsimshian and their social structure, each of the four clans was repre- sented by a local segment, or lineage, according to our terminology, in each of the fourteen Coast Tsimshian “tribes.” Nine tribes had their individual summer and fall fishing villages on the lower Skeena, their separate winter village along Met- lakatla Passage near the modern city of Prince Ru- 118 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST pert, and olachen-fishing sites on the lower Nass. Two tribes stayed the whole year around on the Skeena, just below the cafion. The other three coast tribes lived south of the Skeena, each in a separate village. The difference between these tribes and the so-called tribes of the Tlingit is that the localized segments of the clans, that is, the lineages, were more firmly integrated. While each lineage had its own chief and owned certain properties, the line- ages of each tribe were ranked relative to each other, and the chief of the highest-ranking lineage was the recognized chief of the tribe. It appears that the tribe as a whole held certain properties, including the winter village site. In recent times, at least, each tribe acting as a unit has built the house of its chief, and considers the structure tribal property. It is not certain that this was customary anciently, however. The tribe as a whole usually participated in both ceremonials and warfare in for- mer days. | The nine tribes who wintered along Metlakatla Pass seem to have been approaching a still more complex type of political organization, which was hastened but not quite crystallized by the historic incident of the establishment of a Hudson’s Bay post at Port Simpson. The tribes moved their winter villages there, and formed a loose sort of confed- eracy, although the individual tribes never quite gave up their old autonomy. The organization of the upriver Tsimshian, the Gitksan, was essentially like that of their coast- dwelling relatives, except that they had but three large clans, whose names are translated as Frog- Raven (equated with the coastal Raven clan), Wolf, and Fireweed (equated with the Blackfish SOCIETY 119 division of the coast). A single localized clan, or clan-lineage, at the village of Kitwanga, named after the Eagle, had the right to use names and crests referring to that bird. Tradition relates that the ancestors of this group came originally from the Nass River. The Kwakiutl-speaking Haisla of Douglas and Gardner canals were the southernmost people on the coast to have a matrilineal type of social or- ganization. There is no doubt but that these folk acquired their social system from their Tsimshian neighbors. In fact certain clans or clan-lineages are traditionally reputed to have been of Tsimshian origin, and many Haisla have Tsimshian blood from recent intermarriages. There were two Haisla tribes, with principal winter villages at Kitamat at the head of Douglas Canal, and at Kitlope, up Gardner Canal, respectively. (As has been noted, both names are Tsimshian, not in the Haisla dialect of Kwakiutl at all. “Kitamat,” for instance, is said to mean in Tsimshian, “People-of-the-snowy-place.” ) There are said to have been a total of six clans (including one clan-lineage), each with its own crests and traditions: Eagle, Beaver, Raven, Crow (extinct for some time), Blackfish, and Salmon (a clan-lineage, found only at Kitamat). The lineages of each of these units had their own chiefs, houses, and fishing grounds. The various possessions that have been men- tioned as being vested in all the northern lineages: crests, houses, and lands, were not the only forms of lineage-held properties. Personal names, songs and dances for ceremonial occasions, and cere- monies or specific parts of ceremonies were also so regarded. It is true that where clans occurred, there 120 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST were certain crests and other prerogatives that were considered to be clan property. However, these | things were handled in the same way that the line- age possessions were. The basic concept was that all the members of the unit shared in the joint right to these prerogatives, as they are often termed, but that the chief of the lineage was the custodian both of the intangible rights and of the lands and mate- rial possessions. The lineage chief was in this re- spect similar to the executor, in our own culture, of a large estate who manages its various enter- prises for the heirs. It was the chief who decided when the group should move from the winter vil- lage to their fishing station and commence work on the weirs and traps. It was he who decided that a mask representing a certain hereditary crest should be worn by a dancer in a ceremonial, and that certain lineage-owned songs should be sung. The chief, once more, was the one who formally bestowed hereditary names referring to lineage crests on young members of the group. All these varieties of possessions, material and intangible alike, constituted the wealth of the social group. The better the use their chief made of these riches, the more was the well-being and prestige of the group enhanced. South of the region in which matrilineal organi- zations prevailed, from the Heiltsuk to the Nootka and the Gulf of Georgia Salish, the formal social structure differed. There were no moieties, clans, or lineages. Descent was reckoned bilaterally, with only a slight preference for the male line. It is true that most Heiltsuk groups (both Xaihais and Bella Bella) had divisions named after the Eagle, Ra- ven, Blackfish, and Wolf, which they themselves SOCIETY 121 equated with the Tsimshian clans. However, they had neither a strict rule of descent determining af- filiation in these groups, nor of exogamy, two con- cepts which are indispensable to true matrilinear organization. A man and his wife might assign their first child to the father’s so-called “clan,” the next to the mother’s, if she were of a different “clan,” depending on the names and rights they wanted each child to share—a procedure that would have scandalized any right-thinking Tlingit, Haida, or Tsimshian. Basically, these people, like their South- ern Kwakiutl, Nootka, and Gulf of Georgia Salish neighbors, were organized into extended families. Each of these extended families had a series of land holdings that included all-important economic re- sources—salmon- and herring-fishing grounds, hunt- ing tracts, shellfish and berry tracts, etc.—and a host of ritual and intangible possessions: the right to use certain crests (not associated with clans), to perform certain dances and ceremonies, to use cer- tain masks, to bear certain names, and many more. The chief of the extended family, like the chief of the northern lineage, was the custodian of all these rights. Membership in the extended family was in- herited from one’s parents. Although, when the par- ents stemmed from different local groups, a person was considered more closely allied to his father’s side, he retained some claim to rights in the ma- ternal line. On the marriage of his daughter, or the daughter of any important member of the extended family, it was not uncommon for a chief to bestow certain of the family prerogatives on the groom, thus in effect transmitting them to the bride’s chil- dren when born. The political units developed from this basic local 122 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST group-extended family pattern varied considerably. Some groups, like the Xaihais, a few of the South-- ern Kwakiutl, the Central and probably the South- ern Nootka, and most of the Gulf of Georgia peo- ple, never developed more complex structures. On the other hand, just before or shortly after the dawn of the historic period, four Bella Bella groups, cer- tain of which may have actually been tribes con- sisting of several local units, joined forces, estab- lishing a common winter village at a place called Noluh. The Bella Coola likewise had several tribal winter villages at each of which a number of other- wise independent local groups assembled. Data on the Wikeno are fragmentary, but it seems likely that there was at least one tribal grouping on the Inlet, and two among the Wikeno Lake groups. Many Southern Kwakiutl divisions and Northern Nootkans also united into tribes, as did the Salish -Homalco-Klahuse-Slaiamun divisions of the Gulf of Georgia. The hallmark of these tribal unions was the sharing of a winter village site, an established _ geriation or order of rank for the chiefs of the con- stituent local groups, and frequent, though not in- variable, joint participation in ceremonials and in war. A few groups went even further, creating con- federacies. Some Northern Nootkan tribes, particu- larly those residing about a large inlet, assembled at a common summer village, established a fixed order of rank for all their chiefs, participated jointly in rituals (sometimes the highest-ranking of the chiefs represented the whole confederacy ), and, on occasion at least, presented a solid front in war. Such a unit might have as many as thirty houses at their confederated summer site, and even well SOCIETY 123 along in the historic period might include more than a thousand people. The four Southern Kwakiutl tribes holding the coast from Neweetee territory to the Nimkish River—the Walas Kwagiutl, the Kwexa, the Kwagiutl or Guetela, and the Qomkutis, and for a time the Matilpe—like the nine Coast Tsimshian tribes, formed a confederacy as the re- sult of a historic stimulus: the establishment by the Hudson’s Bay Company of a trading post, Fort Ru- pert, in 1849. Their difficulties in attempting to in- tegrate their tribal system into a smooth-running confederacy will be described below. The Puget Sound peoples and those of the lower Columbia were culturally disrupted so early by white settlement that much information on their social organization is irretrievably lost. However, it is fairly certain that the autonomous local group, consisting of an extended family, was the prevail- ing form. It is not clear whether they accented patrilineality in determining group membership and inheritance, or whether they permitted as much flexibility as did their bilaterally reckoning north- ern relatives and neighbors, although there are sug- gestions that they stressed kinship through the male line, as in western Washington. In northwestern California the extended families were smaller. The tendency was for them to split up into small units of close kin. Several such groups, some vaguely related, others unrelated (or the fact of relationship forgotten), might share a village site. But each family group had its own lands, its own head man, and acted independently of the rest. Parts or all of a village might cooperate in cere- monies, particularly in the major festivals, but that was simply because no one family had either the 124 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST personnel or resources to handle the performance unaided. Warfare likewise reduced itself to inter- family feuds; unrelated neighbors were careful to avoid involvement. Northwest Coast society as a whole was distinc- tive in western North America because it graded individuals into a series of relatively higher or lower statuses. Examples of these ranked statuses were the chiefs, the nobles, the commoners, and the slaves. This phenomenon has been appraised super- ficially as indicative of the existence of a class or caste system which, to the Western mind, imme- diately suggests rigid sharply separated social strata within each society. Such an interpretation does not conform with the facts, except for the slaves, who formed, at least occasionally, a quite distinct societal unit. Actually, the members of each group occupied a series of social positions that were _ graded in minute steps from high to low. Within each graded series it is impossible to mark off a fixed point separating noble from commoner. Fur- thermore, despite the avowed rigidity of the sys- tem, it was possible for a person to modify his own status slightly, for better or for worse, and to im- prove or worsen that of his children (or that of his maternal nephews in the case of the northern matri- lineal societies ). | We may begin by examining the nature of the graded series of statuses just mentioned. It has al- ready been pointed out that the basic social unit, the autonomous local group, invariably centered around a group of blood relatives, either a lineage or two or more sublineages, or an extended family. The chief or head of this unit was normally the oldest member of the group descended in the most SOCIETY 125 direct line from the lineage ancestor or ancestress. It is true that among some groups, particularly the Coast Salish (Bella Coola conformed with the prac- tices of their linguistic congeners in this respect, rather than with those of their Kwakiutl neighbors ), there was some variation allowed, so that a more able junior relative might be awarded the chief- tainship. Nonetheless, the native theory still held that the chief should stand in the relationship of the eldest to the other members of his group. The chief's younger brothers were his presumptive heirs and therefore next to him in rank. The formal rank of all the other members of the lineage or the re- lated lineages was reckoned on the same basis— that of kinship to the direct chiefly line. The lowest- ranking individual, in other words the lowest com- moner, was the most distant relative who was still counted as a kinsman by the members of the group. As will be noted below, while social status was derived in this fashion from genealogical relation- ships, it was in a sense not automatically acquired at birth, but had to be formally assumed; that is to say, to take one’s proper place in the group a person had to take or be given the proper name or title from the family stock of these honorifics. At a ceremonial occasion he had to present evidence of his right to use lineage or extended family crests and similar prerogatives on the same sort of formal - occasions and so on. The names and titles that he might take, the crests he might display at once demonstrated the particular level of his rank in society and depended on the nearness of his blood kinship to the direct line of descent from the group ancestor or ancestress. Even the lowest-ranking commoner was entitled to certain categories of 126 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST names that belonged to the group, and was entitled to participate in the all-important ceremonial affairs of the group. It is obvious, therefore, that within every social unit there was an unbroken, graded series of statuses from high to low. Informants have no hesitation in saying that “so-and-so was a noble,” or that “so-and-so was a commoner’; but they find it difficult to define precise status for those who fit in between these two extremes. Even among the groups on Vancouver Island and northward, among whom the system of graded ranking was most elaborated and theoretically most rigid, an individual could modify his social stand- ing. A man of quite low rank who was a skillful canoe maker or mask carver or a bold warrior often became so valuable a member of the group and so esteemed by the chief that he might be given certain prerogatives beyond those to which he would have been entitled simply by reason of birth. Such privileges might include a_ higher-ranking name, a title of “war chief” if the man were a war- rior, the right to use a special crest, or exclusive rights to some good fishing spot. At times, instead of giving these rewards to the individual himseif, the chief might give them to him for his children or maternal heirs, as the case might be, or bestow them directly upon his heirs. Contrariwise, a man who fell into disfavor could expect only the barest minimum as his share of the honors and economic benefits of the group. The Coast Salish, including — the isolated Bella Coola, permitted a great deal of such shifting up and down the social scale, accord- ing to an individual’s outstanding qualities or lack of them. The importance of properties in real and material SOCIETY 127 wealth and in intangibles, such as the right to use names and crests, has been mentioned several times. In the preceding paragraphs the significance of heredity, genealogically speaking, in fixing a man’s social position has been stressed, but it is necessary to bring the intimate connection between heredity and wealth into proper perspective. In the final analysis, social status on the Northwest Coast did not depend entirely either on heredity or on wealth, but on the interrelationship between the two. The chief, by virtue of his noble birth, was the custodian of the lineage wealth and was en- titled to use and manipulate these properties, par- ticularly the ceremonial ones. Therefore in a sense he was the richest individual of the group. His noble juniors were also empowered to utilize certain of the group properties, but not those of the very high- est rank or esteem. Low-ranking members were by birth entitled only to very minor rights from among the family properties. Of course the manifestations of this concept—of rank as stemming from the interaction of heredity and wealth—were not identical throughout the en- tire area, although the basic forces were the same. The preceding discussion applies most specifically to the Indian communities from Yakutat Bay to Nootka territory. The Coast Salish, except for a few Gulf of Georgia groups strongly influenced by Kwakiutl neighbors, possessed far less wealth in the form of titles, ceremonial privileges, and crests to use—consequently they had fewer formal means of indicating each person’s social position. There seems to have been less differentiation of status— less of a spread, as it were, between high and low. Nonetheless the chief's prestige, augmented or not 128 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST by personality factors, stemmed from his custodian- ship of group properties. Along the lower Colum- bia, early historical sources contain descriptions of Chinookan chiefs of considerable power, and what seems to have been a somewhat overdrawn picture of variation of social rank. Certain chiefs were un- doubtedly very powerful, but apparently their au- thority was basically the same as that of the Coast Salish chiefs, exceptional powers deriving from two factors: first, a strong personality on the part of the chief himself, and second, a large and unusually closely knit lineage standing solidly behind him. In northwestern California, with the smaller social nuclei, we get the impression of a greater accent on individual ability. Yet in the final analysis, the Yurok or Karok “rich man” or head of the little family group attained his position because he had inherited custodianship of the family’s treasures of white deerskins, great flint blades, and strings of dentalia. ? It would appear on the face of the information available that the bases of the Northwest Coast sys- tem of rank statuses should have been fairly clear to investigators. Nonetheless one finds many con- tradictory, ambiguous statements in the literature. The principal reason for this seems to be that de- velopments within the historical period superficially modified the system. Two things happened during the nineteenth century. One of these, which had its beginning in the sea-otter fur trade, was that varieties of material wealth became available from a source external to the culture. Brass and iron jewelry, abalone shells from California, blankets, firearms and steel tools, all prized possessions, could be obtained at the cost of little effort by anyone SOCIETY 129 who wanted to devote some time to hunting sea otter and, later, by trapping fur-bearing animals on land or signing on a fur-sealing schooner. Some groups—the Chilkat, the Stikine, the Coast Tsim- shian and the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl, who were in a position to control trade with interior fur hunters or coast groups remote from the trading posts— netted tremendous profits by acting as middlemen in the fur trade. Hence great amounts of material wealth, such as was necessary for the prestige- giving ceremonials, was suddenly made available. More numerous and more spectacular ceremonials were, therefore, given in this period than ever be- fore. The second factor was the sharp decline in native population brought about primarily by the introduction of European diseases, and secondarily by the increased efficiency of native warfare result- ing from the introduction of firearms. It eventually happened that among some dwin- dling groups there were more noble titles and crests available than there were people to bear them. Consequently, a man of low rank—one who was only remotely connected with the chiefly line of descent—might nevertheless find himself the heir presumptive to the chief's position or, as often was the case, one of two or three equally distantly re- lated survivors. Were he an industrious fur hunter, he could assemble enough material riches to stage a great ritual at which he would announce his right to the high rank, titles, and crests—a situation that would have been completely impossible in the abo- riginal era when the population was in a state of equilibrium. Quite as frequently, when there were several commoner survivors, they engaged in the bitterest sort of competition for the high statuses. 130 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Therefore, during the past century there were innu- merable prestige-claiming ceremonies, many more than would have been performed in prehistoric times, and a great many of them staged by people who anciently never could have performed them at all. The extent of the social gap between these nouveau riche claimants to high positions and un- ambitious commoners was falsely accentuated out of all proportion. It has been remarked that slaves, as a group, came close to forming a distinct social stratum. Slaves on the Northwest Coast were primarily war captives, although in northwestern California a debtor could be reduced to slavery. A slave was a chattel in every sense, with no rights whatsoever. He was considered to be a valuable possession, not so much because his economic activities contributed to the riches of the group (although ordinarily he would be made to work and do menial chores), but because ownership of a slave indicated either suc- cess at war on the part of his owner or control of sufficient material wealth to purchase these unfor- tunates. In individual cases slaves might be treated well, but on their master’s death they were likely to be killed. The sacrifice of a slave was interpreted to mean that the owner was so rich and powerful that he could unconcernedly destroy a valuable pos- session. Tlingit chiefs frequently crushed slaves to death under the enormous house posts set up at a ceremonial house-building. On the arrival of a visit- ing chief, Kwakiutl sometimes killed slaves on the beach in order to use the bodies “as rollers for the chief's canoe.” The enslavement of a relative was felt to be a disgrace to his entire lineage, so that his family ———— OO ES lll ——— — SOCIETY 131 made every effort to secure his freedom—usually by paying a ransom for him. Consequently, many war captives were sooner or later freed by their kinsmen; after a performance of ceremonials to cleanse them of the dishonor, they resumed their normal status in society. Ordinarily, therefore, it was only slaves who had been captured and carried a great distance from their homes—Puget Sound Indians enslaved by the Haida, or northern Cali- fornian natives captured and traded at The Dalles and down the Columbia to the coast—who had little chance of ultimate freedom. Slaves taken from nearby groups were usually either killed by the captors or ransomed by their kin. Hence, while slavery did involve a distinct separation from the rest of society, it was, in many cases at least, merely a temporary condition. The Potlatch The ceremonial at which the various prerogatives intimately associated with social status were as- sumed was called in Chinook jargon, which was the lingua franca of the Northwest Coast, the “potlatch.” Each major cultural division, from the Tlingit to the Lower Chinook, had its own variations in pro- cedure and detail of this performance, but the function was everywhere the same. The potlatch brought to expression basic principles involved in social status and also served as a major force for social integration. As has been stated, each individ- ual in the social unit was born with an inherent — right to use group properties of major or minor importance, but he could not exercise these rights— in other words, assume his proper status—until his ! 132 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST title to them had been formally announced and validated. This formal announcement and public validation was accomplished during and by the potlatch. The heir presumptive to a chieftainship would be presented formally to a group of guests at such an affair. His relationship to the incumbent chief would be explained and he would be given a name or the right to use some crest specifically related to the position he would eventually occupy. Under some circumstances a man might, in the same manner, present himself as a presumptive heir. The guests who heard these claims announced, and recognized their validity, were regarded as witnesses to the proceedings. As such, they were rewarded and their subsequent good will was in- - sured by giving them feasts and gifts. While at times the demonstration of privileges or the giving away of material goods might appear to over- shadow the essential announcement and validation of rights and status, this last-named function was the essence and basic goal of the whole perform- ance. The contribution of the potlatch to group solidar- ity was achieved in various ways. The proper giver of the potlatch was, of course, the chief of the local group, although in some instances where progress had been made toward tribal solidarity, the ranking chief of the tribe might give the affair. The chief performed this function as custodian of the family’s wealth in goods and intangibles. (When a tribal chief was the host, he used only his own lineage crests.) He was the principal host, but, in point of fact, all the members of the family assisted and joined him as hosts. The guests, who provided the necessary validation of the claims made, were nec- SOCIETY 133 essarily outsiders. They might be from another group of the same tribe, or they might come from an entirely separate and independent community. Furthermore, since gifts and material goods—which in historic times were synonymous with trade arti- cles like blankets, guns, and other European im- ports, as well as cash—were essential, all the mem- bers of the host group contributed to make the total quantity available for distribution to the guests as large as possible. The host group also cooperated with their chief in assembling foods for the feasts, in providing dancers and singers for the crest displays, and in innumerable other ways. In fine, every member of the host group participated actively and thus had many opportunities to dem- onstrate his membership in the group and to share the prestige acquired from the ostentatious display. Another contributing factor was the fact that not only was the heir presumptive given titles and other honors, but other members of the group had rights - to the public bestowal of whatever family rights to which they might be entitled. Children of in- dividuals of intermediate and low rank alike would be given names from the family stock or have their ears pierced at the potlatch, or in one way or an- other would be presented as members of the group. Thus, in a variety of ways, the institution was a group affair that affirmed or reaffirmed the group affiliation of each of its members. The basic pattern was embroidered on and elabo- rated in various ways by each of the northern divi- sions. The Tlingit viewed the potlatch as a cycle of rituals to mourn the death of a chief. It was not a single performance, but one that might take several 134 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST years to carry to completion. It began with the reward to the group who had conducted the mortu- ary rites for the chief. These people always had to be of the opposite moiety from that of the de- ceased, that is, if the chief had been a Raven, a group from the Wolf side would take care of the body and bury it. In theory at least, this group should belong to the same lineage as the dead chief’s father. In any case they were formally in- vited to a potlatch at which the new chief, the heir to the deceased, was presented. His rights to the position were explained and the origins of the vari- ous properties were recounted. For serving as wit- nesses, and for coming, as they said, “to console the (new ) chief for his loss,” they were given presents. At the same time, the chief who had been desig- nated to take charge of the funerary proceedings was “paid.” Subsequently, until the cycle was com- pleted, the same people were summoned on various occasions: to rebuild the house of the new chief, and to raise a mortuary column in memory of his predecessor. Specifically, they were called upon to perform these tasks: to carve the mortuary column, to cut and carve the house posts, etc., so that some of the gifts were given to them in payment for their efforts, and some were given them simply as gifts. The Tsimshian potlatch was essentially the same, although the overt expression of its purpose is some- times stated as being that of inheritance—that is, the announcement of and validation of the position of the new chief—rather than to stress the mourning function as did the Tlingit. Actually the potlatches of both peoples were essentially the same, serving at the same time to honor and commemorate the SOCIETY 135 departed chief and to establish his heir officially in his place. The Haida, as will be brought out, like- wise staged such affairs. The Haida, according to available published sources, seem to have given potlatches most fre- quently to establish the position of a younger per- son as the heir presumptive. That is to say, a pot- latch might be given in a child’s honor by his parents before he went to live with his maternal un- cle, whose status and rights he would eventually in- herit. Although the child’s father appeared to func- tion as a host, the actual hosts were the mother and her lineage, who provided the property—both the ritual prerogatives bestowed and displayed and the material goods distributed as gifts. The father’s lineage were the guests. Eventually, on the death of the maternal uncle, the heir gave a potlatch in the house which he was entitled to inherit, using the prerogatives and wealth of his own lineage. These combination memorial-status-assuming af- fairs were probably the major ones given by the Haida, as they were amongst their Tlingit and Tsimshian neighbors. 3 Among the Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, and Nootka, potlatches were often given, like those of the Haida, to establish a child or youth as the heir presumptive. In addition, these three peoples very often com- bined the potlatch with performances by the danc- ing societies. The latter were elaborate dramas rep- resenting the abduction of certain individuals ( with inherited rights to the performances) by super- natural beings who returned them, endowed with varied and often spectacular ceremonial preroga- tives. The Salish groups, who had fewer ceremonial 136 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST prerogatives to announce and validate, gave pot- latches to confirm the status of their chiefs. To demonstrate that he was worthy of the post, and thereby validate his status, the headman of a Salish lineage might stage such a performance years after he had nominally attained his position as leader of his extended family. Too many years have passed since the last Chi- nook potlatch was given for us to have any detailed information on such variations as may have been made on the pattern along the lower Columbia. It seems most plausible to assume, however, that there was relatively little difference between their proce- dures and aims and those of their Salish neighbors. The northernmost groups gave a minor variety that has been called a “face-saving” potlatch. When some misadventure befell a chief, or the heir to a chieftaincy—for example, if he stumbled and fell on some public occasion, or suffered any other public indignity—the damage to his honor could be repaired only by the formal distribution of gifts and the reaffirmation of his honorable status. The elaborateness of this performance depended to a large extent on the nature of the accident. If it was considered to have been a true accident and not the result of malicious human intent to demean him, a few small gifts sufficed to erase the damage to his dignity. If, however, there was any reason to believe that the affront had been deliberate, either through physical or magical means, a large and elaborate potlatch was called for. Among such groups as the Nootka and many of the Kwakiutl, where the function of the potlatch and its role in social integration was overtly recognized, a high- ranking guest at another chief's potlatch, when con- Se ae 2. =~. EES eS SOCIETY 137 ducted to the wrong seat by the ushers, satisfied his honor by giving a single blanket to one of the hosts. In such a situation the host chief repaid this gift later on in the proceedings. Competitive potlatches have received consider- able attention in ethnographic literature because of their very spectacular nature. Two powerful rivals might give away and destroy thousands of dollars’ worth of trade goods and money in the course of the contest. The destruction of property, of course, was to demonstrate that the chief was so powerful and so rich that the blankets or money he threw on the fire, or the “coppers” he broke, were of no mo- ment at all to him. While such contests were held occasionally among many of the northern groups, they reached their highest development—or per- haps one should say their peak of bitterest rivalry —in two places: Fort Rupert and Port Simpson. It appears fairly clear that nearly identical factors led to this development in the two localities. It will be recalled that several neighboring Kwakiutl tribes moved into Fort Rupert when the Hudson’s Bay Company post was established there, forming a loose confederation. Each of these tribes consisted of several local groups who, long ago, had formed fairly stable political entities, even though the local groups retained a certain independence of action as well as their individual property rights. Once the tribes occupied the common site, close to the trading post, they were faced with a very acute problem. It was inevitable that each tribe should sooner or later invite the others to potlatches. | It is necessary to explain here that while the rank- ing of the individuals within each local group was well known, and in each tribe the lineages, and 138 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST their respective chiefs, were graded in a well- established order of precedence from highest to lowest, there were no precise verbal designations for these sequences—that is to say, there were no native terms directly translatable as “first chief,” “second chief,” “third chief,” etc. The crucial point, and the public recognition of a chief's claim to precedence, occurred at the time of the distribution of gifts to the guests. The highest-ranking chief was given the first gift—and ordinarily, to show respect for his rank, the largest single gift. The chief second in rank among the assembled guests was the re- cipient of the second gift, and so on in descending sequence. The chiefs of the newly organized Fort Rupert Confederacy had no precedents on which to base the relative rankings of the chiefs of the several tribes. This fact led them to initiate a series of potlatches in which certain of them asserted their claims to particular places—first, second, third, or fourth, and so on—in the consolidated precedence list. When two chiefs claimed the same place, the first one would give a potlatch, stating his claim; then the second would try to outdo him. Finally, one or the other gave away or destroyed more property than his opponent could possibly equal. The one who had been surpassed had no recourse. He could no longer contest his claim, for, in the native mind, it came to be regarded as ridiculous that an individual of few resources (and of course this involved not only the man, but his entire local group) should attempt to make a claim against someone who had demonstrated power and wealth. The extremes to which these competitions were carried and the attitude that developed in Fort Rupert—that great expenditures were sufficient to SOCIETY 139 validate any sort of a claim—are exemplified by the unique institution which those people created. This was the title of “Eagle.” An Eagle was a person who had the special right to receive his gift before the highest-ranking chief was presented with his. At one time there were twelve Eagle titles at Fort Rupert. Investigation has revealed that most of these Eagles were not chiefs at all, but were men of intermediate or even common status who through industry and clever trading amassed great quanti- ties of material wealth. Some of them, in addition, were backed by certain chiefs who recognized them as potential tools to assist in the downfall of some high-ranking rival. It is interesting to note that the Eagles made no pretenses at claiming tradition- hallowed names or crests, but assumed or tried to assume invented names that referred in some way to the privilege that they hoped to acquire—that of precedence in receiving gifts before the real nobles. There was even one individual who, in the early part of the last century, presumed to claim the right to receive his gift on the day prior to the pot- latch. The chiefs would not tolerate this effrontery; when he insisted on his claim, they had him killed. Others of this nouveau riche contingent, however, managed to keep in the good graces of the chiefs and maintained their anomalous positions for many years. After the nine Tsimshian tribes assembled at Port _ Simpson, they were faced with almost the identical problem regarding potlatch protocol. The order of precedence of the clan chiefs within each tribe had been established for a long time and was not sub- ject to question. The intertribal rankings were not definite. Competitive potlatches, very similar to 140 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST and quite as bitterly contested as those of the Fort Rupert Kwakiutl, became common. It is entirely — possible that such contests occurred occasionally among various groups in the remote past when certain local groups assembled at common win- ter villages in the process of tribal amalgamation. These prehistoric competitions never were so fre- quent or involved such quantities of valuables as at Fort Rupert and Port Simpson. An interesting sidelight on these specialized potlatches is afforded by the fact that among the Haida at Masset, fic- titious competitions were staged solely to add a lit- tle spice to the occasion. The putative rivals agreed, in private, to expend identical amounts so that the affair would come out a draw. Some Southern Kwakiutl chiefs are known to have done this also. The economics of the potlatch are not particu- larly complex. A chief announced his plans to his lineage or extended family mates some time in ad- vance. He would normally expect them to contrib- ute wealth goods to the extent of their ability. The low-ranking members of the group gave furs, blan- kets, or money for a variety of reasons: to gratify their personal sense of participation in the group performance, to assure the esteem of their chief and fellow group members, or to ensure public recognition for themselves or their children at the time of the potlatch by being given names or being included in some ceremonial in at least a minor capacity. This concept of participation on the basis of familial ties is most obvious among the northern groups, where, in theory, a potlatch was supposed to be given by a chief (and his lineage) to lineages of the opposite moiety. For instance, among the SOCIETY | 141 Haida, recent studies have made clear that certain types of potlatch given in honor of the children of a chief were actually given by the chief’s wife and her lineage—the same lineage, of course, that the children belonged to—to the lineage of the hus- band and sometimes others of his moiety. Nonethe- less, the husband and his close relatives contributed substantially to the accumulation of valuables to be distributed in honor of the children. Similarly, a Tlingit chief could count on his wife’s brothers’ contributing handsomely to his store of wealth in- tended for a potlatch given in the name of his lineage, even though the brothers-in-law were in the opposite moiety and would be among the guests at the affair. Such gifts were outright donations; no return was expected other than the sort of eventual turn-about-is-fair-play reciprocity we ourselves ex- pect in connection with Christmas cards and dinner invitations. The presents the brothers-in-law re- ceived at the potlatch bore no relation to any such donations they might have made, but were scaled to each one’s individual rank. The important com- pensation, in native eyes, was that at the potlatch the chief honored his own children and their lineage mates—members of the lineage of his wife’s brothers —by formally presenting them, announcing their assumption of hereditary names and titles (of their own lineage), and arranging to have their ears pierced, or to have them tattooed. In other words, the potlatch was an occasion for the emphasis of unity of a group of relatives even where kinship was ostensibly broken by the unilateral structure of society. The amount of property that the chief set as an objective depended on the size of the group or 142 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST groups he intended to invite and the elaborateness of the spectacle he planned. Among the Kwakiutl divisions and the more northerly tribes, he might, if necessary, borrow blankets or funds to attain his goal. Such loans were usually for a set period of time—half a year or a year—and were ordinarily repayable by a sum larger than the initial loan. This loan, and its repayment, was a financial trans- action entirely separate from and outside the pot- latch and had no relation to potlatch payments or gifts. When the time came for the big event and the various genealogical claims had been announced and the prerogatives and crests displayed, the gifts were distributed. Among the northernmost tribes, where the potlatch guests had performed certain tasks such as the burial of the dead chief, the rais- ing of a mortuary column, or the building or re- building of the chiefs house, etc., the chiefs to whom these duties had been entrusted received special gifts said to be payments for the work done. The individual chiefs so honored were expected later on to reward their own relatives and retainers who had done the actual work. The same procedure held true among the Haida, for example, when certain chiefs were designated to tattoo crests on noble children of the host group. These chiefs were given “payments” for the tattooing, although they themselves had not functioned as the artists. The actual tattooers were paid by the recipients of these — payments. Eventually all these preliminaries were completed. The main potlatch gifts were pre- sented in amounts that varied according to the rank of the recipient. (Of course the payments as well as the gifts were distributed in the order of rank.) On occasions when guests were invited from — - = \ ee ee ee ee a ee Se SOCIETY 143 various distant localities, as, for example, when a Tsimshian chief invited Haida and Tlingit guests, a tactful host would present gifts to the principal chiefs simultaneously. A special class of objects, called “coppers” in English, was intimately associated with the pot- latch. These large shield-like sheets were ham- mered out of placer copper found somewhere along the reaches of the Copper River in Alaska (Plates 27, 28). Of course in historic times many were made of sheet copper obtained from white traders. These coppers were traded southward as far as Southern Kwakiutl territory. Among the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, it was almost essential that one or two of them be used at the potlatch in honor of the dead chief, on the assumption of his place by his successor, and that they be broken and thrown on the fire or into the sea. To these people the coppers were valuable, but they were not nearly so highly regarded as they came to be among the Southern Kwakiutl, among whom the value of a copper was augmented each time it was given away, whether in a potlatch or in connection with bride price or dowry. Some coppers are known to have attained values of several thousands of dollars. The northwest Californians—provincials from the areal point of view—staged performances that, like the potlatch, revolved about the wealth and status concepts. In these, however, the family wealth in material treasures was merely displayed, and was not distributed amongst the spectators. Rights and prerogatives such as existed in the north were lack- ing, so these folk contented themselves with an ex- position of their valuables, then thriftily stowed them away for another year. 144 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Marriage Marriage was regarded as a social contract, not merely between the man and his wife, but between their respective families. The higher the rank of the couple, the greater the emphasis on this latter aspect. The concern of the individual’s family re- volved principally about the rule that a person should marry a spouse of corresponding social status. A chief, or heir to a chieftaincy, should marry the daughter of a chief, or at least the daugh- ter of a man of high rank, closely related to a chief's line of descent. Throughout the area it was deemed essential for the groom’s family to give a substantial quantity of valuables and goods—the “bride price” —to the girl's family. The higher the rank of the couple, the greater the amount of the bride price. In northwest California, where areal patterns were so often reduced to their bare essentials, a man’s worth was gauged in terms of the amount of the bride price paid for his mother. Two aspects of the bride price should be noted. First, it was not, outside of northwest California, a quantity arrived at through close bargaining by representatives of the two social units; it was rather as large an amount as the groom's group were capa- ble of giving, given the status of the couple. Sec- ond, the woman’s family did not, through the so- called “sale,” lose all interest and rights in her, but continued to be concerned about her welfare. Their continuing interest was usually expressed by a re- turn gift or series of gifts made to the man’s family. . The Southern Kwakiutl carried this concept to its logical conclusion by a series of return gifts from a 23. Wooden rattles. On the left, a design representing the Killer whale from the Haida; center, a human skull from the Kwakiutl; right, a form, from the Tlingit, representing a Hawk (about 10 inches high). 24. Various rattles for musical accompaniment. Upper left, puffin beaks from the Haida; upper right, teeth and amulets from the Tlingit (these two examples are 6 to 8 inches in di- ameter); center, pecten shells from the Tlingit but used more frequently by the Gulf of Georgia Salish (the shells are about 6 inches in diameter); bottom, deer hoofs on a stick from the Tlingit (about 18 inches long). The upper rattles are of a type widely used by the Western Eskimo. 25. Two examples of “chief's rattles.” These were carved of two or more pieces of alder wood, hollowed out for the “sounders’ of pebbles, and then fitted together. The top example is from the Haida and is a “raven rattle” used by northern chiefs and some shamans to accompany songs on state occasions. The principal figure is a raven with the styl- ized face of a hawk carved on the underside. On the raven’s back is a shamanistic scene showing a spirit extracting disease from a sick person. The other is from the Tlingit; the main figure is a large water bird, perhaps a crane. The scene on his back is probably an episode in the origin myth of some clan and shows a person, apparently pursued by a wolf, escaping on the back of a friendly sea monster. 26. This “tambourine” drut with the design painted c the inside so the drummir will not scuff the paint, is type commonly found amor the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsin shian. The straight drw stick below would have he a padded buckskin head i protect the rawhide drun head and give a more son rous tone. 27. An engraved “copper” from the Haida which was used in the potlatch ceremony. The coppers are generally about 2% feet high. 28. A Southern Kwakiutl princess of the 1890s. Note that a portion of the top of the copper she is holding has been cut away, probably in defiance of her father’s potlatch rivals. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. 0 ‘punogs yadng fo dnoud fquvau awos 40 yst , ~wpamn” upysyvg ayy wouf hyqoqoad aav asay ‘]NOS 480] D JO]NUD S UDULDYS D (UL0}10q) pun (duo) sayout 7 qnoqv) jJays ainjdova4 03 hausnol pazynupip sry ur UDULDYS AY} paysissD Qu0]DgD YN prwpur ,.“4aY94D9-)NOS,, suDWDYS UDLYsULS J oym ssuraq Sunuasasdas ‘spivog aouvo pds yoodhy ‘eg v (do}) au ‘auoq ur y10q “durasvo fo sajdwnxa omy *6z (duo] sayout ¢ nogn) nBuyy ayy wo.f 31. A shaman’s rattle (about 20 inches high) from the Qui- nault, a Salish tribe of western Washington. Carved in the form of the shaman’s guardian spirit with sounders of deer hoofs attached in the front, this specimen represents a dis- tinctively Salish style. ‘yday som sawusofiad yodrousd ay} yoryn ur ajorqna ay} fo quouf OY? St Sty, fuaalas pivog pajuwd pv fo yunvd uaas aq up aingord ay? fo 4fa7 AY? IV ‘suomnpouy hpruvf vyj00N pun limyony hupw ur yunzsod -Ult “‘plrquapuny L 2Y2z Juas -aidaa punois yong ay2 ut apis dayna uo sysod asnoy ayy ‘LaduDp-joquuupy ay, sauds “ul pup sassassod oym p.rg DUYDI-UDUL = SNOL,SUOUL ay} ‘DMisnunjppnypoqypg ay, juas -aidas ‘syvaq ayy-plig apn ynn syspu suuvan ‘uo.f ay. ut saindy Suryonos9 ay J, ‘aoupuiofiad hjyanoog supw -DYUS JIMyoNY usayznog v fo eeuosiod syeureIp ay7z smoys ydoisojzoyd pjo hiaa sy yz, ‘ze a) we ! di La _— “BABE as 33. A Southern Kwakiutl changeable mask. The outer mask represents a Wolf Spirit. By manipulating strings the dancer can open the hinged halves to reveal a representation of a super- natural bird-being. 34. This jointed puppet represents the spirit presiding over the Kwakiutl Sha- mans Society ceremonial (the dance: series that includes the “Hamatsa,” or Cannibal-dancer). Such puppets were: displayed by chiefs giving the cere- monial and their principal guests. A simple sleight-of-hand trick made the objects appear to fly miraculously back’ and forth between host and guest, to: symbolize the beginning of the per- formance. This specimen happens to be from the Haida, who used it with some of the performances they ac- quired from the Kwakiutl. Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution. SOCIETY 145 man to his son-in-law, or the son-in-law’s group, to “buy back” his daughter. The completion of these payments did not signify that the couple were thereby separated, but it did permit her to remain with her husband without pressure of obligation. Since it was customary for the father-in-law to include various crests and ceremonial privileges in his gifts to his son-in-law, which of course were in- tended for the couple's children, acquisition of such prerogatives through marriage came to be an end in itself. Hence, during the period of population shrinkage, or perhaps even before that time, the Kwakiutl devised fictitious unions in which a young chief was “married to” an arm, or leg, or the house post, of another chief. The quantities of valuables given by both parties, which were of course dis- tributed by each recipient in potlatches, redounded to the credit of both. There were several varieties of preferred mar- riages. One of these, found among the northern nations who reckoned descent matrilineally, was cross-cousin marriage (that is, marriage to one’s mother’s brother’s daughter, or to one’s father’s sis- ters daughter). A young chief who married his mother's brother’s daughter was actually marrying the daughter of the man whose position, house, and properties he would eventually inherit, an obviously convenient and practical arrangement. Among the Kwakiutl groups, the Bella Coola, the Nootka, and their nearest Salish neighbors, a chief or a chief's son might seek to marry the daughter of some dis- tant important personage to create useful alliances; or he might marry a woman of approximately equivalent rank from some extended family to which he was already related, or, if the actual 146 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST blood kinship were not too close, from his own group. | The advantages of marrying into a related fam- ily, or to a woman from one’s own extended family, were, according to the Kwakiutl, Bella Coola, and Nootka viewpoint, that one thereby regained crests and privileges that had been given away in pre- © vious marriages, in the one instance, or, in the other, retained such valuable possessions within the group. The Bella Coola are said to have arranged intragroup marriages quite often for their chiefs and chiefs’ heirs in order to retain the family pre- rogatives. In fact, some early investigators inter- preted this practical measure as a strict rule of endogamy (a term meaning a prohibition against marrying outside of a certain defined group), such as is found with a rigid caste system. However, this was not a correct interpretation, for many Bella Coola not only married outside their extended fam- ily units, but outside their nation as well, acquiring spouses among the Bella Bella and Wikeno in some numbers. Proof of this practice may be found in the number of crests and ritual prerogatives among the Bella Coola that they state were obtained from one or another Heiltsuk division “in marriage,” that is, as part of the gifts made by the bride’s father to his son-in-law, and in the various rights of similar type found among the Heiltsuk that are reported to be of Bella Coola origin. The Coast Salish and Chinook—except for those living near and strongly influenced by Southern Kwakiutl and Nootka—having, as has been previ- ously stated, a more rigid rule of patrilineal inherit- ance of their few prerogatives, did not transfer such tights to sons-in-law, and as they did not have a SOCIETY 147 unilateral organization either, there was no particu- lar advantage to their marrying relatives. The Yurok and their immediate neighbors added a unique touch of their own to the areal patterns. Normally, a bride went to live in her husband’s home. Occasionally, however, either to patch up an affair in which a man of few resources had become involved with a girl, or in a situation in which a man of importance had. daughters but no sons and did not want to be without willing hands to serve him, a special arrangement was made, a “half mar- riage,” as the Yurok translate their own name for the institution into English. In this type of marriage, slightly more than half the normal bride price was paid by the groom and his kin, and he went to live in his father-in-law’s house, where, in effect, he worked out the balance of the bride price in serv- ices. Wars and Feuds The Nootkan and Kwakiutl tribes, and their neigh- bors to the northward, made war on occasion; those to the south carried on feuds. The distinction is much more than one of the scale of the military operation and number of people involved, although usually the feuds of the Salish, Chinook, and north- west Californians were carried on by a few individ- uals at a time. At times the northerners too had their feuds, in which the killing or injury of a kins- man was avenged by his relatives. But true war- fare, aimed at driving out or exterminating another lineage or family in order to acquire its lands and goods, was a well-established practice in the north. In the discussion of recent histories of the various 148 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST groups, some attention has been given to these northern wars of conquest. Some northern Tlingit lineage or lineages drove the Eskimo off Kayak Is- land; the Kaigani Haida forced some southern Tlingit to withdraw from part of Prince of Wales Island and established themselves there; the Tsim- shian Kitkatla and Kitisu tribes, and apparently the Bella Bella as well, were doing their best to exter- minate the Xaihais in order to take possession of their territory. Among the Nootka, bitter, long- drawn-out wars were carried on by various local groups and tribes for the express purpose of captur- ing the territory of their neighbors. In addition, the objective of frequent raids, some of them at quite long range, was to capture wealth goods and slaves. The Haida raids down into the Puget Sound area have been mentioned. Presumably the develop- ment of the concept of a war of conquest is to be attributed to the highly developed concepts of prop- erty right in lands and places of economic impor- tance, and to a certain amount of actual population pressure in the north in aboriginal times. The raid staged on the occasion of the death of an important person, whether or not he had died from natural causes, was a typically northern custom. The usually expressed purpose was that of “send- ing someone with the dead chief,” or of “making other people mourn also.” Such a party usually at- tacked and slew the first persons they met; some- times even their own village mates were not ex- empted if the raiders encountered them offshore in a canoe. After a successful attack the northern warriors beheaded their victims, brought the heads home, and usually set them up on tall poles in front of _— : SOCIETY 149 the village. Only the Tlingit scalped; they took the heads of fallen foe and removed the scalps on the way home. Feuds were conducted in a different fashion among most of the Northwest Coast groups. After a slaying or an injury, the kin of the victim made an effort to retaliate, although sometimes the trou- ble could be smoothed over. In any case, whether or not revenge was taken, the customary method of settling the feud among almost all the groups, ex- cept the Kwakiutl and Nootka, was by payment of indemnities, or “weregild.” When more than the initial offense had occurred, each injury to either side had to be paid for separately. Intermediaries were usually sent back and forth to negotiate agree- ments as to the proper amount of damages. It was at this time, in northwestern California, that the valuation put on a man according to the amount of bride price paid for his mother came into play. Else- where such neatly calibrated scales were not used; _the aim was to demand enough compensation to _ embarrass and humble the opponents. Sometimes, among the Tlingit and probably their immediate neighbors, in cases where no blood- money settlement could be agreed upon, a chief or noble of the slayer’s lineage would take it on himself to resolve the matter. He, of course, had to be of a rank as nearly as possible equivalent to _ that of the slain person. He donned the finest cere- monial regalia of his lineage. Then he went out of the house, dancing one of the slow, stately hered- itary dances of his lineage as he approached the waiting foe. The courteous gesture on their part was to allow him the dignity of approaching to within a Bow yards of them before they evened matters by killing him. oe a ni athe ROW, cat tee ‘at ae wy 4: . ~ pabeabien rari t, aoe i a ‘. ‘ tear De Di tkalte AY Aas P| mc: “ye eT eet Ds, Maer thay eee fee Se a Nag AP GT ew Te A Pre me (aR ™! i Thal apate eee, | fe) ee ‘ ye : ye i iq ? tabile rea bY S 4, ' * ; ‘ 7 F rf } ; P & i: oS) ‘ i , ‘ / Hi : hy grt ry iy att a ihe ak aes ae he rs. : : Beare teat: || Be ’ AR ee oat | 1 oe re ‘ Ay ya ; 14> 4 ; yi ates) oyu f y ‘ “4 ‘ i sii etek 4 74 : tila. a Hi: >. + & Gry % ' f . ep at a oe: ph NTE, PAE st y¥* ‘ > ‘aha Lin Let wa ‘ wi mike tak Pe ek. skeen it; reek oe ©) dyre & p08 ¢ , Tol j rites <7 tet : Rm 7 > = ‘ Sie: nat + Ja) iy see Fas & seges a H - , 4% +i J . a") Y Sirah 6.1 yes ow Hace vou a j i ¥ch eB aAss hh et 3 , : 1 i e t 4 4} E 4 Lark SP ‘Nu i ; 3 i nr ae * Te Oe eat» i : ey . ~ . ; ‘ +i) - at : i j faa ‘ = 45 eu bite de t oe ¥3 = > * : “ oy PART Pat BAG ; ‘ ol woe . uy site 4 bt ? r y ‘' MS ss ae | : ‘ toe Vb } fa . woe gle ot ip ‘ + t : eit et 4.3 ’ j ; % : a it j "A + They MTY L' i t ht ft th » i] ar i ; > yh if id's Viikte +r ¥4 aeons > i i vit + Ate ’ eA Le ais A mt? pets a? il © -*, a tele Be ost pede Res 7 THE CYCLE OF LIFE The Northwest Coast people, like all others—our- selves included—considered that there were certain critical periods in the life of the individual, points of transition from one status to another, that re- quired special care and attention. In their view, his behavior at that time determined the course of his subsequent life. There was also the feeling that the individual, at certain of these periods, might be dangerous to others. Therefore various procedures were carried out to ensure the well-being of the in- dividual and his relatives and friends as well. The occasions regarded as particularly significant by all these tribes were: birth, a girl’s puberty, and _ death. There were, of course, numerous minor rites practiced by the several groups under considera- tion, such as specified ways of disposing of the first baby tooth—or all of the baby teeth—that a child shed, some kind of formalities connected with the first game a boy killed, or the first basketful of roots or berries a girl collected unaided, and so on. Mar- riage was an occasion for formalities and festivity, particularly if the couple were of high rank, but it was not considered to have the crisis aspect of the other life stages. It would be out of place in a summary of this kind to relate in detail the multitude of observances of all the groups of the area. A few generalized state- 174 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST ments must suffice. Procedures for ensuring the in- dividual’s well-being were most emphasized at birth, of course. Commonly, there were privately owned magical techniques to ensure long life, suc- cess in some particular career such as canoe mak- ing, gambling, and the like, as well as rites that were common knowledge, such as methods of disposing of the end of the umbilical cord when it had been detached. The infant’s mother was usually secluded for a varying number of days, during which she was kept on a restricted diet, being permitted no (or few) fresh foods, and being universally enjoined against eating fresh salmon. At the end of the set period she was ceremoniously restored to normal life, usually by a ritual bathing. Among some of the groups, the father’s diet and © activities were somewhat restricted during his wife's lying-in. Most of the northern nations, believ- ing that twins were mysteriously related to the Sal- mon Spirits, required parents of twins to camp far from salmon streams and to subsist on a diet of dried foods for a long time, lest the Salmon Spirits be offended. Among these groups a twin, when grown, was believed to have special power to cause bountiful runs of salmon. At the onset of a girl’s puberty she was invariably secluded. Her presence was believed to be offensive to the spirits of salmon and other game; therefore she was prohibited from approaching the river and from eating fresh fish or meat. The northwestern Californian pubescent was restricted to a diet of very thin acorn mush. All the groups believed that by doing certain types of work, performing certain magical procedures, and, of course, by faithful obe- dience to the taboos, the girl would become an THE CYCLE OF LIFE 175 industrious woman, would bear many healthy chil- dren, and would live long. By remaining in seclu- sion at the proper times, by observing all the rules and so avoiding the offending of salmon and other important fish and game, she protected the food supply of her family and did not, by her contami- nating presence, endanger the luck of any fisher- man or hunter. Bathing rituals normally occurred during the period of seclusion or at its termination. When a person died his kin were torn between grief at the loss and fear of the ghost. Among the southern divisions, the body was removed from the house as soon after death as possible. Wakes, at which family dirges were sung, were held by the northern groups, as far south as the Gulf of Georgia. When a chief died, a wake might last several nights. Removal of the body through a hole in the wall was almost universally practiced, so that the living would not have to follow the path of the dead as they passed in and out through the door. The method of disposal of the body varied. The Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haisla cremated their dead. The body of a shaman, however, was put in a little grave-house on a point overlooking the sea. The body of a Haida was also placed in a grave-house. A mortuary pole would eventually be carved and set up for a Haida chief, and his remains trans- ferred to a niche in the back of the pole, or to a box placed on top. A Haida who died far from home was cremated, however, and only the charred bones and ashes were brought home. Bella Coola tradi- tions indicate that long ago their forefathers used to practice cremation. In more recent times they, like their Heiltsuk, Southern Kwakiutl, and Nootka neighbors, wrapped the dead in cedarbark mats, 176 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST then placed them in wooden boxes, which they lashed high in the branches of a tree, or stowed away in a cave, or, more recently, buried in the ground. Some of the Gulf of Georgia Salish fol- lowed the same custom; others, that of their kin of Puget Sound and western Washington, and of the Chinook groups, who placed the body in a canoe, usually raised off the ground on a sort of scaffolding, The northwest Californians interred their dead. Everywhere the personal possessions of the de- ceased were buried with him, burned, or deposited at the grave. In the north a potlatch was held dur- ing which most of the wealth of a dead chief and his family was given away to the members of the “opposite” moiety or clan who had done the bury- ing, carved and erected the mortuary or memorial column, and rebuilt the house of the chief's succes- sor. The mortuary potlatch given in honor of a chief was indubitably the most important affair of this type among Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian. Almost everywhere along the coast, both male and female mourners (the immediate family, had the deceased been a man of little consequence; the entire group, had he been a chief) cut their hair short in sign of mourning. Among some groups women also scratched their faces to indicate mourn- ing. Usually both the principal mourners and the pallbearers had to be ceremonially bathed or other- wise purified to remove the contaminating influence of the dead, or actually of the ghost, before they could resume their normal lives. Art, particularly carving in relief or in the round, was highly developed on the Northwest Coast. This applies to the region from the lower Columbia northward; the northwestern Californians and their neighbors did not participate in this artistic tradi- tion, although they did decorate some of their small utensils with neat, if simple, geometric patterns. It was among the more northerly nations that the fa- mous sculptural art, one of the finest in aboriginal America, came into full bloom. There were two major stylistic divisions of this art, as well as several minor derived ones. The two principal strains, which were probably originally related, differed primarily in that one stressed ap- plied design and formalization of representation, while the other was more fully sculptural and three- dimensional, combining realism with an impression- istic suppression of non-essential detail. In the north, the Haida, Tsimshian (including all the Tsimshian subdivisions: Coast, Gitksan, and Niska), and, to a slightly lesser degree, the Tlingit, devel- oped a highly standardized style in which conven- tionalized forms were used to decorate innumerable objects. Symmetry and rhythmic repetition were ac- centuated. The Wakashan-speaking groups just to the south developed a simpler but more truly sculp- tural and vigorous style, which stressed mass and 178 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST movement rather than conventionalization. It must be noted, however, that the northern carvers, when they wished, could produce restrained, highly re- alistic works of great merit, as, for example, portrait masks and helmets (Plate 36). In relatively late his- toric times, the northern artists began to incorpo- rate some of its conceptual principles into their work. They managed to retain, however, the vigor of their old style, and the old sculptural quality, so that their carvings can always be distinguished. The Coast Salish imitated the older Kwakiutl and Nootka carving. Much of their work was a simplifi- cation of an already boldly simplified style, so that it seems crude in comparison with its prototype. There were several minor local patterns among the Salish and Chinook that appear to reflect minor dif- ferences in sources of inspiration—that is, whether the group in question had closer cultural contacts with the Southern Kwakiutl or with the Nootka, and also, the distance from these sources. As far south as the Columbia River, traces of Wakashan stylistic influence may be seen, although the origi- nal three-dimensional treatment was crudely re- duced to two dimensions, and a few purely local touches were added, perhaps because of influences from the interior. The origins of the styles are unknown. Most au- thorities, however, agree that their perfection and standardization indicate a lengthy developmental history. The first European explorers in the area, Cook and Dixon, saw and collected objects at Nootka Sound and on the Queen Charlotte Islands stylistically identical with those made a century and more later. There is no evidence of any impor- tant modification of stylistic patterns during the his- ART 179 toric period other than their gradual deterioration through disuse toward the end of the last century and the early decades of the present one. This de- cline resulted from loss of interest due to the rap- idly accelerated acculturation of the Indians and to their nearly complete missionization, which was accompanied by pressure brought to bear by mis- sionaries in favor of the abandonment of all pagan customs. The impairment of the art style was also affected to some extent by the legal prohibition of certain customs, like the potlatch, with which much of the art was associated. At the present time this great art is virtually extinct. Such earlier developments as can be reasonably well documented during the nineteenth century point to its strength and vigor prior to the historical deteriorations just mentioned. For example, some time quite early in the nineteenth century, or per- haps in the closing years of the eighteenth, the Haida began to mine a soft black slate that occurs in one locality in the Queen Charlottes, and to carve it into pipes and pipestems for sale to whites. A number of reasons lead us to believe that this work began under white stimulus. First, the earliest ex- plorers and fur traders who visited the Haida do not mention any articles of slate. Second, pipes were not known to the Haida or their neighbors of the north until smoking was introduced by whites. Fi- nally, the pipes seem to have been made purely for _ sale or barter, not for native use. By the time the _ United States Exploring Expedition, under Lieuten- ant Wilkes, U.S.N., visited the Oregon Territory in 1841, where they were given quantities of speci- mens from the Queen Charlotte Islands by the Hud- son's Bay Company personnel at Fort Vancouver 180 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST (Plate 37), the Haida were turning out considera- ble numbers of elaborate and ornate—and most cer- tainly unsmokable—slate pipes, most of them obvi- ously poor imitations of white seafarers’ scrimshaw work. Some of these objects show considerable tech- nical skill, but artistically are pretty sad. During the next two or three decades, however, the aborigi- nal art style, latent in the consciousness of the carv- ers, began to come to the fore, submerging the clumsy copying of alien patterns. Some of the “pipes” were still made, but came to be decorated with native motifs. Even during the “scrimshaw” pe- riod, carvers occasionally utilized aboriginal themes, though in a stiff awkward manner (Plate 37). The Haida artists began to carve models of “totem poles,” decorated boxes, and feast dishes, in slate, and by the 1880s the ancient style dominated the slate carving to the point where the specimens of purely classic type and of considerable artistic merit were being produced (Plate 38). In other words, the basic tenets of the style were strong enough to dominate the introduced complex, in which a new material was first used to copy new forms (pipes and scrimshaw work) for a new purpose (for sale as curios), suggesting that the native art was firmly rooted in, and thoroughly harmonious with, the na- tive culture. This whole art, both among the three northern- most nations and the Kwakiutl and Nootka (and the Bella Coola), was aimed at the depiction of the supernatural beings, in animal, monster, or human form, who according to lineage or clan traditions had appeared to some ancestor, or, in some in- stances, had transformed itself to human form and become an ancestor. In either case the descendants ART 181 of that ancestor, in the proper line, inherited the right to display symbols of the supernatural be- ing to demonstrate their noble descent. Whether painted or carved, the motifs are often referred to as “crests,” and were much like the heraldic em- blazonments of European nobility. Similarly the masks and other appurtenances of the dancing so- cieties were hereditary lineage property (although they, and the rituals they represented, could be for- mally bestowed outside the family line under cer- tain conditions, or captured in war). Thus the art style itself, through the objects made according to its dictates, was intimately linked with the social organization, rank, and status, as well as the cere- monial patterns, of the northern groups. Perusal of the illustrations in this volume show- ing Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian objects will make the special features of the northern art style clear, and will demonstrate its aesthetic value. For orien- tation, its major characteristics are listed below. 1. Whether two-dimensional (painting or low, flat relief) or three-dimensional (carving in high relief or full round), it was essentially an applied art. Thus its forms were typically adapted primarily to the shape of the object decorated. This was true even of the figures carved in high relief, like those on “totem poles” and spoon handles of mountain- goat horn, in which they appear to be contained within the mass of the material. Masks, because of their specialized function, formed the only impor- tant exception to this rule. 2. Conventionalization of form was carried to an extreme degree. However, this did not take place in a random manner, in one way in one specimen and differently in another, but according to certain 182 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST principles. The first of these resulted from adapta- tion to the object decorated, as just mentioned. The second was based on what amounted to a passion for symmetry and balanced design. This may be observed most clearly in two-dimensional design, where, for balance, the figure was treated as though it had been split lengthwise and spread out flat, as it were, on the level surfaces, or wrapped around the sides of the whole object (Fig. 24). There were many ways of accomplishing this. One was by “split- ting” the figure into two separate halves, each half then being shown in profile, head to head, tail to tail, or back to back. Another slightly more complex mode of representation was to “split” the subject from the neck back, showing the head and face in front view, with the two halves of the body spread out on either side. Third, the artists emphasized certain areas in which they were interested, such as the head and face, and sometimes the paws or tail, and minimized or suppressed other parts. This trend was related to the fourth factor in conven- tionalization: the exaggeration and standardization of certain details for identification of the being rep- resented. As already remarked, the objective of the art was to depict definite symbols, the property of the clans and lineages. To render these symbols rec- ognizable, certain distinctive features were selected, and consistently used. The following list enumerates a few of these typical keys to identification: Bear: Short snout, large teeth, protruding tongue, large paws and claws Wolf: Long snout, large teeth Beaver: Prominent incisors, holding stick in fore- paws (forepaws sometimes raised to this posi- Fig. 24. Northern designs illustrating the method of two- dimensional application of three-dimensional concepts. The figures are portrayed as if they had been split and spread out flat (see detail of hat, top right). These examples are Haida, but Tlingit and Tsimshian artists used this technique, too. Top left, a Beaver design from a basketry hat; center, a sea monster painted on a screen; lower left, carving on a wooden hat (seen from above) representing a sculpin; lower right, a tattoo design representing a “wasgo,”’ a being which com-. bined characteristics of the whale and the wolf. 184 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST tion without stick), wide, flat, scaly (cross- hatched) tail Killer whale: Large mouth with prominent teeth, long “dorsal fin,” whale flukes Raven: Wings (usually), long straight beak Eagle: Wings (usually), heavy down-curved beak Sculpin: Two short dorsal fins, spines around mouth It should be added that occasionally, when realism was required, the artists discarded their conven- tionalizations and produced portrait masks and hel- mets of amazing fidelity. 3. There was a strong tendency to fill all vacant areas, showing a sort of horror of blank spaces. For this reason, for one thing, when a series of figures are carved, as on a “totem pole” or a spoon handle, they are interlocked, with no intervening spaces. The “eye element,” a rectangle with rounded cor- ners, containing a lenticular form surrounding a circular one (the iris of the eye), was often used simultaneously as filler and to indicate arm and leg joints. Another common technique for avoiding blank space, especially in two-dimensional design, consisted in filling in the body area of the figure with a sort of schematic anatomical view. Occasion- ally this had a purpose, as in cases in which the being had eaten someone or something in the leg- endary episode in which he appeared. Even where such “X-ray” views or anatomical sections had no bearing on the myth, however, the device was fre- quently used. 4. Movement in the artistic sense—that assists in carrying the viewer’s eye from one part of the com- 35. Hupa White Deerskin dance. The two dancers in the fore- ground carry large obsidian blades, an important type of treasure on the lower Klamath River. A. L. Kroeber photo- graph. 36. These Haida portrait masks were made to represent real persons, probably in connection with a performance involving representation of the killing and miraculous resuscitation of the person concerned. 37. Two kinds of tobacco pipes. Top, Tlingit pipes carved of wood with metal bowls from the late nineteenth century. Below, a pipe carved by the Haida from slate and collected from Hudson’s Bay Company personnel on the lower Co- lumbia River in 1841. (Bottom photograph courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.) 38. Slate carving comes of age. Traditional figures, model totem poles, and carved boxes were made by Haida artists in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This particular box measures approximately 8 inches by 11% inches. The figure in the upper right hand corner of the lower illustration is a representation of the famous “Bear-mother” tale, a part of the origin tradition of certain important clans. It stands about 8 inches high. 39. A Southern Kwakiutl mask representing the Thunderbird, and a Nootkan mask (below, about 25 inches high) portraying the spirit of a minor ceremonial. 40. A Nootkan headdress mask, representing a supernatural wolf and (below, about 22 inches in diameter) a Bella Coola mask. The Bella Coola had a number of masks of this type, with a corolla around the central face, and they also borrowed extensively from their Kwakiutl neighbors. 41. Tlingit shamanistic figu- rines, about 6 inches high, which were attached to the - shamans’ headdresses. They may have represented in- tended victims of black. magic. This type of simpli- fied but vigorous art is prob- ably a holdover of a very old Northwest Coast art style, preserved by the Nootka and Kwakiutl and imitated in a@ crude way by the Coast Salish. 42. Coast Salish “sxwaihwai™ mask. This mask represents : one of a special group of supernatural beings connect- | ed with bird-spirits, devel- oped on the lower Fraser River and elaborated in the § Straits of Georgia region. | ‘SPUuDIST 2770) -IDYD uaan() ay} fo pua usayjnos ay} yD punjs] huoyjuy uo sajod hapnyiow PuDd ..Wa}0},, Dp] “EF ra MoOfe O .- 44. Some poles and houses at the Haida village of Skidegate. This photograph was taken by the noted British Columbia photographer Maynard about 1885. ART 185 position to another—was achieved in several ways. The interlocking of a series of figures, mentioned above, contributed to that effect, particularly when the large principal figures were alternated with smaller ones in a rhythmic sequence. This device was used frequently, though not exclusively, by Tsimshian totem-pole carvers. Painted lines typi- cally vary in width, being thicker at the centers and tapering toward the ends. (In self-enclosing elements, like the “eye” design unit, the upper and lower margins usually. taper toward the sides.) Movement as well as accentuation was frequently given to carvings by flowing painted lines. Two-dimensional design—either painting in red and black, other than that used for accent and em- bellishment of high relief carving, or incised or very low relief carving—was applied to a great variety of objects: storage boxes, “settees” or chiefs’ backrests, cradles, globular wooden rattles, canoe hulls and paddle blades, house fronts, the highly valued shield-like “coppers,” “oil cups” of wood or moun- tain-sheep horn, shamans’ charms and “soul catch- _ ers” of bone, horn, or ivory, and as well to buckskin, elkskin, or caribou-skin robes. In the field of textiles twined-woven spruce-root hats were painted with crest decorations, and a few plain woven Chilkat blankets have been collected that have designs painted on them. It is not known whether this was an older practice than weaving designs in panels. It may have been, and persisted into historic times. An early historic reference to robes “with designs in blue, yellow, black, and white” can refer only to the usual type of Chilkat blankets that we know from historic times. Incidentally, the typical Chilkat blanket and “dance shirts” with patterns woven in, OOOO ERO EAL IER 186 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST and the older dance aprons and leggings, are the — only objects we know that were regularly made by women in the classic northern art style. It is not that there was a specific taboo involved, but the motifs did not ordinarily lend themselves to the geometri- city of basketry decoration. Hence, women did not learn the working principles of the art as did the men interested in painting and carving. (It should be noted that only certain men—not all—learned the principles of the art style and applied them to painting and carving.) There are a very few—and they are few indeed—Tlingit and Haida baskets that bear woven crest designs rather than the usual geometric patterns. As a matter of fact, in the manu- facture of Chilkat blankets, male artists made pat- tern boards that the women weavers, technicians but not artists, carefully and methodically followed. The only other woven representative designs made by women in the area were the whaling scenes, schematic but with a certain verve, imbricated on the spruce-root hats of the Nootka. These, like the male-made Nootkan art products, vary from the northern pattern in their angularity, detail-less motifs, and extensive open areas. Carving was done in high relief or the full round, in the classic tradition, in diverse materials and ap- plied to a variety of objects. Most authorities are agreed, however, that this type of work was origi- nally developed around a complex of woodworking, and then secondarily extended to horn, bone, ivory (traded from some Eskimo source), and even an occasional piece of stone. The handles of mountain- goat horn spoons, many feast dishes in their en- tirety, sealing and halibut clubs, figures mounted on canoe prows, “totem poles,” the shanks of halibut oe Se se ee ed ART 187 hooks, speakers’ staffs, and a host of other artifacts, were executed in high relief. The Wakashan version of this art, as was re- marked before, differed in a number of ways from that of the northernmost nations. Basically, it was more frankly sculptural, and less an applied art. Whereas even in full-round carving the work of the northerners gives the impression of being contained within the original volume of the log, horn, or bone on which the carving was done, Kwakiutl and Nootka artists did away with the confines of their material, cutting it away into new planes, and ex- panding beyond it by adding appendages—for ex- ample, the outstretched wings of a Thunderbird, or the prominent “dorsal fin” of the killer whale (occasionally northern artists added pieces to carv- ings, especially long beaks of certain birds carved on “totem poles,” but this was not characteristic of their work). The Wakashan carving was less often applied to objects of utilitarian use, and hence was freer of the restraints of an applied art. The themes depicted were much less rigidly conventionalized; instead, there was a stress on realism of significant areas. At the same time large open areas were tol- erated, and minor details were suppressed, so that the sweeping lines lead directly to the key areas and the eye is not distracted by secondary space- filling motifs. All these features of the Wakashan style combine to give great strength and force. Its impressionistic simplicity gives it a certain “primi- tive” cast, but also boldness and vigor (Fig. 25, Plates 39, 40). It is interesting to note that where Tlingit art differed from that of the neighboring Haida and Tsimshian, it was in the same direction, toward a simplified realism. Some Tlingit work is 188 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Fig. 25. These old Southern Kwakiutl wooden sculptures represent: upper left, the Chief Speaker, used in the pot- latch; upper right, a counter of blankets holding a copper; and below, a grave monument. very similar to Wakashan art in treatment and force- fulness (Plate 41). It may be that such carving is closer to the original style from which Haida and Tsimshian (and some Tlingit) art was evolved. Archaeological materials, chiefly from the lower Fraser, reveal an old art style that contrasts mark- edly with the classic northern pattern. Yet these ancient objects fit the artistic traditions which the ART 189 historic Coast Salish derived from their Kwakiutl and Nootka neighbors (Fig. 26, Plate 42). This archaeological material thus fits the hypothesis just suggested: that the Wakashan style, and its Salish derivatives, may have been the old form. Gradually the ancestors of the historic Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian modified that basic pattern into the subtle, more symmetrical, and also more static and more rigidly standardized style that was in use at the time of early historic contacts and was con- tinued with no essential change till the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Fig. 26. A Salish stone mortar carved in the form of a human head, the bowl being in the top of the head. The orieieet is in the Provincial Museum, Victoria, British Co- umbia. | Totem Poles No discussion of classic Northwest Coast art can be complete without a mention of the famous “totem poles.” The term is quoted because it is something of a misnomer. Strictly speaking, a totem among primitive peoples the world over is a crea- ture or object associated with one’s ancestral tradi- tions, toward which one is taught to feel respect 190 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST and reverence—true totemism involves a basic atti- tude of religious awe. The Australian aborigines, like many other totemic peoples, do not kill their totem animals for food, even in times of hardship. Other groups have rituals to propitiate their totemic species. Not so the Northwest Coast Indians. There a person with an Eagle, Raven, Bear, or other crest had no particular regard for creatures of that spe- cies. It was not the biologic species in general that was of importance in his clan or lineage tradition, but a single specific supernatural being who had used the form of an eagle, raven, or bear. The In- dian had no compunctions whatsoever about killing contemporary representatives of these species. In discussing pride in one’s ancestry, we have already drawn the comparison between the crests and Euro- pean heraldic quarterings. From the point of view — of use, the crests can be compared to a cattle brand that the modern Western cowman burns not only on his animals to establish legal ownership, but on the gatepost of the corral, on the wings of his chaps, on the doorjamb of his house, and all sorts of places, because it is his brand and he likes it. Similarly, the northern nations along the coast took pride in their crests and sought to display them as often and in as many ways as possible. Several varieties of totem poles (we may dis- pense with the quotes now and use the popular term) with varying functions were set up. The first was the memorial pole, erected by a deceased chief's heir as part of the process of assuming his predecessor’s title and prerogatives. Such poles were erected along the beach in front of the village. Among the Southern Tlingit and the various Tsim- shian divisions this was the principal kind in use in ART 191 historic times. Another type, the mortuary pole, was set up alongside the grave of the deceased chief. Sometimes it actually constituted the grave, since the box containing the remains might be placed in a niche in the back of the pole, or was supported on top of it. The house-portal poles were a third type. They were built onto the front of the house and rose high above it, with a large opening, form- ing the doorway, at or near the base. Carved struc- tural members of the houses, posts, and sometimes the beams, form another category. Finally, some poles symbolized some special privilege. Among the Southern Kwakiutl and Nootka, the tall slender poles surmounted by a bird-like figure marked the house of the Beach-Owner—the chief who had in- herited the prerogative of being the first to invite important visitors to the village to a feast. Some authorities have disagreed as to which of these types are and which are not to be considered totem poles. The only reasonable solution is that all are, since they all consist of symbols which belonged to a particular lineage or family and referred to events in the lineage tradition giving the right to display such a symbol, and which could be displayed by the head of that lineage. Of course the crests used on either a memorial or mortuary pole were part of the lineage property, which both the deceased chief and his successor (who had the pole carved and set up) were entitled to use. The only variation to this consistent lineage-right pattern was a spe- cialized type of Haida pole associated with house building that sometimes included crests of both _ husband’s and wife’s lineages (Plates 43, 44). It was stated above that the crests displayed on ESS TE LEE ns ee ane 192 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST totem poles and elsewhere represented encounters — by clan or lineage ancestors with supernatural be- ings. In its broadest terms, the phrasing should have been that the crests represented important events in the family history, for the Indians be- lieved the legendary encounters with spirits and monsters to have been actual historical events. By accepting the native viewpoint, we can account for two specialized types of carvings, used chiefly by Southern Tlingit and Kaigani Haida. In one of these, figures of white men and European sailing vessels were carved. On one famous pole in the Alaskan Haida village of Old Kasaan, several per- sonages who obviously represent nineteenth-cen- tury Russian priests are to be seen. The significance of these figures is that Chief Skowl, for whom the pole was carved and set up, was inordinately proud of the fact that he had successfully resisted the attempts of the Russian priests to convert him and his people to their faith. This he regarded as an important phase of his life, and so the figures of the priests were carved to symbolize it. In addition, according to the Indian concept, by thus publicly referring to the “defeat” of the foreign priests by the chief, they were ridiculed. This brings out an- other use of the totem pole: to refer to success over a rival, and in this way to humiliate him. When, after an altercation, a chief managed to humiliate another publicly, that event was important enough to be recorded either contemporaneously or on the victors memorial pole. Under these circumstances the successful chief and his lineage had to be cer- tain enough of their own strength to have no fear of desperate attempts at revenge by the chief and lineage whose disgrace was thus advertised. ART 193 The few old poles still standing in their original positions give an impression of great age, with their surfaces weathered to a silvery gray, and bits of moss growing here and there in cracks and crevices. It therefore comes as a surprise to many people to discover that few of the individual poles are even a hundred years old. After all, the wet climate must destroy even the durable red cedar, or at least the base of a pole set in soggy ground, in less than a century. In reaction to this really not very surprising discovery, a few persons have interpreted this to mean that the custom of carving and setting up totem poles was of recent origin, a conclusion com- pletely incompatible with the facts. First of all, the earliest European explorers to visit the permanent (winter) villages saw various kinds of poles. Meares (1788) and Boit (1799) describe elaborately carved portal poles at the Nootka village of Clayoquot. Among other early voyagers, Marchand (1791) describes both portal and mortuary poles at the Haida village of Kiusta. In 1793 the Malaspina Expedition observed a tre- mendous Bear mortuary post set up at a chief's grave at Lituya Bay in Huna Tlingit territory. The second point of importance is that the most com- mon functions of the totem pole—aside from such specialized variants as the Haida combinations of husband’s and wife’s crests (not well understood by ethnologists) and the Southern Kwakiutl-Nootka Beach-Owner posts—are related to mortuary rites and/or memorials to the dead. It has been demonstrated that the northern Northwest Coast is only part of a larger area of distribution in which some kind of pole or post, . painted, plain, or with attached ornaments, was 194 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST erected at or near a grave in memory of and in honor of the dead. This practice prevailed over a wide area in northeastern Siberia, among the West- ern Eskimo in Alaska, and southward through the interior of northwest North America at least as far south as the Columbia Basin, where we have ar- chaeological records of cedar posts set up at the — head of prehistoric graves. On the coast this wide- spread ancient custom was elaborated until, long before first European contacts, the totem-pole com- plex was evolved. 9 SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONSHIPS The foregoing pages have summarized, in a very condensed fashion, the salient features of the cul- ture area that fringed the Pacific Coast of North America from Yakutat Bay to Trinidad Bay. The aim thus far has been to point out the principal patterns that distinguished the areal civilization and combined to set it off as an entity distinct from other aboriginal American cultures. We have dis- cussed most of the outstanding patterns: emphasis on woodworking; rectangular plank houses; spe- cialized varieties of dugout canoes and emphasis on water transportation; untailored (wrap-around or slipover) garments principally of plant fiber; bare- footedness; an economy built around fishing, with an elaborate series of types of fish traps, angling devices, and harpoons; sea-mammal hunting, im- portant both as food source and for prestige; rela- tively slight use of vegetal foods; lineage-local group basic sociological unit; rank-wealth correla- tion defining status, and emphasis on individual status in social affairs; slavery; elaboration of cere- monialism (potlatch, dancing societies, wealth dis- plays); and First Salmon and related types of cere- monies deriving from belief in immortality of game. At the same time, our hasty survey has touched on local variations of these primary patterns and specialized local developments. It will be worth- 196 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST while to review these traits and complexes of limited distribution, to define the subareas, or prov- inces, within the Northwest Coast area, to deter- mine the inferences to be gleaned from indications of relationships between these subdivisions and be- tween them and the neighboring culture areas. _ Beginning in the north, it is fairly clear that the Tlingit, Haida, the Tsimshian formed a sub-unit, or province, of areal culture, in which the northern divisions of the Kwakiutl, particularly the Haisla, participated in a marginal fashion—that is, these latter peoples shared some, but not all, of the dis- tinctive traits. Some of the chief features of this Northern Province were: “Joined” house construction (plates slotted to re- ceive planking) Rod-and-slat armor (rod armor in northwest Cali- fornia also) Porcupine-quill embroidery (infrequent) “Elbow” adze One-piece barbed harpoon points Hafted stone mauls (also Heiltsuk and Bella Coola ) V-shaped halibut hook Woman’s labret (also Haisla and Heiltsuk) Man’s breechclout Leggings (ceremonial) Blankets in twilled twining (if true that Tsim- shian formerly wove articles of “Chilkat blan- ket” technique ) Tobacco chewing with lime Matrilineal social organization with crests (also Haisla; Bella Bella in imperfect form ) Crest displays principal ceremonial SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONS — 197 Cremation (Haida only rarely ) Highly stylized representative art (also Haisla and Heiltsuk) Several of these traits immediately suggest Es- kimo-Aleut parallels: the elbow adze, the hafted stone maul, one-piece barbed harpoon heads (non- toggling), labrets (although the form varied), and rod-and-slat armor. When we add to this list a few sporadic but specific items such as Aleut-style atlatls (with unmistakable Tlingit carved decoration) col- lected at Cross Sound by the explorer Vancouver, the umiak seen by La Pérouse at Lituya Bay, and the occurrence of sinew-backed and compound bows among the Tlingit, the existence of Eskimo- Aleut influence cannot be overlooked. It is of no great consequence whether the material objects were captured in Tlingit raids or acquired through trade. There has been a tendency on the part of some students to attribute all Northwest Coast- Eskimo (and Aleut) parallels as representing cul- tural borrowings by the latter groups, but it is more reasonable to assume that the interchange flowed in both directions. Another line of influence in the Northern Prov- ince is indicated by such items as the man’s breech- clout, leggings, the occasional use of porcupine- quill embroidery, sinew-backed bows, bows with string guard, and cremation, all of which point to the Athapascans of the interior as their source. We know that certain Tlingit and Tsimshian groups— the Chilkat, the Stikine, and the Niska particularly —carried on considerable trade with the interior people, and were in a position to acquire not only | furs and placer copper, but manufactured objects = 198 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST and techniques as well. Although it is often as- sumed that the matrilineal organization of the Atha- pascans of the interior (Tena, Tanaina, Atna, Loucheux, Tsetsaut, Tahltan, Western Nahane, Babine, Chilcotin, Carrier), and of the Eyak, rep- resented coastal influence, the opposite may be true. Southward, the next province to set itself apart is that of the Wakashan-speaking (Kwakiutl and Nootka) groups. The isolated northernmost Salish, the Bella Coola, belong with this subarea cultur- ally, at least on the basis of data from the early historic and ethnographic horizons, although they retained a few traits reminiscent of the patterns of their southern kinsmen. Some of the unique traits and complexes of this cultural subdivision are: “D” adze (adjacent Coast Salish also ) Curved halibut hook (adjacent Coast Salish also) End-thrown sealing harpoons with finger rests or finger holes Sealskin floats for sea-mammal hunting Harpoon rest on canoe Whaling with lines and floats ( Nootka only) Ritual use of human corpses and skeletons Lineage-local group organization with bilateral bias Dancing societies (borrowed in Northern Prov- ince, and correlated with crests; borrowed by Salish to some extent) Movable masks, puppets and similar mechanical devices in ritual Despite the geographical distance separating the two regions, this list includes a lengthier series of features reminiscent of Eskimo-Aleut culture than a SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONS 199 the preceding. As Boas pointed out long ago, the end-thrown sealing harpoon with finger rests or finger holes is very probably a form related to the use of the atlatl. The use of sealskin floats, the har- poon rest, the whole Nootkan whaling complex, the ritual use of human remains, and the use of me- chanically operated masks and puppets and the like are all Eskimo-Aleut traits, and some of them, like whaling, are demonstrably old in Eskimo cul- ture, according to archaeological evidence. We may note, too, that for the most part these traits are of a different order from the Eskimo-Aleut elements of the Northern Province. Anyone might find a hafted stone maul, or an umiak, at an aban- doned or massacred Eskimo camp, and, impressed by the object’s obvious practicality, take it home to use and eventually even copy it. However, the complicated techniques and rituals of the whaling complex are obviously of a different order. They could only be learned and adopted after a long period of intimate contact. This is even more un- derstandable when one considers that the whaling rituals were jealously guarded secrets among both the Nootka and the Eskimo. Another point of inter- est, although its significance is not entirely clear, is that the Nootka actually practiced two different kinds of whaling: one, actual whale hunting with harpoons and floats, identical in technique to that of the Eskimo of the Bering Sea and parts of the Arctic coasts, and second, a ritual procedure corre- sponding closely to that associated with the lance hunting of the Aleut. The absence of the whaling complex among most of the Kwakiutl (except for certain groups in > Quatsino Sound) can only be attributed to its aban- anil 200 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST donment, because it is inconceivable that these peo- ple, so closely related culturally and linguistically to the Nootka, should not have practiced this art at one time. Furthermore, it is precisely the Kwa- kiutl who have retained the Eskimo-type harpoon rest on their hunting canoes. They also used seal- skin and seal-bladder floats when harpooning smaller sea mammals. Human remains played a part in magical rituals as well as in certain of their dancing society performances. In brief, then, we have a very definite indication that the Nootka, and undoubtedly their Kwakiutl relatives also, were at one time in close contact with people who participated in a considerable number of Eskimo and Aleut activities. The absence of these particular Eskimoid complexes among the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian suggests that these last-named three nations may have intruded on and disrupted a former very active route of com- munication and cultural influence. It is also interest- ing to note that there are no cultural features dis- tinctive of the Wakashan province that suggest influences from the adjacent interior, with the un- important exception of coiled basketry. We know that the latter was introduced among some Nootka groups within historical times as a result of contact with the Salish in the Fraser River canneries and the Puget Sound hop fields. A number of complexes shared by the northern and the Wakashan provinces are not found else- where in the area. These include the following: Sporadic use of pile dwellings Canoe type (except Nootka) Suspended-warp loom (adjacent Salish also) SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONS 201 Twined robe of vegetal fibers with three straight sides and curved lower edge Urine used as detergent Extreme rigidity of social ranking Kerfed, bent, and sewn (or pegged) wooden boxes Pre-European use of iron (in small quantities) The significance of the foregoing complexes varies. Construction of pile dwellings, for example, may reflect both superior engineering skill and the fact that in the rugged terrain of the northern coasts, extensive areas suitable for habitation were scarce. The type of loom and the form of robe woven on it apparently represented the basic pat- tern from which the highly specialized Chilkat blanket was developed. A number of Salish neigh- bors of the Kwakiutl and Nootka are reported to have made the kerfed and bent boxes. In all prob- ability, however, most of the boxes of this type that they possessed—like most of their Nootka-style ca- noes—were articles received in trade. The use of urine as a detergent, especially in view of its cere- monial associations, is unquestionably related to Eskimo-Aleut practices. The pre-European use of iron points in the same direction, although rather than representing diffusion of a cultural concept, it indicates trade connections with Asia through Eskimo and Aleut. Iron, in small quantities, used for cutting tools first appears in Eskimo culture in the horizon designated “Punuk,” after the St. Law- rence Island site where it was first identified, dated at about 1000 A.D. The iron tools that the first Euro- pean explorers like Captain Cook observed on the ~ Northwest Coast, and the obvious familiarity with 202 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST the material that led to its demand by the natives in exchange for their furs, mean that the trade connections continued up to the historic period. The significance of established trade channels is that such contacts between peoples facilitate transmis- sion of culture traits along with or in addition to the material objects bartered. Adjoining the Wakashan province on the east and south, we find that the Coast Salish, the Chi- nook, and the small enclaves of miscellaneous lin- guistic affiliation such as the Quileute-Chemakum, probably the Klatskanie, and the small tribelets of the central Oregon coast, formed a subdivision by virtue of sharing a series of distinctive modifications of general Northwest Coast pattern. Not all of the provincially distinctive traits were shared by all of the groups, but there is a sufficiently high degree of correlation to link them all together. The Salish- Chinook province is distinguished by the following: Mat-lodge temporary dwellings Coiled basketry (recent among some Nootka) Woman’s basketry cap (truncated conical form) Dog-wool blankets and the double-bar loom (Gulf of Georgia and Straits of Juan de Fuca only ) Closely twined wool blankets (“nobility blan- kets” ) Chinook-type head deformation Loosely defined system of social rank Spirit-canoe ceremony Guardian spirit singing Abbreviated version of Nootka dancing society, with dog-eating Small steam sweatlodge Se i a es — SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONS 203 Most of the items in the foregoing list are ob- viously interior traits and complexes. The fact that there are so many may reasonably be interpreted to indicate that the Coast Salish and perhaps the Chinook retained a great deal of their ancient cul- tural heritage after they entered the coastal region. The mat lodge that they used as a temporary shel- ter at fishing camps and the like, was, of course, one of the very common house types east of the Cas- cades. Steam sweating has an extensive inland dis- tribution. Coiled basketry, again, was widespread in the Plateau region, and extended through the Great Basin into central California. The type of woman's basketry cap had a widespread distribu- tion in the Plateau. Even though the dog-hair blan- ket and the double-bar loom on which it was woven had a limited distribution in the province, it ap- pears to be a significant feature, because the blanket itself was woven in the same checkerwork tech- nique as the rabbitskin robe so common throughout the Plateau and the Great Basin. It is even possible, as was suggested in an interesting paper published some years ago, that this Salish weaving complex may ultimately be derived via the Plains and South- west from a Mesoamerican center of origin, pre- sumably with the rabbitskin robe as the connecting link. Both the loosely organized social structure that conforms only superficially to the basic Northwest Coast pattern of graded social status and the com- paratively simple and unelaborate ceremonial pat- terns, are reminiscent of Plateau and Great Basin cultures. Here, of course, appraisals must be made on the basis of degree rather than presence or ab- — sence of specific concrete elements, but nonetheless, 204 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST it seems quite clear that insofar as Salish-Chinook — society and ritualism vary from coastal standards of rigidity and elaboration, they resemble patterns more at home east of the Cascades. Incidentally, it is worth noting that the heritage, or borrowing, of interior features in almost every instance indicates linkages with the Interior Salish and Sahaptin — groups, and in this respect differs from the sugges- tions of interior influence on the three northernmost nations whose cultural ties appear to be with the Northern Athapascan divisions. There are very few traits and complexes peculiar to this culture province and that of the Wakashan- speaking peoples aside from those attributable to distribution of material objects through trade, such as canoes and wooden boxes made by Nootka and Kwakiutl, and Nootkan hats, and a few complexes like Nootkan whaling with all its ritual accompani- ments and certain ceremonial patterns. The princi- pal inter-province parallel is one connected with house construction, in which the framework of the house was structurally separate from the horizontal removable planking of the walls. It appears to have been only the Coast Salish and Chemakum-Quileute in their areal subdivisions who used this type of structure. The Chinook and the central Oregon coast groups apparently did not. The potlatch is the principal complex shared by all three provinces just described, but lacking in the remainder of the area. Northwestern California, that is to say, the focus of culture along the lower Klamath, together with the culturally marginal Athapascan groups of south- west Oregon and the adjoining northwest corner of California, formed the fourth distinctive subdivision SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONS 205 of Northwest Coast culture. While we have seen that basically Northwest Coast patterns underlie the civilization of the lower Klamath, the develop- ments there were in many respects the most aber- rant of the entire area. Some specific traits patently reflect central California influences. Others are more difficult to identify as to source. We may list the outstanding distinctive features: Men’s house-sweathouse complex with direct fire sweating | Wooden pillow and stool Plank dwelling with three-pitch roof and central pit Specialized canoe type Woman's basketry cap Straight adze Grinding and leaching of acorns Featherwork decoration (woodpecker scalps, etc. ) Wealth-display ceremonials and World Renewal rites The first two items mentioned as regional pecu- liarities have a most remarkable distribution, the significance of which cannot be interpreted at pres- ent. The entire complex associated with the con- struction of a large sweathouse, direct fire sweat- ing, draft-exit tunnel, and use as a men’s house is strongly reminiscent of the Western Eskimo kashim. The complex likewise has a number of similarities to the Southwestern kiva. It is impossible to deter- mine as yet whether or not these three institutions actually have any genetic relationship. The second item—the use of wooden pillows and stools—is again reminiscent of Eskimo culture, al- 206 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST though the specific forms are not identical. If more regional elements had an identical distribution, we might be justified in regarding them as representing tag ends, as it were, of influence from the north. The canoe type characteristic of this province seems to be the local elaboration of the so-called “shovel- nose canoe,” widely, if sporadically, distributed over the coastal area wherever river travel was frequent. The type of woman’s basketry cap, the entire acorn complex and its economic importance, featherwork decoration, tobacco smoking in the tubular pipe were all widespread in aboriginal central California. Our hurried analysis of regional specializations within the Northwest Coast area has emphasized the fact that four fairly clearly defined provinces existed—three of these, it appears, reveal cultural relationships of at least moderate strength with the non-coastal cultures of the adjacent regions. The Northern Province also shows traces of superficial influence from southwestern Alaska. At first glance this situation is not particularly noteworthy; after all, it is what one normally expects to find. People acquire new traits and complexes from groups with whom they have the most contact. The principal significance arises in the first place from the fact that the Wakashan subarea has been demonstrated to have few or no traces of direct interior influence, and second, it includes a series of features that very strongly suggest close cultural linkages to Eskimo- Aleut, from whom the groups in this area are now separated by several hundreds of miles and a num- ber of alien nations. The most logical inference to be drawn from this situation is that the earliest inhabitants of the north- ern coasts—the people with whom the ancestors of SUBAREAS AND CULTURAL RELATIONS 207 the modern Kwakiutl and Nootka came into contact (or who may have been the ancestors of the Kwa- kiutl and Nootka )—possessed a culture, if not spe- cifically Eskimo, at least Eskimoid in its essential features. Theirs must have been the southernmost extension of the highly specialized and ancient cir- cumpolar tradition. That is, the ancestral culture of the Northwest Coast, whether it was specifically “Eskimo” with all the cultural and ethnic connota- tions of the term, or, as may have been the case, was a slightly watered-down derived version, none- theless was based on the essential patterns of an- cient Western Eskimo civilization: it was a culture oriented toward the sea, with an emphasis on navi- gation and the hunting of sea mammals, and a tradition of neat craftsmanship in working wood and bone. The recent discoveries of an archaeologi- cally early pattern in the lower Fraser region that is distinguished from the successive later levels precisely by possession of articles definitely Eskimo in type, such as one-piece toggling harpoon heads, bone foreshafts, an abundance of ground slate im- plements, as well as definitely Eskimo-type labrets, seems to corroborate this hypothesis. If the Eski- moid type of the original Northwest Coast culture is eventually proved, it will go a long way toward explaining the uniqueness of the Northwest Coast in relation to aboriginal cultures of ethnographic times in western North America. _ An older interpretation of Northwest Coast cul- ture as essentially an extension of that of northeast Asia, contacts with which were disrupted by “the intrusion of the Eskimo into western Alaska” no longer can be sustained. Investigations of recent. years in Eskimo and Aleut archaeology demonstrate 208 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST that those people have occupied the shores of Be- ring Strait, southwest Alaska, and the Aleutian Is- lands continuously since before the birth of Christ. The Asiatic influences that reached the Northwest Coast must have been transmitted by Eskimo and Aleut, or else formed a part of the ancestral sea- hunting culture. In fine, all the light of modern evidence fits the hypothesis that the source of the Northwest Coast civilization, as we know it from modern ethnography, was a derivation of that of the ancient Eskimo. Those old patterns were modi- fied and adapted to the richer and milder environ- ment in the course of time, and further modified, and eventually enriched and elaborated to new heights by the ancestors of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian, and Salishan-speaking peoples as well, who worked their way down to the coast from the interior. BIBLIOGRAPHY The literature on the aboriginal cultures of the Northwest Coast is both abundant and widely scattered. For conven- ience of reference, it may be broken down into two principal categories: early historic accounts, that is, descriptions of natives made by early explorers and fur traders; the second, recent studies made by ethnologists. The early records, al- though for the most part limited to observations (since with rare exceptions the writers could not converse with the na- tives at any length but reported only what they could see), are often lively and vivid. The recent descriptions, based on questioning Indian informants about customs, many of which have been discarded and must be reconstructed from mem- ory, are more complete, but lack the vitality of firsthand observations. Some of the best-known and more accessible of the early historic accounts are: Cook, James, and James King, A voyage to the Pacific Ocean, undertaken by the command of His Majesty, for making discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere . . . in the years 1776 to 1780. 3 vols. Various editions. First description of the Nootka. Dixon, George, A voyage round the world, but more par- ticularly to the North-West Coast of America; performed in 1785-1788, in the “King George” and “Queen Char- lotte,’ [by] Captain Portlock and Dixon, London, 1789. First description of the Haida. Howay, F. W. (ed.), Voyages of the “Columbia” to the Northwest Coast 1787-1790 and 1790-1793, Massachu- setts Historical Society, Collections, Boston, Massachusetts, vol. 79, 1941. Jewitt, John R., A narrative of the adventures and sufferings of John R. Jewitt; . . . during a captivity of nearly three years among the Savages of Nootka Sound; with an ac- 210 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST count of the manners, mode of living, and religious opin- ions of the natives. Many editions. Middletown, Connecti- cut, 1815. A very detailed description of native life, and livelier reading than many novels! Mackenzie, Alexander, Voyages from Montreal, on the River St. Lawrence through the Continent of North America, to the Frozen and Pacific Oceans; in the years 1789 and 1793. With a preliminary account of the rise, progress, and present state of the fur trade of that country, London, 1801. Mackenzie crossed the Rockies and the Cascades in 1793, coming down the Bella Coola River. His is the first detailed description of the Bella Coola, although Van- couver had surveyed Dean and Burke channels the same ear, oe John, Voyages made in the years 1788 and 1789, from China to the North West Coast of America, to which are prefixed an introductory narrative of a voyage per- formed in 1786, from Bengal, in the ship Nootka; Ob- servations on the probable existence of a North West pas- sage, etc., 2 vols., London, 1791. Vancouver, George, A voyage of discovery to the North Pa- cific ocean and round the world, performed in the years 1790-1795, 3 vols. Various editions. Descriptions of Nootka, and brief descriptions of vari- ous other groups: Coast Salish, Kwakiutl, etc. Aside from a few works on Northwest Coast art style, two of which are cited below, there are no general popular works on the area, nor, strange to say, is there anything like the number of popular books describing the cultures of the in- dividual groups such as there are on tribes of the Plains or the Southwest. The principal honorable exception to this statement is found in a series of brief but good descriptive accounts prepared for school use by the Department of Edu- cation of British Columbia (Victoria, B.C.): the “British Columbia Heritage Series: Our Native Peoples” (vol. 1, In- troduction to our Native Peoples; vol. 2, Coast Salish; vol. 4, Haida; vol. 5, Nootka; vol. 6, Tsimshian; vol. 7, Kwakiutl; vol. 10, Bella Coola [other volumes in the series treat of groups of the interior]). There is a very extensive profes- sional literature in anthropological journals and series, but even there most of the works deal with some particular trait or complex—houses, weaving, potlatches, and the like; there are relatively few reasonably complete descriptions of any single native nation. A list of Bobbi and monographs, most BIBLIOGRAPHY 211 of which should be available in any large public library, follows: Boas, Franz, The social organization and secret societies of the Kwakiutl Indians, based on personal observations and on notes made by George Hunt, U.S. National Museum Report for 1895, Washington, D.C., 1897. Davis, Robert Taylor, William Reagh, and Alvin Lustig, Na- tive Arts of the Pacific Northwest, Stanford Art Series, Stanford, California, 1949. Drucker, Philip, The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes, Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 144, Washington, D.C., 1951. Garfield, Viola E., Tsimshian Clan and Society, University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 3, Seattle, Washington, 1939. Gunther, Ema, Klallam ethnography, University of Wash- ington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 1, no. 5, Seattle, Washington, 1927. Halliday, William, Potlatch and totem, Toronto, 1935. An interesting but somewhat administratively slanted account by a man who was Indian Agent for the Southern Kwakiutl for many years. Hill-Tout, Charles, British North America: The Far West. The Home of the Salish and Déné, London, 1907. Inverarity, Robert Bruce, Art of the Northwest Coast In- dians, Berkeley and Los Angeles, California, 1950. Kroeber, A. L., Handbook of the Indians of California, Bu- reau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 78, Washington, D.C., 1925. (Chapters on Yurok, Karok, and Hupa In- di ans. ) Mcllwraith, T. F., The Bella Coola Indians. 2 vols., Toronto, 1948. Niblack, Albert P., The Coast Indians of southern Alaska and northern British Columbia, U.S. National Museum Report for 1888, pp. 225-386, Washington, D.C., 1890. Olson, Ronald L., The Quinault Indians, University of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 6, no. 1, Seattle, Washington, 1936. Ray, Verne F., Lower Chinook ethnographic notes, Univer- _ sity of Washington Publications in Anthropology, vol. 7, no. 2, Seattle, Washington, 1938. Smith, Marion W., The Puyallup-Nisqually, Columbia Uni- versity Contributions to Anthropology, vol. 32, New York, 1940. Swan, James G., The Northwest Coast, or Three Years’ Resi- dence in Washington Territory, New York, 1857. 212 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST For those interested in ethnological monographs, many, | on individual tribes, will be found in the following institu- tional series: American Museum of Natural History, especially in the Memoirs series, reporting the results of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition t chie y on Tlingit, Haida, and Southern Kwakiutl ). ~- Bureau of American Ethnology (on Tlingit, Tsimshian, Southern Kwakiutl, Nootka, northwestern California groups ). University of California (northwestern California groups, Coast Salish, Northern Kwakiutl [Haisla and Wikeno]). University of Washington (Coast Salish, Chinook, Nootka [Makah]). National Museum of Canada (Tsimshian). Most monographs in the foregoing series give bibliogra- hies in which additional serail peg be faba In eo dition, a very useful compendium, the Ethnographic Bibli- ography of North America, by G. P. Murdock (third edition), Human Relations Area Files, New Haven, Connecticut, 1960, lists a great many books, short papers, etc., on the areal cultures. INDEX Aborigines, Australian, 3, 190 Acorns, grinding and leach- ing of, 54, 67, 205 Adornment, personal, 91-92 Adzes, 57-60, 65, 67, 197, 198, 205 Agriculture, 1, 8-9 Ainu, 27 Albino-deer hunting, 53 Aleuts, 48, 100, 197 Algonkian linguistic stock, 17-18, 19 Alsea, 19 Angling, 39 Animals, belief in immortal- ity of, 154-55, 195 domesticated, 1, 105 game, 5 marine, 3 rituals for, 156-57 Anthropology, physical, 23- 27 Appliqué designs, 90 Archaeological studies, 20- 23 Armor, 97-98, 100 Arms, 93-97 Arrow points, 66 Arrows, 93 Art, 177-94 Athapascan linguistic stock, _ 11, 12, 19 Australian aborigines, 3, 190 Backrests, 81, 185 Barefootedness, 82, 195 Bark (see Cedarbark) Basketmaking, 62-63, 99- 102 Basketry caps, 82, 100, 202, 205 Bathing rituals, 92, 157-59, 174, 176 Bear hunting, 5, 50-51 Beheading of victims, 148- Bella Bella, 13, 120, 122 Bella Coola, art, 180 burial customs, 175-76 houses, 68—70 linguistic affiliation, 14 marriage customs, 145, 146 physical anthropology, 24-27 potlatch, 135 religious beliefs, 153-54, 160 social organization, 125, 126 weapons, 93-94 Belts, 89 Bering, Vitus, 28 122, 214 Berries, 3, 54 Bilateral social organization, 107, 120-31 Birth, care of mother at time of, 173-74 Blades, 57-58, 59, 65, 66, 67 Blanketmaking, 83-89 Boas, Franz, 24-25, 27, 199 Bone, use of, 66 Bottom-fishing, 39-41 Bowls, 67 Bows and arrows, 51, 93-94 Boxmaking, 77-79, 180, 201 Breechcloth, 81, 196, 197 Bride price, 143-47 Burial of dead, 175-76 Button blanket, go Camas, 54 Cannibal Spirit dance, 165- _ 66 Canoe navigation, 21, 22, 72, 195 Canoes, dugout, 72, 73-76, 195 manufacture of, 60-61, 72-77 sailmaking for, 62, 77 sea-hunting, 42 shovelnose, 74-76, 206 whaling, 45-49 Capes, cedarbark, 62, 82-83 Caps, basketry, 82, 100, 202, 205 Carving, 40, 72, 78, 81, 177— 94 Caste system, 124 Cedar wood, use of, 61-62 Cedarbark, importance of, 61-63 preparation of, 62-63 use of, in basket weaving, INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST 62-63, 99-103 in matmaking, 62-64, 98-99 _in robe making, 62, 83- 89 in sailmaking, 62, 77 Ceremonials, 163-71 Cannibal Spirit dance, 165-66 crests used in, 110-14, 119-20, 125-29, 132, 142, 191, 196, 198 Nutlam, 167-68 The-Ones-Returned-from- Heaven, 167-68 potlatch, 131-43, 204 Shamans’ Society, 166-68 195; Wealth-display, 53, go- | 91, 156, 170-71, 195, 205 00 White 170 World Renewal, 156, 163- 66, 169-70, 205 (See also Rituals) Chemakum, language and cultural affiliation, 17- 18 Chieftainship, 107-8, 115, 118-29, 132 Children, ear piercing of, 141 head deformation of, 93, 202 tattooing of, 92-93, 141- 42 Chilkat blankets, 84-86, 88, 89, 185-86, 196 Chinook, art, 178 canoes, 76 clothing, 82 Deerskin dance, 113, INDEX Chinook (cont'd) cultural relationships, 202-4 head deformation, 93 household utensils, 66 language and cultural di- visions, 18-19 marriage customs, 146—47 musical instruments, 103 potlatch, 136 religious beliefs, 154 tobacco used by, 105 Chisels, 57-58 Clans (see Social organiza- tion ) Cleansing rituals, 92, 157- 59, 174, 176 Climate, 3-4 Clothing (see Dress styles) Ciubhouses, 71-72 Clubs, 93, 96 Coast Salish, art, 178, 189 canoes, 73, 74, 75, 76 cultural relationships, 202-3 fishing techniques, 36, 40 houses, 70 hunting techniques, 49- 50, 51 musical instruments, 103 social organization, 125- 28 tribal and dialectic divi- sions, 17 Coast Tsimshian, fishing techniques, 37, 39 houses, 69 seal hunting, 45 social organization, 116- 18 tribal and dialectic divi- sions, 12-14 215 Coiled basketry, 101-2, 200, 202 Combs, 92 Commoners, 129 Competitive potlatch, 137- 40 Confederacies, 107, 122-23 Cook, Captain James, 23, 28-29, 59-60, 178, 201 Cooking, 54-55 Coos, 19 Coppers, 137, 143, 185 Corpses, human, ritual use of, 157, 165, 198, 199 Cradles, 79, 185 Cremation, 175, 197 Crest designs, 40, 69, 72, 76, 78, go, 181, 185, 186 face painting of, g2 tattooing of, 92, 141-42 on totem poles, 189-94 Crests, ceremonial use of, 110-14, 119-20, 125- 29, 132, 142, 191, 196, 124, 125-26, 198 Crooked knives, 58—59 Cross-cousin marriage, 145 Cuirasses, 97-98 Cultivation of tobacco, 1, 9, - 105 Cultural patterns, 9-20 and subareas, 195-208 Curing by shamans, 159-60 Cycle of life, 173-76 Daggers, 93-96 Dance aprons, 84, 86, 8g, 186 Dance shirts, 84, 86, 185 Dancing societies, 135, 166—_ 69, 195, 200 216 Dancing societies (cont'd) (See also Ceremonials ) Deadfall traps, 50-53 Death rites, 175-76 Deer, belief in immortality of, 156 hunting of, 5, 50-51 Deformation of heads, 93, 202 Deities, 154 Dentalia shells, 18-19, 31, 90 Detergent, urine used as, 92, 201 Dialectic divisions, 11-19 Dice, use of, 104 Dip nets, 35 Disease, 14, 129 curing of, 159-61 Dishes, 55, 60, 61, 66, 67, 180, 186 Dixon, George, 178 Dog eating, 168, 202 Dog-wool robes, 65, 87, 88, 202 Dogs, domesticated, 1, 65, 87, 105 Double-bar loom, 87, 202 Dress styles, 81-92 basketry caps, 82, 100, 202, 205 breechcloth, 81, 196, 197 button blanket, 90 Chilkat blankets, 84-86, 88, 89, 185-86, 196 dance aprons, 84, 86, 89, 186 dance shirts, 84, 86, 185 headgear, go leggings, 84, 86, 89-90, 196, 197 nobility blankets, 88, 89, INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST 202 personal adornment, g1-— 92 rain capes, 62, 82 robes, 83-89 Drums, 79, 103 Duck-down robes, 87 Dugout canoes, 72, 73-76, 195 Duncan, William, 13 Dwellings, 67-72, 196, 200, 204 Dyes, 85-86, 89 Ear pendants, 91 Ear piercing of children, 141 East India Company, 28, 30 Elk hunting, 5, 50-51 Embroidery, 81, 85, 90, 196, 197 English contacts, 28-33 Eskimo influence, 21 Eskimo-Aleut influence, 195- 208 European contacts, 28-33 Extended families, 108, 120— 31 Face painting, 92 Face-saving potlatch, 136- 37 Fauna, 4 Feast dishes, 60, 67, 79-81, 180, 186 Featherwork decoration, 53, 91, 170-71, 205, 206 Feuds and wars, 147-48 Fighting knives, 93-95 Fire, use of, as woodworking tool, 60 Fire-sweating, 71, 205 Firearms, 31, 93, 94, 129 INDEX First Fruits rite, 156 First Salmon ceremony, 156- 57, 195 Fishhooks, 39-41, 60, 196, 198 Fishing, 3, 6-7, 21, 22, 35- 43, 195 Flattening of infants’ heads, 93, 202 Foods, acorns, 54, 67, 206 berries, 3, 54 camas, 54 cooking and serving of, 53-55 vegetable, 3, 53, 195 Forehead masks, go Fort Rupert Confederacy, 123 potlatches in, 137-40 Fur-seal hunting, 45 Fur trading, 28-33, 128-29 Gaffs, 39, 41 Gambling, 104 Game animals, belief in im- mortality of, 154-55, 195 land, 5 marine, 3 Garments (see Dress styles) Geography of Northwest Coast, 3-4 Gift giving, in marriage, 144-46 in potlatch, 131-43 Gill nets, 36 Girls, seclusion of, at time of puberty, 174-75 tattooing of, 93 Grave-house, 175 Grinding and leaching of acorms, 54, 67, 205 217 Guardian-spirit singing, 169, 202 Guardian spirits, 151, 157- 61 Hafted mauls, 57, 58, 67, 196, 199 Haida, art, 192-93 burial customs, 175-76 canoes, 72, 75, 76 clothing, 82, 83, 100 cultural relationships, 196, 200 dialectic divisions, 12 fishing techniques, 37, 39, 40-41 household utensils, 78 houses, 67-68 musical instruments, 103 physical anthropology, 24, 177, 179-81, 25 potlatch, 135, 140-42, 143, 176 religious beliefs, 153-54, 156-60 seal hunting, 45 social organization, 109— 14 tattooing, 92-93 tobacco used by, 105 wars, 148 Hair seal, belief in immortal- ity of, 155-56 hunting of, 42-45 Haisla, burial customs, 175 dialect, 13 social organization, 111, 119 Half-leggings, go Half-loom, 88, 201 Half marriage, 147 109, 218 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Halibut hooks, 39-41, 60, 196, 198 Harpoons, 21, 37-39, 42-48, 197, 198 Hats, basketry, 82, 100, 202, 205 Head deformation, 93, 202 Head pressers, 62, 93 Headdress masks, go Heiltsuk, 13-15, 146 Helmets, 97, 178, 184 Herring, belief in immortal- ity of, 155 fishing for, 3, 6, 35, 41 rituals for, 157 Herring rake, 41 Hooks used in fishing, 39-41, 60, 196, 198 Horn, use of, 65, 66 House fronts, design painting on, 69, 185 House posts, 134 Household furnishings, 61- 63, 77-81 Houses, construction of, 67— 72, 196, 201, 204 Hudson’s Bay Company, 13, 32,33, °123,)'137 Human remains, ritual use of, 157, 165, 198, 199 Hunting, land, 5, 8, 49-53 sea, 3, 21, 22-23, 42-49, 195 Hupa, ceremonials, 161, 163, 169 houses, 71 linguistic affiliation, 19 Immortality of game, belief in, 154-55, 195 Indemnities, payment of, 149 Infants’ heads, flattening of, 93, 202 Intragroup marriages, 146 Iron, brought by traders, 29-30 use of, in toolmaking, 59— 60, 201 Joined house construction, 68, 196 Jumping dance, 170 Kaigani, 12 Karok, ceremonials, 156, 161, 163, 169 houses, 71 linguistic affiliation, 19 Kerfed and bent boxes, 77— 79, 103, 201 Killing of slaves, 130-31 Klatskanie, linguistic affilia- tion, 18 Knives, crooked, 58—59 fighting, 93-95 shell, 42, 46, 66-67 slate, 66 — Kwakiutl, art, 178, 180-81, 187, 191 canoes, 72, 75, 76 ceremonials, 163-69 clothing, 82-83, 91 cultural relationships, 196-97, 199-200, 207 fishing techniques, 36-41 head deformation, 93 household utensils, 78-80 houses, 67-68, 69, 70 hunting techniques, 51 marriage customs, 145, 146-47 physical anthropology, 24, 25 INDEX Kwakiutl (cont'd) potlatch, 135, 136, 140 religious beliefs, 154, 157, 160 seal hunting, 42-45 social organization, 122, 123 tools, 58-60, 67 tribal and dialectic divi- sions, 13-16 wars, 147 Kwalhiokwa, 18 Labrets, 91, 197 Ladles, 55, 65, 66 Lahal, 104 Land, 1-9 Land hunting, 5, 8, 49-53 Languages, 9-19 Leggings, 84, 86, go, 196, 197 Lekwiltok, 15 Life cycle, 173-76 Lineage social organization, 107-21, 152-53, 195 Linguistic divisions, 9-19 Lodges, mat, 70, 202, 203 semi-subterranean, 72 sweat, 71-72, 202 Looms, 83-90, 200, 201, 203 Mackenzie, Alexander, 14, 27, 31, 69 Makah, 16, 17, 18 Malaspina Expedition, 193 Marmot hunting, 53 Marriage, 144-47 Masks, headdress, go movable, 165, 198, 199 portrait, 184 Masset, 12 Mat-covered 71-72 sweatlodges, 219 Mat lodges, 70, 202, 203 Matmaking, 62-64, 98-99 Matrilineal social organiza- tion, 107—21, 196, 198 Mattresses, 62, 81 Mauls, 57, 58, 67, 196, 199 Meares, John, 193 Medicinemen, 159-61 Mirrors, 91-92 Moccasins, 82 Moieties, 107—20 Mortuary poles, 134, 142, 175, 176, 191, 192, 193-94 Mountain-goat horn, uses of, 52, 55, 65, 66 Mountain-goat wool, uses of, 52, 65, 84-87, 89 Mountain-sheep horn, uses of, 65-66, 103 Mourning, 134-35, 176 Musical instruments, 103-4 Mussel-shell knives, 42, 46 Nations, 9-20 Natural resources, 1-9 Navigation, canoe, 21, 22, 72-73, 195 Necklaces, go Nets, fisaing, 35-37 New Fire ceremony, 156 Niska, 37, 41, 116-17 Nitinat-Makah, 16 Nobility blankets, 88, 89, 202 Nobles, 124, 127 Nohuntsitk, 14 Nootka, art, 178, 180, 186, 188-89, 191, 193 canoes, 73-74, 76 ceremonials, 163, 168 clothing, 82, 83, 91 220 Nootka (contd) cultural relationships, 198, 201, 204, 207 fishing techniques, 38-41 head deformation, 93 household utensils, 78 houses, 68, 70 hunting techniques, 51 marriage customs, 145, 146 potlatch, 135, 136 religious beliefs, 154-60 seal hunting, 42, 44 social organization, 120- 22 tools, 60 tribal and dialectic divi- sions, 16 wars, 147 whaling, 45, 48 Nootka Controversy, 29 Northwest Coast, culture, 1, 3 description of, 3-9 history, 28-33 prehistory, 20-23 Northwest Company, 31 Nose pins, 91 Nutlam ceremonial, 167-68 Ogden, Peter Skene, 32 Oil dishes, 67 Olachen, 3, 6, 35, 41, 54; 73 belief in immortality of, 155 rituals for, 157 Ones-Returned-from-Heaven ceremonial, 167—68 Paddles, 76, 185 Painting, 69, 72, 76, 78, 181-86 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST face, 91 Patrilineal social organiza- tion, 107, 123 Penutian linguistic stock, 13, 18 Perez, Juan, 28 Personal adornment, g1—92 Phratries, 12, 116 Physical anthropology, 23- 27 Pikes, 51, 52, 93, 94 Pile dwellings, 69, 201 Pillows, 62, 205 Pipes, 67, 105, 179-80, 206 Pitfall traps, 50-51 Porcupine-quill embroidery, 81, 90, 196, 197 Porpoise hunting, 3, 42-44 Portrait masks, 184 Potato growing, 53 Potlatch, 131-43, 204 competitive, 137-40 coppers used in, 137, 143, 185 face-saving, 136 Prehistory, 20-23 Priesthood, 157-58 Provinces and cultural rela- tionships, 195-208 Puberty of girl, seclusion at time of, 174-75 Puppets, 164, 198, 199 Quileute, language and cul- tural patterns of, 18 Rain capes, 62, 82-83 Rainfall, 4 Rank-status social organiza- tion, 124-31, 201 Rattles, 103-4, 160, 185 Religion, 151-61 ———— a INDEX Rituals, cleansing, 92, 157- 59, 174, 176 death, 175-76 First Fruits, 156 First Salmon, 156-57, 195 for fish and game, 156-57 human remains used in, 157, 165, 198, 199 New Fire, 156 whaling, 47-49, 199 (See also Ceremonials ) Robe making, 83-90 Rod-and-slat armor, 97-98, 196 Russian-American Company, 29 Russian contacts, 28-33 Sailmaking, 62, 77 Salish, art, 178, 189 burial customs, 176 ceremonials, 169 cultural relationships, 198, 200-3 head deformation, 93 houses, 70 marriage customs, 145-47 physical anthropology, 25-26 potlatch, 135-36 religious beliefs, 154, 160 social organization, 120- 21 textiles made by, 63, 65, 87-89 _ tribal and dialectic divi- sions, 16-18 (See also Coast Salish) Salmon, belief in immortal- ity of, 154-57 fishing for, 3, 6, 35-39 Scalping, 148-49 221 Sea hunting, 3, 21, 22-23, 42-49, 195 Sea otter, 28-29, 32, 45 Sealskin floats, 44-46, 198- 200 Seats, 62, 81, 205 Semi-subterranean lodges, 72 Shamanism, 159-61 Shamans’ Society, 166-68 Shellfish digging, 41 Shovelnose canoe, 206 Simpson, Sir George, 32 Singing, guardian-spirit, 169, 202 Siuslaw, 19 Skidegate, 12 Slate blades, 66 Slate carving, 179-80 Slave-killer weapons, 96 Slave trading, 18, 31 Slaves, 124, 130-31 killing of, 130 Sleeping compartments, 68, 74-76, 69 Sleight-of-hand tricks, 164 Slings, 93-95 Smelt, 3, 6, 35 rituals for, 157 Smoking habit, 105, 179, 206 Snares, 51 Social organization, 107-31 bilateral, 107, 120-31 chieftainship, 107-8, 113, 115, 118-29, 132 commoners, 124, 125-26, 129 confederacies, 107, 122- 23 extended families, 108, 120-31 . lineage, 107-21, 195 222 Social organization (cont'd) matrilineal, 107-21, 196, 198 moieties, 107—20 nobles, 124, 127 patrilineal, 107, 123 rank-status, 124-31, 201 slaves, 124, 130-31 Somehulitk, 14 Soul catchers, 185 Southem Kwakiutl, groups, 13-16 Spanish contacts, 28-33 Spirits, 151, 157-61 Spoons, 42, 52, 55, 65-66, 181, 186 Stage effects, 164 Steam-sweating, 71-72, 203 tribal ceremonial, Stoneworking, 8, 66, 67, 186 — Stools, 62, 81, 205 Storage boxes, 78-79, 185 Subareas and cultural rela- tionships, 195-208 Supreme Being, belief in, 151, 153 Suspended-warp loom, 85, 88, 200 Sweathouses, 71-72, 205 Sweatlodges, 71-72, 202 Tablecloths, 55, 62, 81 Tagis, language and cultural affiliation, 11 Tambourine drums, 103 Tattooing, 92-93, 141-42 Technology, 57-104 Terrain, 3-5 Textiles (see Weaving) Thunderbird carving, 187 Tillamook, 17 Tlingit, art, 177, 187-88, INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST 190 burial customs, 175 canoes, 72, 76 clothing, 81-84, 86, 100 cultural relationships, 197—200 fishing techniques, 39-40 household utensils, 65 houses, 68, 69 hunting techniques, 49 musical instruments, 103 physical anthropology, 23-24 - potlatch, 133-34, 141, 143, 176 relations with traders, 32— 33 religious beliefs, 153, 156— 60 social organization, 108— 18 tools, 57, 58 tribal divisions and lin- guistic affiliations, 11 wars and feuds, 148, 149 weapons 94-97 Tobacco chewing with lime, 105, 196 Tobacco growing, 1, 9, 105 Tobacco pipes, 67, 105, 179-80, 206 Tolowa-Tututni, 19 Tools, 56-61 Totem poles, 180, 184, 187, 189-93 Trade blankets, go Trading, 28-33, 105, 128- 29, 142, 197 Transportation, 6-7, 21, 22, 72, 195 Traps, fishing, 35-37 hunting, 50-52 — INDEX 223 Traps (cont'd) in dyes, 85-86 underwater, 51 Vancouver, Captain George, Trees, 4, 61 23, 31, 197 Tribes (see Social organiza- Vegetable foods, 3, 53, 195 tion ) Vegetation, 4 Tsimshian, art, 177, 185, 190 burial customs, 175, 176 ceremonials, 168 clothing, 81, 83, 84, 100 cultural relationships, 196-200 household utensils, 66 hunting techniques, 49 . musical instruments, 103 physical § anthropology, 24, 25 potlatch, 134, 139, 143, 176 religious beliefs, 154, 160 social organization, 109, 111, 116-19 subdivisions and dialects, 12-14 tools, 57 wars, 148 weapons, 93-94 weaving techniques, 84 (See also Coast Tsim- shian ) Tumplines, 89 Twined basketry, 101-2 Two-bar loom, 87, 202 Umiaks, 76, 197, 199 Umpqua 19 Underwater hunting traps, ; 51 Unhafted mauls, 57, 58, 67 United States Exploring Ex- pedition, 179 Urine, use of, as detergent, 92, 201 Wakashan style of art, 177- 78, 187, 189 Wakes, 175 Warclubs, 93, 96 Wars and feuds, 147-48 Water buckets, 79 Water transportation, 6, 21, 22, 72, 195 Waterfowl hunting, 51 Wealth, 128-29 Wealth-display ceremonials, 53, 90-91, 156, 170-71, 195, 205 Weapons, 93-97 Weaving, of baskets, 62-63, 99-103 of mats, 62-64, 98-100 of robes, 83-90 Whaling, 3, 16, 45-49, 198- 200 Whaling rituals, 47-49, 155- 56, 199 Whistles, 104 White Deerskin dance, 170 Wikeno, 4, 122, 166 Women, as cooks, 53-55 and decorative arts, 186 as food gatherers, 42, 54 lying-in period of, 173-75 personal adornment of, g1—92 as shamans, 160-61 Wood, trees used for, 61 Woodpecker-scalp __decora- tion, 53, 91, 170-71, _ 205 224 INDIANS OF THE NORTHWEST COAST Woodworking, 8, 57-61, 67, | Yurok, canoes, 75 77-78 ceremonials, 163, 169-71 (See also Houses) household utensils, 65 World Renewal cycle, 156, houses, 71 163-66, 169-70, 205 linguistic affiliations, 19 marriage customs, 147 Xaihais, 14, 120, 122, 148 religious beliefs, 156, 157, 161 Yakutat, 11, 76 E 78 .N78 D7 1963 Drucker, Philip, 1911- —InPs of the Northwest -» = ; y, = ‘ Aidast ‘ _f g y, Mt TT Illustrated with over 70 drawir ill Ill Indians — — of the . Northerest Coast Written by an outstanding authority and profusely illustrated, this is a comprehensive study of the Indians that lived from Yakutat Bay in Alaska to the northern coast of California. Originally published in the ~ Anthropological Handbooks Series of The American Museum of Natural History, this volume vividly re-creates the complexities and attainments of this unique culture of aboriginal America. The author first describes the land, people, and prehistory — _ of the area and then considers each aspect of the culture: social structures and marriage customs, economy and technology, religion, rituals, art, wars, and feuds. Philip Drucker, an authority on the ethnology of the Pacific Coast, was educated at the University of California — and was formerly with the Bureau of American Ethnology : of The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D. C. 3 American Museum Science Books offer to the student es general reader up-to-date and authoritative writings in the life and earth sciences, including anthropology and pis. # tronomy. These books are published for The American _ Museum of Natural History by the Natural Histery Press. — “ ap SSS SSS COVER DESIGN by : AL NAGY