Northwest Coast Cultures

Five species of salmon run up the rivers of this coast in great numbers at predictable times each year. Dried and smoked, they keep for a year. That stored food let the Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw and their neighbours live in permanent villages of great plank houses, with hereditary chiefs and nobles, commoners and slaves, and carvers and painters who worked at their craft full time.

Their art follows rules. Formline design is built from a few shapes — the ovoid, the U-form and the S-form — joined in flowing lines, and a Haida artist and a Tlingit artist a hundred miles apart worked in one shared visual language. A crest carved on a house post or painted on a bentwood box declared a family's descent and the rights it had inherited: the right to a name, a song, a dance or a fishing place.

Those rights were confirmed at the potlatch, where a host gave gifts to invited guests, who witnessed the names given, the marriages recognised, the debts repaid and the family histories told. Canada made the potlatch an offence under the Indian Act from 1885; missionaries and Indian agents had reported the feasts as wasteful and as keeping people from the settled farming and schooling the government wanted. Families went on holding them in secret. In 1921, after a potlatch given by Dan Cranmer at Village Island, forty-five people were charged and their regalia was taken to museums. The ban was dropped in 1951, and much of the regalia was returned in the 1970s and 1980s to the U'mista Cultural Centre at Alert Bay and the Nuyumbalees Centre on Quadra Island.

The bentwood box shows the same skill in a small thing. A single cedar plank is grooved across the grain in three places, steamed until it bends, folded into four sides, pegged or sewn at the last corner, and fitted with a base. It holds water, and food can be cooked in it with hot stones. One plank, three folds, no nails.

The peoples of the Northwest Coast — among them the Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish — built rich, ranked societies on salmon and cedar. They recorded their histories in carving, in crests and in the great feasts called potlatches.

Salmon and cedar

Five species of salmon run up the rivers of this coast in great numbers at predictable times each year. Dried and smoked, they keep for a year. That stored food let people live in permanent villages of great plank houses. Society was ranked: there were hereditary chiefs and nobles, commoners and slaves, and carvers and painters who worked at their craft full time.

The red cedar supplied almost everything else. Cedar bark was pounded soft enough to weave into clothing, blankets and mats. Ocean-going canoes were carved from a single tree, then filled with hot water and stones so the softened sides could be spread wider. A large plank house could hold several families. Its planks could be lifted off the frame, carried by canoe to a summer fishing camp, and put back up there. One tree supplied houses, boats, boxes and cloth.

Art with rules

Their art follows rules. Formline design is built from a few shapes — the ovoid (a rounded rectangle), the U-form and the S-form — joined in flowing lines. A Haida artist and a Tlingit artist a hundred miles apart worked in one shared visual language.

A crest carved on a house post or painted on a box declared a family's descent and the rights it had inherited: the right to a name, a song, a dance or a fishing place. Carved poles were traditionally left to weather and, in time, to fall, and a new pole might be raised in the old one's place.

The potlatch

Those rights were confirmed at the potlatch. A host gave gifts to invited guests, and the guests acted as witnesses. They saw the names given, the marriages recognised, the debts repaid and the family histories told.

Canada made the potlatch an offence under the Indian Act from 1885. Missionaries and Indian agents had reported the feasts as wasteful, and as keeping people from the settled farming and schooling the government wanted. Families went on holding them in secret. In 1921, after a potlatch given by Dan Cranmer at Village Island, forty-five people were charged, and their regalia — ceremonial masks, clothing and objects — was taken to museums. The ban was dropped in 1951. Much of the regalia was returned in the 1970s and 1980s to the U'mista Cultural Centre at Alert Bay and the Nuyumbalees Centre on Quadra Island.

The bentwood box

The bentwood box shows the same skill in a small thing. A single cedar plank is grooved across the grain in three places and steamed until it bends. It is folded into four sides, pegged or sewn at the last corner, and fitted with a base. It holds water, and food can be cooked in it with hot stones. One plank, three folds, no nails.

The Northwest Coast runs along the Pacific Ocean, from Alaska down to Washington. It is a land of tall cedar trees and rivers full of fish. The Haida, Tlingit, Kwakwaka'wakw and Coast Salish are some of the peoples who live there.

People in the village

• Chiefs led the village. The job passed down in families.
• Noble families owned special rights: a name, a song, a dance, or a place to fish.
• Fishers caught salmon with nets, traps and hooks.
• Carvers made house posts, poles, masks, boxes and canoes. Some carvers and painters did this as their full-time work.
• Weavers made clothing, blankets and mats from soft cedar bark.
• Canoe makers carved big boats from a single cedar tree.
• Hosts and guests came together at a feast called a potlatch. The host gave gifts, and the guests watched as names were given and family stories were told.

Animals

• Salmon — five kinds swim up the rivers every year. Dried and smoked, salmon kept for a whole year.
• Halibut and shellfish — food from the sea.
• Deer and elk — hunted in the forest.
• Raven and Eagle — among the Haida, every family belongs to one of these two sides.

Things they made

• Plank house — a big wooden house for several families. The planks could be taken down and carried by canoe to a summer fishing camp.
• Cedar canoe — carved from one tree, then filled with hot water and hot stones so the sides grew soft and could be spread wider.
• Bentwood box — one cedar plank, steamed and bent into four sides. It could hold water, and food could be cooked in it with hot stones.
• Carved poles and house posts — covered with crests, the animal pictures that told which family you came from.
• Masks — worn for dances and ceremonies.

At Ozette, in Washington, mud once covered part of a Makah village. When archaeologists dug there, starting in 1970, they found houses, wooden tools, baskets and fishing gear, still in good shape after hundreds of years.