HUM 221: NW Coast Arts

Native American art in the Pacific Northwest reached a high level of sophistication, especially in the visual arts. One reason is that they didn't have to struggle as much to find food, since they were expert fishermen and the seas were teeming with salmon, halibut and other fish. Thier storytelling was of a high order, too, many of the stories centering on Raven, both a god and a trickster like Coyote in stories from the Southwestern cultural region. The links in this post will give you a cursory overview of the peoples and their art.

The website Alaska: A Nation Within a State has a pretty good overview of the Northwest Coast culture, which was fairly uniform among the different tribes living along the coast from northern California to South Central Alaska. Note especially their expertise in working with wood. Representative of the Nortwest Coast peoples are the Tlingit (pronounced KLINKit) of Southeast Alaska. Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History has an attractive online exhibit with a brief overview of Tlingit history, art and legends. It also mentions the Tlingits' connection with SEAlaska Corp., a regional corporation set up under the Alaska Native Claims Act in which the people are shareholders.

Possibly the best short introduction to the art of the Northwest Coast is on a website put up by Free Spirit Gallerly, an online art gallery that specializes in Canadian First Nations arts and crafts. Be sure to read Clint Leung's "Introduction to Northwest Coast Native American Art" and follow his links to articles on "The Basic Elements of Northwest Indian Art," totem poles and wood carving. The Free Spirit site is lavish with pictures, and most of the pictures are of contemporary professional artists working with traditional designs and motifs.

A historical footnote:One of my favorite examples of U.S. government efforts to acculturate Native Americans to white anglo society is a Report of the Siletz Indian Agency in Benton County, Oregon, dated Aug. 28, 1882. In it, the superintendent says he is making progress in teaching the Siletz how to use a sawmill, even though it "has not been used as much in the year past as heretofore, for lack of funds, a matter of much regret to a large number [of the people], many of whom have lately been induced to come in and take lands, but were unable to erect houses for want of lumber." He adds:

The labor in the mills is all performed by Indians with a single exception. I am pleased to say that a number of Indians, so far as I know for the first time, cut their timber, drew their logs, and sawed their own lumber without the aid of government, thus proving themselves on the road to self-support and independence, a thing of which they feel a pride.

But he neglects to mention (and may not have known) the Siletz had traditionally lived in cedar or sugar pine plank houses 100ft in length before contact. See also the Siletz History by Robert Kentta, tribal cultural resource director, posted to the Confederated Tribes of Siletz website.