Indigenous American Culture Zones: The Pacific Northwest Coast

“In a small clearing in the forest,  a young woman is in labor. Two women   companions urge her to pull hard on the  cedar bark rope tied to a nearby tree.   The baby, born onto a newly made cedar bark mat,  cries its arrival into the Northwest Coast world.   Its cradle of firmly woven cedar root, with a  mattress and covering of soft-shredded cedar bark,   is ready. But first, the baby must remain on  the cedar mat until its umbilical cord withers.  The young woman’s husband and his uncle  are on the sea in a canoe carved from a   single red cedar log and are using paddles  made from lengths of knot-free yellow cedar.   When they reach the fishing ground that belongs  to their family, the men set out a net of cedar   bark twine weighed along one edge by stones  lashed to it with strong, flexible cedar withes.   Cedar wood floats support the net’s upper edge. Wearing a cedar bark hat, cape, and skirt to   protect her from the rain and the cold, the  baby’s grandmother digs into the pebbly sand   of the beach at low tide to collect clams. She  loads them into a basket of cedar withe and root,   adjusts the broad cedar bark tumpline across  her forehead and returns home along the beach.  The embers in the center of the big cedar plank  house leap into flame as the clam gatherer’s   niece adds more wood. Smoke billows past the  cedar rack above, where small split fish are   hung to cure. It curls its way past the great  cedar beams and rises out through the opening   between the long cedar roof planks. The young girl  takes red-hot rocks from the fire with long tongs,   dips them into a small cedar box of water  to rinse off the ashes, then places the   rocks into a cedar wood cooking box to boil  water for the clams her aunt has gathered.  Outside the house stands a tall, carved cedar  memorial pole, bearing the prestigious crests of   her family lineage. It had been raised with long,  strong cedar withe ropes and validated with great   ceremony. The house chief and noblemen had taken  out their ceremonial regalia from large storage   chests of cedar wood, dancers had worn cedar wood  masks adorned with cascades of soft-shredded cedar   bark and performed in front of screens made from  cedar planks. Guests had been served quantities of   food from huge cedar wood bowls and dishes, wiping  their hands clean on soft-shredded cedar bark.  A young slave woman coils two fresh diapers  from soft-shredded cedar bark and goes to   tend a crying baby, while the child’s father  prepares long, slender cedar withes to lash a   stone hammer head to its shaft. When the  hammer is finished, he uses it to pound   wedges into a cedar log and split off a plank  for a tackle box to fit in the bow of his canoe.   He will use the other withes he prepared to  sew the corner of the box once he bends the   plank into shape. In a year or more he will  make a cedar wood cradle in a similar fashion   for his sister’s new baby, when it grows  too big for the woven cedar root cradle.   He smiles at the reassuring cries of the  newborn infant resounding through the forest.” That was an excerpt from Hillary Stewart’s  book Cedar where she documents the central   role of the cedar tree in the lives of  Pacific Northwest Coast indigenous peoples   and the truly absurd amount of  uses that they found for this tree.   This video is not about cedar specifically, but I  love this passage because it’s such a succinct and   immersive introduction to the beautiful and unique  culture zone that is the Pacific Northwest Coast.  This video is the start of what will  be an ongoing series on this channel,   exploring the major culture areas  of indigenous American peoples. Now,   every nation and community has their own distinct  culture and history, and that fact will certainly   never be overlooked on this channel, but there  are shared cultural trends, beliefs, practices,   and institutions that hold across whole regions,  and that’s what we’ll begin exploring today.   As a side note, we’ll be analyzing culture  zones as they hold in their modern forms.   Cultures change over time, and it’s quite possible  that a given region had a very different culture   several thousand years ago than today, so we’ll be  focusing on the most recent iterations as held by   modern indigenous peoples. We’ll describe them  as they stood immediately prior to colonization   and follow any changes that occurred between  colonization and the present day. For this video,   as will certainly be the case in all the others,  I am going to try to be as detailed as possible   while keeping the video within, semi-reasonable  length. There’s a lot that could be said that I’m   going to have to cut, so I highly encourage  interested viewers who want to learn more   to check out my sources in the description.  Now without further adieu, let’s get started. Geography To a certain extent, every culture is defined  by its geography, and that certainly holds true   in the Northwest Coast. To understand Northwest  Coastal cultures and what makes them so unique,   we need to understand the terrain. Along the  Pacific edge of North America various mountain   ranges rise just inland of the coast--from  the Wrangell-St Elias and Chugach ranges in   southern Alaska, to the Coast ranges of British  Columbia, the Cascades of Washington and Oregon,   and the Coast ranges of Oregon and California.  They form a nearly continuous wall of mountains   about 2,000 miles long (3,200 km) that leaves a  narrow strip of land between them and the coast   that is on average only about 100 miles wide (160  km). For anybody who passed middle school science,   this should look like a recipe for trapping  moisture on the coast side of the mountains,   and you would be exactly right. In fact so much  moisture gets trapped in this thin strip of land   that the area is a temperate rainforest--by some  definitions the largest temperate rainforest   in the world--receiving anywhere from 7-14 feet  of annual precipitation. That’s 2.1-4.3 meters.   Nowhere else in North America outside of  the tropics gets this much precipitation.  More than any other factor, abundance defines  this region. The high rainfall supports   forests that are lush, dense, and teeming with  wildlife, and trees that are huge. 3 of the 10   tallest tree species in the world and 4 of the  10 largest are found in this rainforest alone.   The waterways teem with life year round, but  especially during the annual salmon spawning   when millions of salmon return to  their birthplaces to reproduce.   All of this abundance supported a large human  population. The Northwest Coast was the second   most densely populated region in North America and  one of the most densely populated non-agricultural   regions in the world supporting a pre-contact  population of about 200,000. Communities could   range in size from small villages of less than 50  people to a full-blown town of well over 1,000.  The habitable zone along this coastline  isn’t just surrounded by mountains,   in most places it’s completely overrun with  them--a fact that made land travel very difficult.   This combined with the high population served  to make the region a hotbed of diversity.   Historically, over 40 languages were spoken here  from over a dozen language families, making it,   linguistically, the second most diverse area  in North America, behind only California   (it’s also only California that surpasses  the Northwest Coast in population density).   Many of these families are very distinct from  one another, sharing few observable traits or   relations between them, and there are even  a few language isolates like Haida that are   completely unrelated to their neighbors. When you also consider that the coast is   dotted with thousands of islands and littered  with countless inlets, bays, and rivers,   it probably will come as no surprise that water  travel was the preeminent form of transportation.   The interplay of the mountains and the  water is such an important component of   this region’s geography, that it affects the way  Northwest Coast languages talk about direction.   Most, if not all, of the region’s languages don’t  have words for the cardinal directions of north,   east, south, and west. That paradigm was not  the important one. Rather, these languages   couch direction in relation to the landscape,  describing whether a person is moving towards,   along, or away from a body of water, or  towards, along, or away from the mountains.  The Northwest Coast is one of the few places  in the Americas--indeed in the world--where   you can find natural copper. This is copper  ore so pure it can be worked without smelting.   Consequently, it was worked by the local  inhabitants into knives, spear points,   and artistic items. It could be a little hard to  come by though, so it was mostly held as an item   of wealth and status by elites rather than being  an item of common use. This purpose is seen in the   practice of fashioning decorative, shield-shaped  plates known by anthropologists simply as coppers.   We’ll talk more about pre-contact  Indigenous metallurgy in a separate video. Complex Hunter-Gatherers A theme we are going to run across repeatedly  on this channel--especially within the next few   ancient history videos--is the fact that, the  more we learn about them through anthropology,   archaeology, and ethnography, the more we realize  that hunter-gatherer societies are often much more   complex and sophisticated and much less simplistic  than we’ve previously given them credit for.   Certain hallmarks that have traditionally  signified the transition away from a   hunter-gatherer lifestyle towards an agricultural  one like sedentism or advanced horticulture   are popping up not infrequently in firmly  hunter-gatherer contexts. A good example   of this is the 16,000 year-old village of Monte  Verde in Chile where the population appears to   have been rather sedentary several thousand years  before agriculture arose anywhere in the world. Go   watch my land bridge part 2 video for more detail  on that. We are having to redefine our image of   hunter-gatherer societies as features emerge that  blur the line between hunter-gatherer and farmer.  I mention this here because the Northwest  Coast cultures break so many of the traditional   hunter-gatherer rules that anthropologists had to  create an entirely new category of hunter-gatherer   to account for them--the complex hunter-gatherer. So what defines a hunter-gatherer society? Well   traditionally there are a couple major points. 1. They haven’t developed domestic agriculture.   The economy is focused on hunting wild  animals and gathering wild plants.  2. They tend to be pretty nomadic, following  the migration patterns of animal herds and   growth cycles of plants in different areas. As a  result, the people tend to have few possessions   and a relatively less-developed and more  practicality-focused material culture.  3. Communally held land rights,  and no private ownership of land.   You can also find communally held land in  agricultural societies, but (so far as I am   aware) you will never find private ownership of  land in traditional hunter-gatherer societies.  And lastly 4. Socially, they tend to be pretty  egalitarian and democratic. There is very little   social hierarchy or stratification and where  it does exist, leaders have little authority   to make people do something they don’t want  to do. As a result political structures tend   to be very decentralized and you’ll find little  political organization above the village level.  All around, hunter-gatherer societies are  traditionally seen as less complex than   agricultural ones. Social, political, financial,  economic, and religious institutions all tend   to be less developed and intricate. You  don’t see things like written language,   empires, rigid and complicated class  structures, advanced banking practices,   tax codes, bureaucracy, printed currency, etc. Now, I want to make a point before we move on.   Agricultural societies have always seen themselves  as “better than” hunter-gatherer societies,   and I really don’t need to point out that  Euro-American society has especially held   cultural supremacist views towards indigenous  American societies. We can all agree that   “savage” is only a slur because agriculturalsits  view themselves as superior to hunter-gatherers.   This long history of cultural chauvinism  has imbued words like, “complex,” “simple,”   “sophisticated,” ''developed or development,”  etc. with certain airs of moral judgment.   This is why I try to avoid progress-narrative  type words like this as much as I can,   but sometimes they’re just the best words for the  situation. Whenever I use these words I am just   trying to describe the state of one people group  in relation to another, I mean absolutely no moral   judgment good or bad towards the status of either  group. Just because something is technologically   complicated absolutely, positively, in no way  whatsoever makes that thing morally superior.   Let us rid ourselves of those ideas  as we continue our conversation.  So how does a complex hunter-gatherer society  differ from the traditional hunter-gatherer model?   Sidenote, a “traditional” hunter gatherer  is better known as a general or generalist   hunter-gatherer. This helps distinguish them from  the complex hunter-gatherers who you will also see   called affluent foragers. Basically, complex  hunter-gatherers display a hunter-gatherer   economy with lots of elements from a more  agriculturalist society. Let’s analyze each   of these points and how they relate to Northwest  Coast societies to get a better understanding. Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Agriculture It is true that Northwest Coast societies  didn’t have agriculture in the traditional sense   (with one exception that we will discuss in  a bit). The forests and waterways around them   provided a wealth of foraging options as they  were. On land they would hunt mostly deer and   elk but smaller species like mink and beaver were  also targeted. Additionally, over 70 varieties of   berry and vegetable plants were harvested  such as salmonberry and thimbleberry (both   of which are objectively the superior berries),  huckleberry, currants, and root plants like camas.   However, it was riverine and marine resources  that made up the majority of the diet, with   coastal tribes like the Makah obtaining anywhere  from 70%-90% of their food from the ocean.   From the water they would harvest clams, oysters,  urchins, kelp, hunt sea mammals such as seals,   otters, and among some groups whales,  and fish for species such as halibut,   herring, oolichan, and the big one, salmon. However, they didn’t eat entirely at the mercy   of mother nature, and they certainly didn’t leave  the landscape around them a pristine, untouched   wilderness. This is because Northwest Coast  peoples practiced what is known as silviculture.  I am going to be making a whole video  about Indigenous silviculture in the   not too distant future, so I won't go into  excruciating detail here. Just know this is   a brief overview of the practice, there  is a lot more to be said on this topic.   Silviculture is when people manipulate the  natural environment around them to increase   productivity of certain resources. This can  be done in many ways, but by far the most   common method--and indeed widely used here in  the Northwest Coast--is controlled burning.   Forests regrow after fires in predictable stages.  By understanding this, and intentionally setting   fire to a space, people can encourage the growth  of desired plant species and discourage the growth   of undesired ones. Do this enough times and you  can turn a wild patch of forest into a veritable   garden with a high concentration of edible or  otherwise useful plants. Clearing out underbrush   also increases the population of game species  such as deer and elk because they’re attracted   to the specific plants that regrow first  after fires. It also makes travel through   forests easier for both humans and animals. Northwest Coast peoples would also take it a step   further and use fires to prevent forest growth  at all instead opting to create meadow spaces.   In fact, many of the lowland meadows in this  region didn’t occur naturally, but rather   were intentionally created and maintained by  anthropogenic fire. And we know this because   we can tell the difference in soil ecology  between a forest fire and a controlled burn.   Meadows are advantageous not only  for their unique plant species,   but also because the meadow-forest interchange  is another attractive environment for game.  Taking things even further, sometimes, instead  of allowing a burned area to regrow naturally,   Northwest peoples would intentionally replant it  with chosen species. This was the case with camas,   as attested in numerous accounts. They even took  these silviculture practices into the ocean,   developing techniques to encourage kelp growth  thereby creating cultivated kelp forests.  Hunting and harvesting done purely at the mercy  of natural cycles can be very unpredictable.   A bad year, unusually inclement  weather, interference from animals   etc, can all conspire to reduce food yields  and threaten a village’s survival. By managing   their environments like this, Northwest Coast  peoples constructed highly productive orchards   of harvestable resources concentrated in chosen  areas--often near habitations. Thus, reducing   the unpredictability of natural food sources and  increasing food security. This isn’t agriculture,   since that is the cultivation of domesticated  species whereas this is the manipulation and   cultivation of wild ones, but it is similarly  complex, no less impressive of an innovation,   and accomplished the same results--that of  increasing food productivity and security.  One sidenote which I will elaborate  more on in a separate video, all of this   environmental manipulation was incredibly  healthy and sustainable for the forests.   Silviculture done right doesn’t  damage forest ecosystems,   it actually makes them stronger,  healthier, and more biodiverse.  The more we study and learn about silviculture,  the more widely we see it in hunter-gatherer   societies. It’s becoming less of a diagnostic  marker to distinguish complex hunter-gatherers   from general hunter-gatherers and more of a  tool that seems to have been accessible to   all hunter-gatherers. But so far we still see it  more commonly on the complex end of the spectrum.  Now, there is one example of, in my opinion,  a pretty undeniable practice of full-blown   agriculture in the Northwest Coast--their  wooly dogs. You heard that right, wooly dogs.   Prior to contact, there was a breed of  domesticated wooly dog (which is tragically now   extinct) whose wool could be sheared and fashioned  into linens the same way sheep and goat wool can.   And there are accounts of communities raising  whole herds of dogs specifically to harvest   their wool the same way agriculturalists do  with sheep. Now, this is a topic that has been   criminally under researched in the region, and  definitely deserves more attention as we have   no idea how widespread this practice was and to  what extent it was developed, but for my part,   I would say it’s definitely a case of agriculture.  We have a domesticated crop being intentionally   cultivated for human use. I would not however,  reclassify the Northwest Coast economy from   a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural  one solely based on the farming of wooly dogs.   It wasn’t so important of an innovation that  it changed the nature of their whole economy,   and their societies did not revolve around it.  I’ve spent the last few minutes detailing other   non-agricultural resource harvesting practices  that were much more important socially and   economically than wooly dog farming. I would  however definitely add this to the list of   features that made Northwest Coast societies more  complex than generalist hunter-gatherer societies. Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Sedentism and Possessions You can probably assume that investing this much  effort into terraforming the landscape would make   Northwest Coast peoples less nomadic, and you'd  be exactly right. Nomadism is traditionally a   hallmark of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as  opposed to the sedentary agricultural life,   but Northwest indigenous peoples were not nomads.  They split their time between two permanent sites:   the main village generally along the coastal  lowlands where the whole town would come together   for the winter, and satellite villages generally  farther inland and uphill where family and clan   groups would splinter off for summer harvesting.  As mentioned, these sites were permanent. Unless   something made them uninhabitable, the  village locations would not change.   Thus, Northwest peoples couldn’t closely follow  migrating herds of game to stay near their food   supply like generalist hunter-gatherers.  Instead, their food economy revolved around   harvesting large quantities of staple foods and  storing them for when they went out of season.   By far the most important food staple was salmon  which was so significant it’s going to get its   own segment in a few minutes. Since they lived in  permanent towns and villages, Northwest peoples   didn’t need to have mobile dwellings like teepees,  instead building sedentary, wooden longhouses.  There were several different styles of longhouse  seen up and down the coast--as to be expected   in an area of such high diversity--but they all  generally consisted of a cedar log frame overlaid   with cedar planks. These planks could be easily  moved to let the breeze in during the summertime,   keep the rain out during the winter or  let smoke out from the central fire around   which the interior was organized. Woven  cedar mats could be hung strategically to   act as room dividers which could then be  easily removed for feasts or ceremonies.   These structures could be quite large, capable of  housing anywhere from a couple dozen to over 100   inhabitants, and were often ornately carved and  painted in the characteristic local art style.  Northwest peoples also had a much different  relationship with their personal property than   generalist hunter-gatherers. That is to say, they  had a lot more of it. Take it from someone who   knows, there’s no greater activity for reducing  the amount of clutter you own than constantly   moving. But more significantly, they had (and  still have today) a highly developed sense of   property rights. Individuals owned their personal  items and items for their work. A fisherman would   own their nets and their hooks, an artist  would own their carving and painting tools,   etc, and taking somebody’s property  without permission did require restitution.   But also items of import to whole families would  be owned by that family. A family would own their   canoes and their paddles and a family or clan  would own the longhouse that they dwelt in.  This system of property rights extended even  further to intellectual property. And this is   probably where it was the most rigid. The rights  to sing certain songs, dance certain dances,   use certain crests and designs in artwork,  and even claim or give a certain name were   all treated as property owned by an individual,  a family, or a clan. A person could not without   explicit permission perform a song or a dance  or use a crest or a name to which they did not   have the rights. Items of intellectual property  were very intimately associated with ceremony,   so improperly using them without the necessary  privileges was a serious offense. It was not   uncommon then (and in traditionalist communities  still is not uncommon now) for offended parties   to very publicly halt ceremonial proceedings and  express their offense when someone tried to for   example perform a dance that they didn’t have the  rights to. And if you wanted to perform or use a   piece of intellectual property you had to first  produce the receipts to establish your right to   that intellectual property. Failure to do so  would result in your claim getting challenged.   Intellectual property rights were most commonly  passed between family members by birth, marriage,   or inheritance, though they could also  be given to unrelated persons as gifts.   To establish your claim to a given item, you  had to be able to recite the chain of marriages,   inheritances, gift-givings, etc.  that brought it into your hands.   Other people would be able to verify your claim  because all of this passage of rights happened   at public ceremonies known as potlatches  which we will talk about at length later.   This system of property rights is significantly  more complex than those present in most   generalist hunter-gatherer societies, though  pretty recognizable to an agriculturalist. Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Land Use Related to the property rights system there  were also land use rights. It’s pretty common   knowledge that hunter-gatherer societies don’t  have a concept of private ownership of land. In   these cultures, land isn’t something that can be  owned, bought, or sold by humans. This was also   true here in the Northwest Coast. But that doesn’t  mean land isn’t divided up between people at all.   What is far less well known is that complex  hunter-gatherer societies do have a concept   of usufruct rights of land. Usufruct is the right  to use and benefit from a piece of property that   doesn’t belong to you. We see this all the time  today especially with anything that involves   mining or drilling. For example you could own a  piece of property that turns out to have oil on   it, and an oil company will either buy the  land from you outright, or buy the drilling   rights while you still maintain possession of  the property--typically receiving some cut of   the oil profits for the use of your land. Usufruct rights amongst indigenous American   peoples looked different in every society.  In the Northwest Coast, they were held by   chiefs--a more accurate term would probably  be high-status individuals or elites.   Okay, we’ll elaborate more on the social  structure in a few minutes, but we need to lay   down some basic concepts before we can move on. Northwest Coast society was organized around   the family unit. This wasn’t the nuclear family  like American society, but the extended family   including relatives so distant that family  groups within a town could be several hundred   individuals in size. All members of a family  group generally resided within the same longhouse,   thus a town would have separate longhouses for  each family group. Though if a family group   was big enough they would build additional  longhouses for their members. Sometimes if   a town was small enough it could consist of only  one family group, but often there were multiple.   These family groups were headed by high-status  individuals who held a number of titles and   privileges and were responsible for directing  the economic activities of their family group.  All of the land surrounding a town, and also all  of the water (yes that includes the ocean) within   sight of that town, was divided into separate  tracts, whose usufruct rights were owned by these   title-holding family heads. Thus, all economically  viable land and water along the entire Northwest   Coast was parceled out and administered by  elites within the different towns and villages.  These usufruct rights included all economic  activity within a certain tract of land or   water--hunting, fishing, gathering, whaling,  etc.--but also any of the preparatory work   needed for those activities like building fish  weirs over rivers or conducting controlled burns.   Anybody who wanted to harvest on a certain tract  of land needed first to gain permission from   the title holder. But here’s an important  point, the title holder could not withhold   permission from people if they were part  of the title holder’s family group--group   members had an inalienable right to harvest  on their family’s land, though they were still   required to seek permission from the title holder  before exercising that right. The title-holder   could deny permission to people outside of their  family group. Thus, the title holder’s ownership   did not mean exclusive right of personal use, it  was more a case of stewardship and the right to   direct the economic management of a tract of land  by their family group. They were the custodian   of that land and responsible for ensuring it  was harvested properly and not overexploited.  In addition to seeking permission, harvesters also  had to pay tribute to the title-holder in the form   of a portion of their harvest. Title-holders would  thus get very wealthy by essentially taxing the   use of their land. However, the tribute demanded  was never excessive and title-holders’ wealth   was expected to be regularly redistributed  to the community in potlatch ceremonies.   Nobody in the Northwest Coast was going poor  or homeless off of making somebody else rich.   And by expected I do mean expected, a title  holder could lose their status and privileges   if they went too long accumulating wealth and  not redistributing it. And even when they were   upholding the redistribution cycle, if their  community felt they were being stingy and not   generous enough, they would be publicly shamed.  We’ll talk about this more in the next section. Complex Hunter-Gatherers: Social Stratification The social structures of  Northwest Coast societies,   how can I put this? Have been absolutely obsessed  over by anthropologists for decades. Reams upon   reams of paper have been exhausted documenting  and trying to understand what one anthropologist   described as “the most socially complex hunting  and gathering societies known on earth.”   There is so much I could say here,  and it’s such a fascinating topic,   but for the sake of time we can  really only scratch the surface today.   I’ll leave some links in the description  for interested viewers to check out more.  It is in the incredible complexity of  their social structures perhaps more   than any other single factor that Northwest  Coast societies differentiate themselves from   general hunter-gatherer societies. Rather  than being classless and egalitarian,   there was a rigid social hierarchy that  stratified society on the basis of titles,   privilege, and status where upward social mobility  was quite difficult and slavery was practiced.  We’ll talk about slavery first. In the Northwest  Coast, slavery made up an important part of   the regional economy. Estimates differ on  how much of the population was enslaved,   from as little as 4% to as much as 30%,  but everyone agrees it was practiced in   every tribe and that slaves were  a high-value trade commodity.   Slaves could be acquired through purchase or taken  as captives in war. In fact, slave raiding was the   most common factor motivating warfare. Also the  children of slaves were born slaves. Slaves were   not considered members of society and therefore  excluded from ceremonial and religious life.   Just as in Euro-American plantation slavery, they  were seen as property, and their masters could   treat them however they pleased--including  beating or killing them at will.   It wasn’t uncommon for slaves of very high  status masters to be ritually killed upon   their master’s death or upon the dedication  of important structures like a new longhouse.  Unlike European slavery, however, the labor  of Northwest coast slaves was not especially   brutal and the function of the entire  economy did not center around the practice.   These were economies with slavery, they were not  slave economies. Slaves mostly did the same labor   as lower class free folk--menial tasks around  the house that their masters just didn’t want to.   For other jobs, high-class slave owners  would themselves pitch in, in which case   the slaves would work alongside them as a helping  hand--things like cutting down trees to build a   canoe or a longhouse. There was no such thing as  work that only slaves and no freeborn person did.   Furthermore, slaves generally slept  and ate in the longhouse with the   freeborns rather than in separate slave  quarters, and were given the same food.   Though slaves had no formal rights, their rights  to marry and own personal possessions were   generally respected. A slave could buy their  freedom if they’d accumulated enough wealth,   or their master could grant it at will--both  of which were fairly common occurrences.   In fact, many masters treated slavery more like  indentured servitude, granting their slaves   freedom after a certain period of time rather than  enslaving them for life, though the treatment of   slaves varied drastically from master to master.  Upon obtaining freedom, slaves were largely equal   to any low-status freeborn though there was still  social stigma attached to having been enslaved.  The free class is often described as being divided  into two further classes--nobles who held titles,   privileges, wealth, and status passed to them  through inheritance, and commoners who did not.   However, this is a bit of an oversimplification  and can leave a false impression of how rank and   status worked in Northwest Coast  societies. So let’s get into it.  Northwest Coast societies were not stratified  on the basis of rank as in European feudalism.   There was not a finite list of inheritable  positions with a determined hierarchy and vested   authorities--nothin akin to a king, prince,  duke, etc. Rather, status in the Northwest   was determined by the inheritance of titles,  privileges, and wealth which were stratified in   relation to each other. In other words, rank did  not determine the privilege, privilege determined   the rank. For example, the order of seating at  a public feast was an inheritable privilege,   and a more prominent seating position granted  a person higher status. They were high-status   because they had a better seat, they didn’t have  a better seat because they were high-status.   The order of receiving gifts at or invitations  to public feasts were inheritable privileges.   The higher one was in the order, the more status  they obtained. The right to certain names, crests,   dances, and songs were all inheritable privileges.  Names and crests were particularly important   status symbols as they were imbued with the  status of all people who’d previously held them.   For example, a name which had been held by  a revered and highly regarded ancestor would   confer great status upon the inheritor. Usufruct  rights to land were inheritable privileges,   and although one particular tract of land didn’t  necessarily confer more status than another, a   more productive parcel would make its title-holder  wealthier, and that would impact their status.   The list of all possible titles and privileges  one could hold would be massive, and probably   impossible to exhaustively enumerate. One’s  position in society was thus determined by a   complex interplay of all the different titles and  privileges they held in addition to their wealth.  These privileges were all graded in relation to  each other and no two privileges carried exactly   equal status. Thus no two people carried exactly  equal status. This minute gradation displayed   itself most prominently at potlatches--public  gatherings of feasting, gift-giving, and ceremony.   Gifts were handed out at potlatches one-at-a-time  and the order of receiving gifts was a very   public display of one’s position on the status  hierarchy--every recipient being lower than the   previous but higher than the next. It was not  possible for two people to have exactly the   same status as this would require their names  to be called to receive their gifts at exactly   the same time. As one anthropologist puts it,  “every person was in a class of their own.”  Privileges and titles were inherited,  but could also be obtained by marriage,   given as gifts, or taken as spoils of  war. Inheritance practices differed across   the region with some tribes passing  things down strictly patrilineally,   others were strictly matrilineal, and others  allowed inheritance through both parents.   Primogeniture was not a legal requirement,  and inheritances could be split between heirs   however the title-holder saw fit. Men were  preferred in inheritance, but there don’t   seem to have been formal prohibitions  on women gaining privileges and status.  One’s status was not a stagnant and guaranteed  thing--it could be gained or lost. Thus,   a high-status individual could not simply  rest on the laurels of their inheritance   but had to constantly reaffirm their prestige  through concrete actions. Neglecting to do so   would result in loss of social standing and  even inherited privileges. Likewise, a person   born with no inherited titles and privileges  could gain them and thus increase in status.   There were no formal barriers to title-less  individuals gaining titles as in European society.  One of the most important factors in gaining and  preserving social standing was wealth. One could   climb the social ladder and gain more privileges  and status by accumulating wealth. However,   wealth was not accumulated to be hoarded,  but specifically to be redistributed.   Wealth only served as a status symbol if it  was flaunted, and in the Northwest coast it   was flaunted by being given away  in gatherings known as potlatches.   We will talk at length about potlatches in a few  minutes, but essentially they were public events   put on by wealthy sponsors to assert their status  and prestige by giving away all their wealth. And   I do mean all their wealth. A good potlatcher  would have absolutely no possessions save   probably their longhouse and a pair of clothes  the day after they threw a potlatch. Contrary to   the perceptions of some Westerners, this did not  condemn them or their family to destitution as   their public prestige was never higher than after  a potlatch. Thus, the community would gleefully   provide for their family’s material needs  until they’d built their wealth back up again.   There were very strong social expectations  for statused individuals to throw potlatches   at regular intervals and to be very generous  with their wealth redistribution. The higher   in status a person was, the more frequently and  extravagantly they were expected to potlatch.   Failure to put on regular potlatches and  stinginess of gift-giving would result in the loss   of social standing and even hereditary privileges. On the flip side, a person of low or no privilege   could increase their prestige and gain privileges  by accumulating enough wealth to throw a potlatch.   As mentioned before, there were no formal  barriers to this sort of social climbing.   Practically though, it was a very difficult thing  to do. As inherited privileges gave one access to   more wealth, either by receiving tribute for  someone’s use of your land, by getting invited   to lots of potlatches, etc. the fewer privileges  you were born with, the less access you had to   wealth creation. It wasn’t too difficult for an  already statused elite to increase the grandeur   of their potlatches and thus gain more prestige,  but for most people born with no privileges,   they were unlikely to ever accumulate the wealth  necessary to break into the potlatch cycle.   Marriage was also not much of a social  climbing option. Title-holders tended to   marry title-holders of similar status, with  an eye towards marrying up rather than down,   so the best anybody on the social scale  could hope for would be an incremental   increase in status through marriage. A title-less  individual could conceivably marry someone with   a handful of low-ranking privileges but any  larger of a gap was unlikely to be bridged.   No marriages are recorded between a title-less  person and extremely high-status person.   Thus, even though there was no formal barrier  between unprivileged and privileged, there was   very practically a gap in wealth and social  clout that increased in size and rigidity the   farther up you look on the privilege scale. Still,  looking at this gap as a gap between classes is   misleading and overshadows the incredibly minute  gradation of the Northwest Coast social scale.  A few more notes about the social structures need  to be mentioned. Privilege and status carried   with it much social prestige and wealth, but it  didn’t honestly carry a whole lot of authority.   Only certain figures within a town--family, clan,  and village heads--held much real-world authority,   and even then they couldn’t force free  people to act against their will--this   was more persuasive authority than coercive  authority. The vast majority of wealthy status   holders held social clout, but nothing akin to  legal authority over lower-status free people.   This lack of authority, however, had  no impact on their social standing.  As mentioned before, Northwest Coast  societies were organized into family groups.   These family groups consisted of a high-class  family, their extended family as far as could   be traced of any status level, all the  slaves owned by group members, and finally   a collection of low-status free retainers  who claimed lineage with the noble family.   Whether or not there was actually any blood  relation between the retainers and their noble   family was immaterial, the system was ostensibly  organized around the extended family so a family   relationship was nominally maintained between  everybody in the group. These retainers submitted   themselves to the authority of the noble family,  but they were not bound to the family or the land   in any way like a serf. They had freedom of  movement and could move to another village and   establish themselves with a different family  if they so desired. A family group could hold   property and privileges which were administered  primarily by a family head. This was not a rank   that was inherited but rather an honor bestowed  upon the most statused member of the family.  Amongst certain tribes the family organization  extended further into a clan structure.   Clans were ostensibly distant relations, but  again, actual blood connection wasn’t really the   basis of clan organization. In fact, nobody really  knows how the clan systems began or what motivated   their initial formation. Clans extend across  villages and incorporate multiple family groups   within them. Just like family groups, clans have  a clan head who is the highest-status clan member   and can hold privileges on behalf of the whole  clan. The most common privilege held on the clan   level is a crest or totem. Unlike other Indigenous  totemic systems, however, in the Northwest Coast,   having a certain totem did not express  any sort of special spiritual relationship   between the clan and the animal of the totem. The importance of clan systems changed as you   move north and south and seems to correspond  with strictness of inheritance structures.   In the southern portions of the Coast down in  Oregon, inheritance tended to be allowed from   both the mother’s and the father’s side.  Here clan affiliations were quite weak   as a person could choose to identify more  with the clan of their mother or father.   Up north in Canada and Alaska however, inheritance  tended to be strictly associated with a specific   gender--whether mother or father depends on the  tribe. Thus, a person could only associate with   one clan, and the importance of clan identity  is more firmly established. Marriage in these   communities was strictly outside of the clan,  whereas in Oregon, one could marry within their   clan so long as they’re sufficiently distant in  relation. And in Washington we see a gradation   between these two extremes. I’m doing a massive  disservice to the clan system for the sake of   time. Just know there’s a lot more that could be  said, and you can find more info in my sources.  Finally, each town or village also had a town  head. This person tended to also be the family   and/or clan head of the most prominent and  powerful clan and family within the town. The Guardian Spirit Complex If you grew up in the United States like me  you were probably taught spirituality for all   indigenous Americans revolved around guardian  spirits and spirit quests--that a person would   go on a solo spirit quest where a certain animal  would reveal themselves to that person as their   guardian spirit and the two would maintain a  special connection for the person’s entire life.   Now, to say this was the nature of religion  for all indigenous peoples across the entire   continent is grossly inaccurate. However, to  be completely honest, it isn’t that far from   a faithful description of Northwest Coast  religious systems. In fact, given how much   literature about this region anthropologists  produced in the late 19th-early 20th centuries,   I wouldn’t be too surprised if this is where that  perception came from. It wouldn’t be the first   time a cultural element from a specific region got  misapplied by Americans to all indigenous peoples.   So let’s take a look at what’s actually going on. Northwest Coast spirituality can be described as   a form of animism. Everything in the  universe is believed to be a living,   sentient being with its own spiritual power  no different from the condition of humanity:   every animal, every plant, as well as inanimate  objects and forces of nature such as rocks,   water, the wind or the force of a wave.  In fact, in most Northwest mythologies,   all of these entities are actually people who live  in another skin, and that’s how they’re commonly   referred to: salmon are called salmon people;  rocks, rock people, etc. You can probably deduce   that there is no separation between the physical  and spirit worlds in Northwest Coast cosmology.   Spiritual forces interact with the physical  world and each other all the time and it is   this interaction of the spirits that makes  the physical world function. A balanced web   of spiritual and physical relationships  ties everyone and everything together,   and the healthy functioning of the world depends  on proper maintenance of these relationships.  We’ll talk about how this is done in a second.  First I want to talk about guardian spirits.   Every person develops an individual relationship  with a specific spirit power during their life.   Parents encourage their children at a young age  to begin exploring the spirit world and preparing   this connection. At some point during adolescence,  a person will venture on a solo spirit quest to   formalize this relationship. It can last anywhere  from a few days to a few weeks during which   time the person fasts from eating and sleeping,  spending their time in prayer and ritual bathing.   A spirit power will reveal themselves to the  person typically in the form of an animal and   the two will be linked for life. Spirit powers do  many things for people. They protect their person   from illness, misfortune, and death, and can help  give their person success and prosperity in human   ventures: hunting, fishing, gathering, healing  other’s sicknesses, skill in basketry and carving,   ease in childbirth, ease in obtaining wealth, etc. All of this is repaid by proper expressions of   respect and reciprocity. One respects their  spirit power by honoring ritual obligations   and restrictions. The relationship is a very close  and intimate one, thus to speak openly about your   spirit power would be very disrespectful. This  doesn’t mean nobody else can know what your spirit   power is though as another way to honor your  spirit power is to represent them in artwork.   For example painting a representation of them on  the bow of your canoe or carving their likeness   into a post in your longhouse. Another form  of respect would be to refrain from eating   the animal that is your spirit power. Thus if your  spirit power was a deer, you wouldn’t eat venison.  Reciprocity mainly takes the form of  gratitude expressed through ceremony.   In the Northwest Coast, winter is the primary  season for potlatches and religious ceremonies   with an annual spirit-power-honoring ceremonial  cycle being observed. The “winter ceremonies,”   as they’re called, are public gatherings  where people come together to sing songs   and perform dances that pay homage to their  individual spirit powers. They last for weeks,   and are critically important in renewing the  spirit power relationship. Less frequently, a   person may also repeat their solo spirit quest at  certain points in their life where close communion   with their spirit power is very important. Women  typically do this during pregnancy for example,   and among the whaling cultures of the  Makah and Nuu-Chah-Nulth--a very dangerous   occupation--whalers would do this before a hunt. One side note that I need to discuss. As   mentioned, the spirit power relationship is a  very personal and intimate one. Thus indigenous   Northwesterners today who observe winter  ceremonies consider them sacred and closed to   outsiders. They will also rarely discuss details  of their religious practice and experience.  Spirit powers could also be called upon  to enact malevolence on other people.   Illness in the Northwest Coast was thought  to be a physical manifestation of a spiritual   imbalance--often an attack by a hostile spirit  power that removed part of a person’s soul.   Another source of imbalance could be that a  person had disrespected their own spirit power   who’d then removed their protection. Medicine men  thus acted as both doctor and spiritual healer.   They would both treat the physical wound as well  as perform spiritual cleansing through song,   dance, or other rituals in order to retrieve  the lost soul and restore balance and health.   Medicine men relied heavily on their own spirit  powers to assist them in healing. Thus, medicinal   practices were highly individualized, and no  two doctors performed exactly the same rituals.   One may touch and massage the patient, another  simply sit and sing, another burn cedar, etc.  Beyond the individual level, human society  maintained proper balance with the spirit   world as a whole through the same key methods  of respecting obligations and restrictions   and ceremonial reciprocity. This was most on  display in Northwest Coast harvesting practices.   Now, you may be wondering, if Northwest  peoples considered all plants and animals   to be humans in another skin, how did  they justify harvesting and eating them?   That is a very fair question. The answer is this.  Among the web of relations that is Northwest Coast   cosmology most, if not all, beings rely on others  for their livelihoods in one way or another.   The tree people must drink the water people to  survive, the deer people must eat the tree people   to survive, the bear people must eat the deer  people to survive, etc. This is how the world   was created, and everybody understands that.  Thus, the water people willfully give themselves   as a gift to the life of the tree people, the tree  people give themselves to support the deer people,   etc. And as recompense, the givers ask the gifted  for something in return--usually permission to   make use of their gift, and gratitude for the  offering of it. Humans being a part of the   web of relations, they are bound by the same  system. Thus salmon, oysters, berries, kelp,   etc. all willfully give themselves to support  the lives of people. Cedar and spruce trees,   recognizing that food is not all that is required  for human flourishing, give their bodies so humans   can make houses, canoes, clothes, art and  so on. What is asked in return are 3 things.  1st That humans ask permission before  harvesting and respect the answer.   You’ll see some people still doing this today.  If someone needs to make a canoe for example,   they’ll go up to a tree and ask in prayer for it  to offer itself. Then they’ll wait and listen, and   if the tree says no, they’ll find another tree. If  they can't find a tree that will give permission,   they’ll go home and come back another day. 2nd That humans express gratitude for the   gift through ceremony. Just like how winter  ceremonies honor the relationship with spirit   powers, harvesting related ceremonies honor the  relationship between people and their harvested   counterparts. For example, when the salmon people  begin their annual migration, an initial catch of   a small amount will be made and a feast known as  the first salmon ceremony held. The bones of the   consumed fish are saved and ritually returned to  the water. These dead salmon, it is believed, then   return to their people and attest to the honor and  respect they were given. If the first catch is not   properly honored, it’s believed the salmon people  will refuse to allow themselves to be caught.  3rd And perhaps most importantly,  humans must only take what they need.   Not only would it be disrespectful to say, the  salmon people, to catch more than you can eat   and have taken advantage of their generosity,  it’s also robbing from the livelihoods of the   bear people and the eagle people and all  the others who rely on salmon’s gift,   so they are going to be less likely to share  their gifts with humans. Thus overexploiting   even one resource damages a whole set of  relations and sets the world out of balance.   This principle quite literally makes  environmental sustainability a factor of   Northwest Coast religion. As a result, there were  a whole set of practices and social pressures to   regulate human behavior away from excess and  towards sustainable levels of consumption.   For example, just the simple requirement of  holding a first salmon ceremony takes several days   to fulfill. During this time, no salmon are being  caught and thousands of fish are allowed to swim   upstream unhindered and fulfill their roles in the  environment. As I mentioned before, title-holders   who held land usufruct rights were seen as  custodians of their tracts of land. They were   responsible for ensuring their land was harvested  sustainably, and if they allowed their parcels to   be recklessly overexploited--or worse, demanded  it in order to build wealth off the tribute--they   were liable to lose public prestige. We’ll talk  about this sustainability a bit more later. Potlatch Alright, it’s finally time to talk about  the much alluded-to potlatch ceremony.   The potlatch was an extremely important  component of Northwest Coast public life   (though there are regional variations in this  significance. Similarly to clan structures,   the institution waned in importance  the farther south one traveled).   Potlatches served many and varied purposes. Almost  anything you can think of that would warrant   public attention and a bit of ceremony was done  in the context of a potlatch. There were wedding   potlatches, funeral potlatches, coming-of-age  potlatches, birth potlatches, potlatches for   the dedication of a longhouse or a totem pole,  potlatches for legal functions such as investing   a new chief with their inherited titles, you name  it. They weren’t primarily religious ceremonies   like the winter ceremonies were. Religion was  present in potlatch ceremonies, and in some areas   like the central coast of British Columbia was a  more significant component than in other regions,   but it was never the primary purpose of potlatch  as a ceremony. Rather, economic, political, legal,   and cultural purposes took precedence. They  were pretty much the default public gathering.  As mentioned in the section on social  stratification, potlatches were put on by   wealthy sponsors and served the critical social  role in Northwest Coast economics of wealth   redistribution. As a potlatch’s extravagance was  a direct reflection of their sponsor’s available   wealth and social pressures, they ranged in  scale quite widely, and no two were equal.   Potlatches could be put on just for the local  community, redistributing local wealth and   cementing a title-holder’s position in their  own community, or they could be more competitive   events where high-status title-holders from  neighboring towns were invited in order to   establish an elite’s status in relation to  their peers. In this way wealth was not only   redistributed from the rich to the average within  a single community, it was also redistributed   between the wealthy elites of distant communities.  Thus, being invited to many potlatches was another   way to accumulate wealth. And by extravagant,  I do mean extravagant. The most flamboyant of   potlatches could see several hundred guests and  last easily for a week or several, with the host   providing everybody with gifts and food every  single day. When hosts were really trying to   flaunt their wealth and build status, they would  even throw items in the fire and destroy them,   as a demonstration that they had so much they  could afford to do that--blankets, coppers,   and unfortunately sometimes murdering slaves. There is probably no institution of Northwest   Coast societies that has received more attention  from Western anthropologists than the potlatch,   but even then scientists have tended to document  only the most opulent and extravagant ones. It’s   quite likely that these grand-scale events  of elite competition about which so much   has been written were much less common than  the potlatch that just fed the home town.  So what actually happens in a potlatch?  The two main components are feasting and   gift-giving. These are interspersed with periods  of performance--singing, dancing, speech making,   storytelling--as well as whatever other ceremonial  function the potlatch is achieving--the wedding,   the title investiture, the funeral, etc. Funeral  potlatches are naturally more somber events than   others, and are often referred to as wailing  potlatches as they afford people the opportunity   to express their grief without restriction.  All of these parts are done very ritually,   and a potlatch can be a very grand and impressive  spectacle. They’re held within a longhouse,   so you can imagine how immersive the  singing and dancing is in an enclosed space.  Another critical function of the potlatch  was as a repository of public memory.   Remember the discussion about intellectual  property rights and everything we’ve talked   about regarding inheritance. These were  cultures with no written languages.   There wasn’t a county clerk who could hold the  record of births, deaths, who holds the rights   to what tracts of lands or what crests or names  or what not. The potlatch was where all of this   was done. Any time intellectual property rights  were being passed from one person to another,   it had to be done at a potlatch so that there  were witnesses who could attest the recipient   legitimately inherited those items. If you’ll  recall, I mentioned how people would sometimes   lay claim to rights and privileges that weren’t  theirs, and that they’d get challenged on this.   The only way anybody could know who legitimately  possessed what rights was for those transfers to   be made in public ceremony. Potlatches were  times for hosts to bring out everything they   laid claim to. Not only would they flaunt  their wealth, but they’d tell their stories,   sing their songs, display their crests, etc. as an  assertion of all the different rights they held.   Guests would demonstrate their validation of  the hosts’ claims by accepting their gifts.   This formed a contract. Those guests would then  return to their communities and vouch for whatever   claims to rights a host made at their potlatch.  If a host made a claim to a right that a guest   did not agree with, they would refuse to sign  the contract by refusing their gift. Of course,   it didn’t stay just that subtle, the host  could expect to be verbally challenged as well. Art An Analysis of Form No discussion of the Northwest Coast would be  complete without mentioning their art--without   a doubt the most recognizable element of  Northwest Coast material culture to outsiders.   This gorgeous art style with its  black formline, its abstractness,   its signature repertoire of colors and motifs,  has gotten so much outside attention that many   Americans again have a perception that this style  was present throughout much of the continent.   That it’s a general indigenous American  art style, not just a Northwest Coast one.   I myself was surprised to learn as late as 11th  grade that it’s specific to this region. In fact,   the Seattle Seahawks football team took  their name and branding inspiration from   a Northwest Coast style seahawk mask housed  in the Burke Museum in Seattle, Washington.   The designs on their logo and uniforms take  inspiration from the Northwest Coast art style.   And yes, I use this style for  artistic aesthetic on this channel.  For the sake of both the length of this video, and  because I want to do a full artistic treatise on   this style, I’m going to make a separate video  about it. Here we’ll just cover some of the   highlights. Again, there’s regional variation in  style. In fact, the styles change so dramatically   as you move north and south that it should  be divided into a Northern Northwest coast   style and a Southern Northwest coast style  with the boundary around Vancouver, Canada.   The northern style is the one that has  traditionally gotten all the media and   scholarly attention, and it isn’t hard to see  why. The solid black lines that weave and connect   throughout a piece are called by scholars formline  (for the main, thicker lines) and fineline (for   the smaller, thinner ones). This is where the  art style gets its academic name of formline art.   In the northern regions, this formline plays  a more significant role than in the south,   and there are more strict rules governing the  components of a piece in the north than in the   south. Thus, in the north, figures which represent  animals, humans, and sometimes plants like trees   tend to be more stylized and abstract and less  lifelike than their southern counterparts.   The southern style makes use of similar design  motifs as the north--you’ll see similar t-and   u-shapes, similarly thick eyes and eyebrows,  similar ovoid shapes, etc.--but their unification   through the formline is less of a priority. As a side note, you may have noticed by now a   familiar pattern along the coast of cultural  transformation as you move north or south.   There are many reasons for this, but perhaps most  significantly, the southern nations in the United   States had much deeper ties with people in the  interior, outside of the coastal culture area.   The Cascades in Washington and Oregon are much  narrower and easier to cross than the Rockies   in British Columbia, so it makes sense that  there was more transit into the continent.  Another feature of the Northwest Coast  economy that helps distinguish it as a complex   hunter-gatherer society is specialization of  labor. People didn’t tend to be labor generalists,   but tended to focus on one or a handful  of crafts. There was already a gendered   division of labor common in all hunter-gatherer  societies--with men doing the hunting and fishing   and women doing the shellfish and plant  gathering--but even within a single gender,   people specialized. Fishermen tended to focus on  certain fish and leave the hunting of seals and   otters to sea mammal specialists, whales were a  specialization all of their own in the societies   that hunted them, and art was a specialization.  Artists studied and honed the skills of their   craft from a young age--learning the  style, how to carve, how to paint,   the qualities of the different materials they  worked with, how to make the paints, etc--and   good artists earned high social prestige (on  top of usually being high-status to begin with).   Artists were employed using a patronage system  very similar to the one in Renaissance Italy.   They wouldn’t freelance their work as is common  today, rather they would receive commissions and   all necessary support from wealthy patrons. Just about everything that had a surface was   decorated. Longhouses were painted both inside  and out, their support columns were often carved,   canoes were painted, there were carved  and painted knives, bowls, spoons, boxes,   hats, blankets, coppers, paddles, headdresses,  ceremonial masks, and of course, totem poles.  Another very well known and highly recognizable  component of Northwest Coast culture, totem poles   are monuments usually serving as another status  symbol for elite families by publicly displaying   the powerful lineage and privileges of that  family. They’re made out of vertically erected   cedar logs that can be anywhere from 10-60 ft  in height but sometimes over 100 (3-18 meters   but sometimes over 30) and are carved with a  number of figures, usually animal or human.   Contrary to popular belief, a pole does not  necessarily tell a story, rather it serves to   document the different stories about or familiar  to a community or family. For example, a pole   can be commissioned as a general celebration of  a certain wealthy family or individual. Thus,   this sort of pole is decorated with status  items to demonstrate the privileges owned   by the sponsor--owned family crests, scenes  from owned stories, depictions of ancestors,   or crests of the family’s clan. For obvious  reasons, this was commonly the purpose of the   entrance poles that adorned the front of family  longhouses. A totem pole’s erection is marked by   ceremony and potlatching where the the meanings of  the different depictions and the purpose for the   pole’s construction are explained thereby ensuring  public knowledge of what the monument represents.  Totem poles may be freestanding or, as just  mentioned, they may be one of the external or   internal house poles holding up a longhouse, in  which case they serve artistic, commemorative,   and architectural purposes. There were memorial  poles, erected to commemorate the death of a   significant individual, and even mortuary poles  that actually housed the deceased person’s remains   in a grave box--thereby serving as both tomb and  tombstone. And then there’s my favorite class of   totem pole--the shame pole. I mentioned a while  ago that privilege-holders who were stingy with   their potlatching could be subject to public  shaming. This is how it was done. A guest who   was dissatisfied with a host’s generosity would  return home and commission a shame pole. These   were generally pretty simple in construction,  featuring little more than a representation of the   shaming victim and some other elements emblematic  of the person to make it pretty clear who the   intended target was. It was then either erected  in a very prominent place in the guest’s village,   or, if possible, hauled to the host’s village  and erected pointed at the host’s longhouse.   Shame poles were meant to attract lots of public  attention to this person’s breach of honor.   The victim of a shame pole could not take it  down, only the constructor could. In order to   rid themself of this very public embarrassment,  the shaming victim needed to throw a more generous   potlatch, and only when the guest was satisfied  with the host’s newfound sense of generosity,   would they take it down. A shame pole could also  be targeted at an entire town if the offensive   behavior was widespread enough. In more recent  times, some people have utilized the tradition of   shame poling as an act of political resistance  to draw attention to the loss of traditional   territory and other grievances against colonial  governments and actors. One famous example of this   is a shame pole in Cordova, Alaska commissioned  by Tlingit fishermen Mike Webber as a protest   against the environmental disaster and political  mishandling of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.  We’re going to end this section on art  discussing two kinds of ceremonial clothing:   Chilkat blankets and button blankets. There  is a long and rich history in the Northwest   Coast stretching back well before European  contact of weaving wool into clothing.   Wool could be obtained from the wild mountain  goats in the region as well as the domesticated   wooly dogs who most certainly were all very  good bois. Out of this wool was woven many   items of clothing including a particular style  of ceremonial blanket known as Chilkat blankets.   These are mostly present in the far north  from about the central British Columbia coast   continuing through the Alaska panhandle. They’re  elaborately decorated with a representation of a   personal or family crest done in formline art.  But it is quite a distinct style of formline.   Straight lines, boxes, and 90 degree angles are  everywhere, and these don’t appear in formline   art done on any other medium--it’s  usually an obsessively curvy style.  Another ceremonial blanket with a more recent  history is the button blanket. These are also wool   blankets, but unlike the locally woven Chilkats,  the wool material used in button blankets was   acquired from European traders--making button  blankets a very modern addition to the Northwest   Coast material culture. They consist of a blanket  (almost exclusively dark blue) bordered on 3 sides   in red and decorated in the center with a design  also in red. Like with Chilkats, these designs   are typically personal or family crests. Unlike  Chilkats, they’re done in standard formline style,   not a unique blanket style. The blankets are  also decorated with abalone shells which can   act as simple accent pieces to the borders and  crest, or can form elaborate designs of their own.   As mentioned blue is the most common blanket  color as it was the most available color in trade   blankets during the fur trade era. Less often  encountered was gray, and most rare, green. Thus,   these colors were more valuable and affordable  only to very wealthy individuals--becoming a   status symbol. Button blankets have a much  wider distribution than Chilkats being used   all along the coast (though I don’t know how  prevalent they are south of the Columbia River).  Both of these blankets were used mainly in  religious ceremonies and potlatches and thus   were very special items--to be treated with great  respect. They are still used and revered in this   way today, though for obvious reasons, they have  also taken on significance as a connection to   culture, and thus you’ll see people using them for  special occasions or educational purposes outside   of strictly the potlatch ceremonial setting. People of Salmon and Cedar There are two items that define the  material cultures of Northwest Coast   peoples more than any other. Salmon  was the staple food source and cedar   provided a construction material for  pretty much anything you can think of.   As seen in the passage I opened this video with,  if you were to walk around a Northwest Coast town   for just 5 minutes, you would be astounded  at all the different things a person can do   with one plant (well, okay, 2, the Western Red  Cedar and the Yellow Cedar were both harvested).  The wood served as the primary construction  material for larger items and anything carved.   Canoes were made by hollowing out a single cedar  log. Logs also served as the frame for longhouses   and other buildings like smokehouses as well as  for carving totem poles. Cedar wood splits very   consistently, so one can make planks by driving  wedges into one end of a log and working the   split down the log’s entire length. These boards  were then used for roofing and siding structures,   making decks and platforms, smokeracks, and even  plank drums. Smaller items were also made out of   the wood: storage boxes; plates and bowls; spoons;  canoe paddles; arrow shafts; quivers; hammer, ax,   and adze handles; mallets; rattles; decorative  or ceremonial figurines; ceremonial masks; spears   for hunting or fishing; digging and torch sticks;  cooking spits; weaving looms; toys and trinkets;   whistles; and on and on. Boxes were usually  constructed in a style called bentwood because   a single cedar plank would be steam treated and  bent to 90 degrees in three points. The ends   would then be joined together either with rope or  dowels and a bottom attached in a similar manner.   These boxes could be so tight that they could  hold water and were often used for cooking.  The bark of cedar has two layers, a hard outer  bark and a soft inner bark. This inner layer   was removed and had its own long list of uses.  In an unprocessed state, it could be used for   making small structures like lean-tos and even  emergency canoes as well as smaller items: boards,   bowls, boxes, baskets, design templates used in  carving, and weak, make-shift strings or rope.   For most uses, the bark had to be shredded  by pounding it between two hard surfaces. In   this processed state it was softer and a prized  material for anything braided or woven: baskets,   mats, canoe sails, netting, stronger rope, and  clothing items like hats and shawls. To make it   even softer it could be shredded again through a  variety of methods that usually involved wringing   shredded bark in your hands and treating it with  oil, sometimes soaking it in oil or water for   weeks. It could even get soft enough to make into  comfortable mattresses, blankets, and diapers.  Cedar roots (as well as spruce roots) were  another prized weaving material, usually being   used for baskets or hats. Whatever the material,  weavers and basketmakers could achieve weaves so   tight as to be waterproof thereby weaving  waterproof clothing and watertight baskets.   For rope-making, the most valued  material were the withes--the   little branchlets that hang off from a  main branch in long, drooping, curves.   This is because they have an incredibly strong  tensile strength--up to 10,000 psi. These could   be processed in a variety of ways to create ropes  and nets of differing strength and flexibility.  As mentioned repeatedly, salmon was the major  food source throughout the region. I talked in the   section on sedentism about these economies being  storage economies, that rather than following   migrating herds of game, they would build up  stockpiles of processed and preserved staple foods   for out-of-season consumption. Due to the sheer  volume of salmon available and their well-known   annual migrations, salmon, smoked and dried,  was the most common stockpiled food resource   by far. The timing of the salmon runs varies  throughout the region and according to species,   but they generally occur in late summer through  the fall--perfect timing to stockpile for winter.   Even today, these runs are massive with  millions of fish returning, but before large   scale Western colonization, habitat destruction,  and commercial fishing, accounts attest that the   numbers of the past were much, much higher.  Multiple sources describe rivers choked with   fish for weeks on end--so much fish that one  could almost walk across a river on their backs.   It’s not hard to see why this was  such a valuable resource, and,   at least economically speaking, the Northwest  Coast year centered around the fall salmon runs.  I mentioned before how labor was specialized  in Northwest Coast societies, but the salmon   runs were such an important time that  it was an all hands on deck scenario   with all the men required for fishing  and the women for processing the catch.   Many different techniques were used to catch the  salmon, but perhaps the most efficient was the   construction of fish weirs. These were platforms  built across the entire length of a river with   barred fences extending beneath them into the  water to halt the salmon’s progress. At regular   intervals across the weir, gates in the fencing  were installed that funneled the salmon into pens   where the fishermen could net or spear salmon  in droves from atop the platform. These weirs   were so well constructed, that they could halt the  entire salmon run of a river at a single location. The Tragedy-less Commons It’s here that I want to mention something that  ties together a lot of what we’ve discussed.   There’s a concept in Western economics which  many of you are probably familiar with called   the tragedy of the commons. Traditional  economists are generally very supportive   of private land ownership as opposed to communal  land ownership because they say communal ownership   is less efficient and can easily result  in overexploitation. The scenario goes as   follows. They say that when land is communally  owned and available to be harvested by everyone,   there’s nobody to regulate how much of the  land’s resources people take. Thus, people   will over harvest out of fear that everybody else  is overharvesting and that, if they don’t take a   lot now, they may get none later. This cycle of  fear results in a race to the bottom that actually   creates the scarcity everybody was so afraid  of. To remedy this, so say the economists, the   land should be privately owned. This creates an  entity--the land owner--who can impose limits on   harvesting, or better yet, exclude people entirely  and have complete control over what is done when   with the parcel. The land owner is incentivised to  harvest responsibly as overextending their land’s   resources would deplete their future earnings.  However, I think we have all the evidence in   the world that this system doesn’t quite work  as intended. Exhibit A, climate change. We have   plenty of real-world examples of private ownership  of land not stopping that land’s overexploitation.  However, there are ways to deal with the tragedy  of the commons other than assigning private   property rights, and Northwest Coast societies  demonstrate a couple of ingenious strategies.   First is the use of usufruct rights. By assigning  the rights to use particular tracts of land to   particular family groups, you disperse the  population of a town to harvest in different   areas thereby drastically reducing the amount  of people trying to harvest on any one parcel.   Likewise, by vesting the usufruct’s holder with  the authority to exclude non-family group members,   you’ve pretty much accomplished the  goal of giving some entity regulatory   power over the parcels’ use while still  holding the land in communal ownership.  The second strategy is one that is used in pretty  much all hunter-gatherer societies that I know of,   and a point that I think most Western economists  traditionally overlook or at least underestimate.   That is that sustainable harvesting  practices are a vested value in the culture.   These cultures know that they depend on the health  of their resource base for their survival, they   know that people are capable of taking more than  they need, and they know that unchecked overuse   like this threatens everyone’s livelihoods.  Thus, there are strong cultural values,   enforced through religious tenants and social  pressures and communicated from childhood,   to encourage a sustainable level of harvesting  and discourage reckless exploitation.   Title-holders who had a bit of authority  to regulate harvesting on their land,   were held personally responsible for ensuring  it was done sustainably. Mismanaging and   overextending one’s land would result in loss  of social prestige, among other consequences.   Here’s one example. I mentioned in the last  section that a fish weir could halt the entire   salmon run at a single location. Well that would  create quite a problem for everybody upstream   since everybody along these rivers relied on  the annual salmon migration for their survival   (including people in the interior outside of the  coastal culture zone). If downstream communities   harvested too much salmon and didn’t let enough  continue upstream, they would both threaten the   returns of future runs and risk invasion  from their upstream neighbors. Thus, the   title-holders who operated the weirs had strong  social pressures to only permit as much fishing   as their community needed. At the beginning of the  season, they would first allow the weirs to sit   open and the salmon to pass through unobstructed  for several days. Once they commenced fishing,   they would observe the progress of the catch and  call it quits once they’d harvested their fill.   Could individuals and elites violate cultural  pressures and still overharvest, absolutely,   but people can also break private  property laws too. The point is,   it still usually succeeded in providing  regulation and enforcement of human behavior.  The last strategy ameliorates the issues of  both communal and private land ownership.   And that is the social requirement of wealth  redistribution. Since title-holders got rich   off the tribute people paid for harvesting  on their land, you might assume this would   encourage environmentally and socially destructive  levels of exploitation. However, we don’t see that   because the incentive structure actually doesn’t  incentivise it. If I know, that I can only to keep   my wealth for so long and that I can only build  so much of it before I have to give it all away,   then I have no incentive to destroy the health of  my environment, risk conflict with my neighbors,   or demand exorbitant labor quotas from my people,  because I’m not going to keep all that money   anyway. Why damage a whole web of relationships to  get rich when I can’t even keep the money. In fact   the incentive structure actively works against  these sorts of antisocial behaviors because   I don’t get socially rewarded just for having  money. I get socially rewarded for giving it away.   And what’s more, I also get socially punished  through embarrassment, shame, or even legal action   for hoarding piles of cash without redistributing  it. Likewise for damaging my environment   and community in the pursuit of that wealth. And before anybody says anything in the comments,   this system of wealth redistribution does not seem  to have created droves of mindlessly lazy welfare   leeches “sucking off the government teat” (air  quotes). We have no indication of anything like   that anywhere in the written record. Furthermore,  the vibrancy of Northwest Coast material culture   obviously demonstrates people putting in work  and effort beyond just what they need to survive.  All of these strategies, usufruct rights,  a cultural value for sustainability, and   socially required wealth redistribution enabled  the communal ownership of land, the existence   of a wealthy elite, and a pretty good quality of  life for everybody without overexploiting their   natural resources. Maybe these economies  are something worth taking lessons from.  I hope you all enjoyed watching that as  much as I enjoyed writing it. I lived   in Washington for over a decade, and this  region was my introduction to Indigenous   cultures and affairs as a whole, so I  enjoy any chance I get to talk about it.   If you like this channel and the stories I tell do  consider supporting me on Patreon. Even just a few   dollars a month from a lot of different people  makes a big difference. And if you can do that,   like, subscribe, leave a comment, and  hit that notification button to stay   in the loop. Thank you all very much for  watching and I will see you next time.

Channel: Indigenous History Now

Views: 31,703

Keywords: indigenous, indigenous american, native american, indian, american indian, native, pnw, pacific northwest, northwest, history, culture, anthropology, cultures, native american cultures, native american history, american indian culture, american indian history, indigenous culture, indigenous history, indigenous american history, bc, british columbia, wa, ak, or, washington, alaska, oregon, art, formline, totem, totem pole, potlatch, tragedy of the commons, wealth redistribution

Id: It4AiOLrQhs

Length: 82min 39sec (4959 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 06 2022