Northwest Coast Peoples

 

• Naturally, the cultural area of the Northwest Coast follows the northwestern coast of North America and slightly inland along the Nass, Skeena and Fraser rivers in British Columbia.
• There are a variety of Indigenous nations living in the Northwest Coast, including the Haida, Nisga’a, Central Coast Salish and Northern Coast Salish.
• Societies were established around hunting and gathering, with the most valuable resources being salmon (for food) and cedar (for construction, technology and artwork).
• Resources from the sea were of primary importance. The Pacific salmon runs, which arrived in regular annual migrations and provided salmon that were eaten fresh or dried for year-round use, were particularly significant.
• Fishermen adapted devices, such as nets, traps and weirs, to suit specific sea and stream conditions
• Hunters took land mammals, including black-tailed deer, bear, wapiti (elk) and mountain goat, with bows and arrows, snares, deadfalls and nets.
• Sea mammals, including seals, whales and porpoises, were taken with harpoons on the water, and with clubs or nets wherever animals came ashore.
• The people gathered additional nutrition in the form of shellfish, berries, edible roots, bulbs and green shoots.
• Security of place and abundant resources allowed for the development of permanent settlements, and significant wealth and political complexity
• Social leaders were chosen based on ownership of real property such as house sites, berry patches, hunting territory, seal rookeries and fish-trap sites.
• Class division and slavery were universal
• Slaves were acquired in war or by purchase. Although they lived in owners’ houses, slaves lacked full civil rights and were required to perform menial chores.
• Both men and women made the tools necessary for work.
• Carpentry was men’s work. Using blades of stone and shell, wooden wedges and stone hammers, they fashioned not only plank houses but other items of everyday use including dugout canoes, which provided transportation along rapid streams and on the open sea.
• Women were responsible for making clothes for the family, including elaborately decorated Chilkat blankets of twined cedar bark and mountain goat wool. They also made everyday items, such as fishing nets and lines, wove baskets and hats from cedar bark and roots and fashioned mats from cedar bark or rushes
• Northwest Coast Indigenous peoples generally lived in large post-and-beam structures in the winter known as plank houses.
• These structures were covered by split cedar planks decorated in distinct regional styles.
• Cedar was of primary importance, as its long, straight grains were ideal for both artistic and functional woodworking.
• Wood sculpture and painting, notably totem poles, are the most renowned features of Northwest Coast Indigenous culture