Northwest Native Folklore

The native people of the Northwest coast have a rich assortment of art to be studied. There seems to be a bit more wealth and a thriving social hierarchy that is lacking in other native cultures. Elaborate totem poles carved from cedar and family crests denoting the position in society a family holds, points to an organization of community, or clan. Bill Holm studied the intricacies of Tlingit wood carving. The eagle and raven are important in their creation stories, so those carvings persist throughout the region. Holm took notice of the configurative, expansive, and distributive forms of carving that the Tlingit used, along with the shapes used in carving; the formline, U-shape,
and ovoid. The configurative style was a straightforward presentation of the animal represented. The expansive style was carving of body parts into the wood, but not the whole animal. The distributive art was that which represented a whole animal with body parts distributed in an odd mix of assorted places within the carving. Pablo Picasso was impressed by this third type of carving and used it in his paintings.

There are as many as 57 language groups in this area, although many of them are dying out rapidly because young people do not speak the native tongue. According to Coming to Light, the Kwkwaka’wakw have instituted the Kwak’wala language into their elementary school curriculum. Other tribes are following suit in order to keep their native language, and maybe even their culture, from dying out. There are so many languages because the terrain is rough with hills and mountain ranges that separate the different tribes from one another.

The “Sun’s Myth” in Coming to Light spoke of a disease, small pox, which decimated many native populations in the North and Northwest regions. There was a man from a tribe that went astray and met some foreign people. He married a foreign woman, then went back home with a blanket that belonged to his estranged family, and unintentionally killed many native people along the way, and then his own family when he arrived back at the home he once knew. The story didn’t get too graphic about details of the disease, but it painted an elaborate picture of dying native people due to outside European influence.

For me, the potlatches are always of interest. For a community, or tribe, to get together for celebration or support while one of their people is in mourning, it has to be close-knit, no matter what the spatial difference. I think about how many people in mainstream society seem to be off to themselves and unwilling to share their lives with those around them, unwilling to give of themselves, and it makes me feel lonely. Thank God not all people are like that. There is a trust issue, I think, that gets in the way of communicating joy and sadness to other people. Among the native people, in general, mistrust isn’t an issue among their own kind, but is very prevalent toward outsiders.

I never knew how influential Northwest native art was until you mentioned Pablo Picasso and his distributive art. I figured his style had come from someplace that wasn’t European, due to the liking of patterns and symmetry in European art. I’ve noticed when watching the woodcarving documentary and the movies from the North native cultures, that the people have Asian features in their faces and stature. It was of no surprise to me to see the serpent as a part of their native culture. Dragons, which resemble the serpents denoted in the native art, are prominent in Chinese culture also.