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Monday 16 July 2012

Empire of Skin: frustrations of the hunt / Edward S. Curtis: Indians of the Northwest Coast


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Shores of Nootka Sound.
This plate conveys an excellent impression of the character of much of the Vancouver Island coast, with its rugged, tide-washed rocks, thickly timbered lowland, and lofty mountains in the distance
: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)


April 5, 1804


Chief went out whaling...first time this season...no success


April 6, 1804

 
Thick and cloudy...chief out whaling...struck one...was fast but harpoon broke...returned very cross

April 15, 1805


Chief out whaling...struck two but his harpoon drawed...returned in very bad humour



Maquina's whale hunt scorecard
during Jewitt's captivity

Days the chief went whaling........53
whales struck and lost.................8
whales killed............................1




Whaler -- Clayoquot: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Whaler: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



At Nootka. The canoe is floating on the waters of Boston cove, where in 1803 the trading ship Boston was taken and burned by the Mooachaht Indians, and the entire crew killed except John Jewitt and John Thompson, who were held as slaves by the chief for three years. Jewitt's brief account of his captivity is one of our most interesting records of life among the Indians: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Clayoquot type. It was men such as the possessor of this inscrutable face who in 1811 attacked the Astor trading ship Tonquin in Clayoquot Sound, so successfully that the only recourse of the remnant of the crew was to blow up the vessel: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Whale ceremonial -- Clayoquot. Before daring to practise his dangerous art, the whaler subjects himself to a long and rigorous course of ceremonial purification in order to render himself pleasing to the spirit whale. He bathes frequently, rubs his body vigorously with hemlock sprigs, dives, and imitates the movements of a whale: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



  Hesquiat maiden. The subject of this plate is a female shaman of the Clayoquot tribe. The ceremonial washing of shamans is much like that of whalers and other hunters, consisting mainly of sitting or standing in water and rubbing the body with hemlock sprigs in order to remove all earthly taint, which would offend the supernatural powers: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Whaler -- Makah. Note the great size of the harpoon-shaft. Indian whalers implanted the harpoon-point by thrusting, not by hurling, the weapon: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



The captured whale. A small Humpback Whale (Megapter) lies partially butchered on the beach at Neah Bay: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Nootka method of spearing. The harpoon for seals, porpoises, and salmon is double-headed, so that if the point on the main shaft glances off, the other may perhaps lodge in the hunter's prey: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Fish spearing -- Clayoquot. The fisherman is taking flounder and other flatfish, which lie half-covered in the sand. At certain seasons, when the water is turbid by reason of the presence of excessive marine growth, objects on the bottom of a quiet bay can be discerned at a surprising depth. It is frequently assumed that the prows of North Coast canoes are carved in imitation of a dog's head, but the natives deny any intentional resemblance. The notch in the top of the prow, dividing it into two sections suggestive of an animal's ears, is simply a rest for the shaft of a spear or harpoon: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Canoeing on Clayoquot Sound: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Boarding the canoe. A Hesquiat berry-picker in primitive garb on the bold shores of Clayoquot Sound. The barefoot natives make their way without difficulty over barnacle-covered rocks such as these. It will be noted that the canoe has been fitted with rowlocks: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



On the west coast of Vancouver Island. Lacking hats to protect their heads from the sun, women sometimes make use of branches of foliage: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Bowman: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Hesquiat maiden. The girl wears the cedar-bark ornaments that are tied to the hair of virgins on the fifth morning of their puberty ceremony. The fact that the girl who posed for this picture was the prospective mother of an illegitimate child caused considerable amusement to the native onlookers and to herself: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



On the shores at Nootka. Two women wearing the primitive bark blanket and nose-ornament, and with clam-baskets on their backs, rest on the beach while waiting for the tide to fall and uncover the clam-beds: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



 Return of halibut fishers. Huge quantities of halibut are taken by the Makah at Cape Flattery, and the flesh is sliced and dried for storage: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Bark gatherer. These people still use large quantities of yellow-cedar bark in the manufacture of mats, and formerly this material furnished them their clothing also. The Hesquiat woman in the picture has a bulky pack of bark on her back, and in her hand is a steel-bladed adz of the primitive type: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



 Hesquiat root digger. Nootka women very commonly wore bark cape folded over the head, to protect the forehead from the tump-line, when carrying the burden-basket. The proper use of the cape was to shed rain.: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Berry picker -- Clayoquot: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Seaweed gatherer. Seaweed of the genus Porphyra is a favorite food among all the tribes of the North Pacific coast. The green, membranous fronds are gathered in the spring from tidal rocks and are pressed into flat cakes and dried: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Hesquiat woman: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Makah maiden: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Clayoquot girl: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Nootka woman wearing cedar-bark blanket: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Waiting for the canoe. As evening approaches, two women with clam-baskets and digging-sticks gaze across the water, anxiously awaiting the canoe that is to come and convey them home: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Nootka woman: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Haiyahl -- Nootka. A Nootka woman in profile, with a shell nose-ring and fur-edged bark blanket: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Nootka man. It is commonly believed that the facial hair of many North Coast natives is proof of intermingled Caucasian blood; but that such is not the case is conclusively proved by the statement of Captain Cook, who in 1778 observed that "some of them, and particularly the old men, have not only considerable beards all over the chin, but whiskers and mustachios.": photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



The oldest man of Nootka. This individual is the most primitive relic in the modernized village of Nootka. Stark naked, he may be seen hobbling about the beach or squatting in the sun, living in thought in the golden age when the social and ceremonial customs of his people were what they had always been: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)



Into the shadow -- Clayoquot: photo by Edward S. Curtis (1862-1952), c. 1915, from The Nootka. The Haida [portfolio], Seattle, 1916 (Northwestern University Library / Library of Congress)


frustrations of the hunt from TC: Empire of Skin, 1997

10 comments:

STEPHEN RATCLIFFE said...

Tom,

"Thick and cloudy...chief out whaling...struck one...was fast but harpoon broke..."

Wonderful pictures, Curtis (and Jewitt long before him) on the front lines, keeping track of things --

7.16

grey whiteness of fog against invisible
ridge, blue jay standing on pine branch
in foreground, sound of wave in channel

past event, origin of fixed
positions overlapping

there, only what turns back,
whereas what opens up

grey white fog against invisible ridge,
shadowed green pine on tip of sandspit

Hazen said...

What marvelous photos! How fortunate we are that Curtis took it on himself to preserve something of the indigenous cultures before they were changed utterly. Clothing made from cedar bark—that’s new to me. It looks more supple that I would imagine.

The oldest man in Nootka . . . 'living in thought in the golden age when the social and ceremonial customs of his people were what they had always been.' Steady on.

TC said...

Hazen,

Curtis's great photos are complemented by his careful and thoughtful captions, giving us a record of this vanishing culture that stands alongside the Lewis Hines studies of child labor as a momumental anthropological document of this period on this continent.

Cedar bark was the principal all-purpose textile of these Northwest Coast peoples. It was available in abundance and put to essential uses.

The process of production began with the native women of Vancouver Island stripping bark from the Red Cedar / aka Yellow Cedar (Thuja pliacata).

The bark was used both split and shredded. For mats, storage baskets and wallets it was split and divided up into long quarter-inch splints. These splints could be dyed black by burying them in mineral mud. Weavers could achieve checkerboard and twilled plaiting by intermingling the natural threads with the black-dyed ones.

The flexible inner layer of the shredded cedar bark was shredded, steeped in tubs for at least six days, then pounded and beaten with whale bone paddles. When the fibers had thus been separated-out, they were washed and prepared for weaving.

The weaving was done by the women of the house, though in the case of the wealthiest households, the work was left to slaves.

The cedar bark was combed for straightening, rolled into a loose warp thread, and then rolled again more tightly on the weaver's thigh, or sometimes rolled along with another strand to make a two-ply thread.

The weaving process was described in detail by the always interested and remarkably observant Captain James Cook in the first edition of his Third Voyage.

Native garments, wrote Cook "are made of ... bark, beaten into a hempen state. It is not spun, but after being properly prepared, is spread upon a stick, which is fastened across to two others which stand upright. It is disposed in such a manner, that the manufacturer, who sits upon her hams at this simple machine, knots it across with small plaited threads, at the distance of 1/2" from each other. Though, by this method it is not so close or firm as cloth that is woven, the bunches between the knits make it sufficiently impervious to air, by filling the interstices; and it has the additional example of being softer and more pliable."

Cloaks, wraparound skirts, and circular capes were among the durable, pliable, handsome weatherproof garments thus made. As also various hats and mats and blankets and baskets.

These techniques are often called primitive, in a use of the term which is always to some degree patronising. In comparison, our polyesters would be sophisticated.

The dame of the manor has coincidentally just passed along the Style section of the Sunday paper for use in garbage wrapping. The cover picture shows a pouty blank-faced model dressed up (down?) in a pair of high-end (??) pre-torn denim levis. It's so good to be living in an advanced society.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

To go back there
and wait
feet on the rocks
everything made
by someone I know
or knew
touches everything
I love
to smell my Eskimo doll
out at Nonpareil
touch the baskets
cradleboard
and carvings
this is like this
going out and scouting
for something to eat
and on the way back
to the isle
getting exactly
what is needed
here and there
the places I know
and what the bear
gives away

vazambam (Vassilis Zambaras) said...

Kids of my generation used to tear their denims sliding into 2nd, 3rd or home plate and then go home to mom who would darn or patch the holes for the next sandlot fracas but that was eons ago on some other planet, wasn’t it?

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Nome Dogfights

There are some things that I would tell Denise Hall and Robert Christie about Nome, if they were still alive and kicking. Dogfights would be high on the list, but so would the boardwalk, the army jacket, the nuggets, the bear in a cage, the ice, the break-up, the huskies, the school, the jackets, the mukluks, the kuspuks, the pilot bread, the drunk babysitter and the passed-out boyfriend, the blueberries (huckleberries really), the cabin called Teetering-on-the-Brink, Chicken Hill, the Chungs, the 8-track player, the time grandma peed her pants from laughing, the theater, Elvis’s 68 Comeback Special, Commander Cody, the Tundra, the Lutheran Church, the Methodist Church, the TV channel, the albums, the visitors (Kathleen Kennedy), the camping, the driftwood, the rivers, the fishing trips, the citizens of Nome, the wanderers.
People wandered about in Nome. Maybe because I was nine and reading Nancy Drews, I was most interested in the mysteries of these people—the mysteries never led anywhere but death. Clouds of mosquitoes wanted our bodies all summer long. One babysitter told me to breathe only through my nose during winter. Another wanted my parents to bail her out of jail because her class at school was going to take a field trip there. At the library, there was a gold nugget displayed next to the Nancy Drews. The Nome Nugget, as big as a dog’s head. A restaurant had the same name.
A siren blew every day at noon. All the dogs howled to it. There was salmon to eat. There were cases of canned food. One time, our dog, Shumagin, got into a vicious fight at a camp out party with my parents. I saw his eye pulled out by another dog. I saw the optic nerve.
I would also tell Denise and Robert about Mango Man in Kailua, Hawaii. He is ghost-like because his body is halfway in this dimension and halfway out, with his mind tagging along. Most of Nome’s citizens were like Mango Man. They wandered about the town in winter and summer, minimally present, but always seemed to be on their way to somewhere else.

TC said...

This is like this.

Eons ago on another planet a midden had accumulated containing the lovingly assembled records and customs going back to the days when the Land Bridge still allowed us to slide into 3rd, pop up when the throw was wild and race all the way home with our pants on fire and our moms never knowing.

Then came the invention of L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E and all our whalebone tools became useless and the boutiques were full of our discarded artifacts, defaced, violated, made more interesting by not being in History any more.

And then we saw it, the extracted optic nerve, the disappointing Elvis, the astonishng Chungs, the sadistic babysitter smiling icily while telling us to breathe only through our noses all through one long phase of Glaciation, the silent OMG mouthed by the dumbstruck Captain Cook as he realized the homefires on the beach were burning for him.

The way everything led and still leads to death and yet here we are, remembering that 8 a.m. Classical Greek Class, and the nostrils frozen together in January, there in the Great White North, in the midden.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

I am understanding more about the equals sign now said the monk to the master although there was still a slight slouch in the posture, to be fair.

TC said...

A equals C, said the Master. Forget B, we're busy searching his apartment at the moment.

However the slouching Monk still harboured doubts.

What if -- the Monk finally replied meekly, after thinking things over for a while -- the identity sign is actually nothing but the latest white world lie, now playing at the Metroplex?

Best seen on Imax, wearing full metal jacket over popcorn box, said the Master.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Does anything mean anything
without Ed Dorn--
his commentary
now supposedly
holographic
I guess Maquina
still went out
day after day
to look for whales
sometimes
getting one
to haul back
to the red
yellow cedar
maybe just
call it orange
and remove
the fat
carefully
with an ulu
with your teeth