Northwest Coast Art
The Pacific Northwest of North America produced stable Native American cultures. This was in great measure due to the abundance of resources and temperate climate, which figured prominently in the social and cultural fabric of the peoples. Fishing, hunting, and foraging produced ample means of sustenance, and therefore, the people of this region had no reason to cultivate crops or domesticate animals. Their cultures tended to share certain features, probably because they traded and warred with one another. Artistic motifs (recurring artistic elements) were alike, and they shared a common religion-shamanism (ancient belief systems centered on shamans. individuals who communicate with invisible forces or spirits), Although their gods and myths differed, the Northwest peoples all acknowledged the power of shamans to . contact the spirits of the forest and waters, to heal the sick, and to predict the future.
The rich forests of the area provided Native American artists with a wealth of materials for sculpting. Huge spruce and cedar trees abounded for many centuries, and when steel knives were obtained from fur traders and used as tools, Northwest-coast artists excelled in producing magnificent totem poles, carved posts for wooden dwellings, masks, rattles, and other objects. Carved wooden house posts not only supported the roof but also gave additional decoration to the interior. When living closer to the sea, artists had access to abalone shells that were used as inlays to give luster to their sculpted works.
Although many art objects from the area, such as masks, concern themselves with shamanistic religious rituals, a fair amount of art was secular. Like some African art, it was used to maintain the social fabric and bolster a ruler’s power. For example, in the Tlingit group–a people who lived in the islands and bays of the upper reaches of the Pacific Northwest-communities were made up of a number of families, each of which had its own chief who inherited his rank from his mother. Carefully devised social customs obliged both men and women to marry outside their own clan. In this way a balance was established in which no one family achieved dominance. Nonetheless, chiefs competed fiercely with each other in displays of riches. Totem poles formed a part of this ostentation proclaiming prestige and family pride through genealogy-much like the coats of arms of the European aristocracy. Totem poles were carved from single tree trunks and often reached a height of 90 feet (27.4 meters). Probably originating as funerary (burial) monuments, by the nineteenth century they had become fixtures adorning the exteriors of chiefs’ houses.
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