The Northwest Coast

The Northwest Coast stretches 1,800 km from Cape Mendocino, California, to Yakutat Bay, Alaska. It is usually divided into three or four subregions (Fig. 1), with the Oregon and northern California coasts the most ambiguous in their assignment to the Northwest Coast. In the nineteenth century, this was linguistically one of the most diverse regions of North America, with eight language families. Nevertheless, Northwest Coast cultures shared many common cultural, social, and economic traits. It is important to stress that local expression of these traits varied, so that while the coast’s cultures look similar at the areal scale (the entire coast) or the regional scale there was also considerable variability at the subregional and local scales.2,4 Donald5 gives a useful summary of the defining characteristics of Northwest Coast culture. The key resources are cedar, primarily western red cedar (Thuja plicata), and salmon (five species of the genus Oncorhynchus). Cedar trees, which are tall and large with straight grain, were used for a startling range of purposes, from making cloth to constructing very large houses and, of course, the famous carvings. Salmon are an anadromous fish that once occurred in great abundance and were central to the coast’s subsistence economy. According to Donald,5 the key features of the coast’s cultures are: 1. Marine/riverine orientation in subsistence, ideology, and “outlook”; 2. Sophisticated, highly evolved technology for exploiting marine (neritic) and riverine resources; 3. Highly developed woodworking technology (plank houses, canoes, art objects, and watertight storage boxes), as well as a wealth of basketry items; 4. Some of the densest human populations in North America, including some in agricultural areas; 5. Emphasis on property, with control of wealth central to social importance and success; 6. Tripartite system of social stratification, including a lowest stratum of slaves; 7. True slavery; 8. No intercommunity political organization; even communities not always political units; 9. No major political offices. I would add a tenth trait to his list: 10. The basic economic unit was large coresidential corporate households. The corporate household, ranging in size from 15 to well over 100 individuals, was the coast’s fundamental social, economic, and political unit.6 Households owned and controlled estates of corporeal and noncorporeal property that included rights to exploit resources in particular patches. They also had outright ownership of some patches as well as privileges such as titles, songs, and dances. These rights were conveyed through household oral traditions and represented by the supernatural beings depicted in masks and other art. Large post-and-beam houses were among the household’s major possessions. These large houses sheltered people, Kenneth M. Ames is Professor of Anthropology of the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University. He is currently conducting research on hungergatherer economies along the Lower Columbia River of the western United States and working on comparative analyses of long-term complex hunter-gatherer evolutionary sequences.