This report was written as a Renaissance project in 2007.

Way of Life of the Haida Natives, First Nations of Haida Gwaii

A Report by Bradley A. Clements

Table of Contents:
Introduction
Social Organization
Social Structure
Village Structure
Family Life
Material Culture
The Gathering of Food
Housing
Transport
Warfare
Art and Ceremonies
Art and Dance
Potlatches
Conclusion
Post-European Changes
Bibliography

Introduction

Haida Gwaii is the main island of an archipelago, known now as the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the northern coast of British Columbia. Haida Gwaii, as are all of the Queen Charlottes, is covered in sub-tropical rainforest, abundant with western red cedar trees, berries, and fruit and game of many sorts. The islands are isolated from the coast by a broad belt of treacherous water, the Heckate Strait, which teams with halibut, rock-cod, and salmon.
Of these islands were born a people, their lineage stretching back over ten millennia. The archipelago was fertile soil for growing an advanced civilization – all of the resources that were necessary for life were abundant and close at hand, and the surrounding waters were more impregnable to enemies than any fortifications. In this report I will attempt to scratch the surface of the mountain of lore and history surrounding these people, and, perhaps, reveal to you some of the wonders of their world.

Social Organization

Social Structure
The Haida are one of the oldest ethnic groups still existing in North America. Exact dates cannot be confirmed, and resources disagree on the exact age of the Haida culture, but we can expect that it is somewhere between 9,000 and 13,000 years old, possibly older. Most of the major villages are located on Haida Gwaii, but others are scattered throughout the islands – more than one hundred of them - and in outposts on the mainland coast and, more recently, on some of the islands of southern Alaska. The Charlottes’ coastal areas are known to be quite violent – large surf and harsh winds pound much of the shoreline – so villages were located in sheltered coves and stream-deltas.
The Haida had a distinct language unto themselves, and oral tradition, including dances, songs, story-telling, and art, was very important. Every man with a notable lineage was expected to be able to recite it all, sometimes back as far as the peopling of the islands. Their society was fundamentally hierarchical, divided into castes of nobles, shamans, commoners, and slaves. Nobles owned rights to plots of land for hunting, gathering, building, and logging, and grounds for fishing or laying fish-traps, and commoners had to pay to use the noble’s lands. Nobles were people who were expected to know how to manage wealth, conserve the lands that they used, have a respectable lineage, own a house with a housepole, and to give potlatches. Commoners did not own land rights and were not allowed to have a housepole. Commoners were the majority of the population and shared in group activities and work. Some commoners were prestigious artisans, had links to the lineage of a noble, or had shamanistic powers, and were respected above their fellow commoners, but they still had the same rights. Slaves were usually prisoners of war, and could be sold, killed, or given away. They were the base working class and were owned by nobles, but they could obtain freedom if they expressed outstanding skills in art or hunting.
The Haida were divided into clans. Clans were descendants of a common ancestor and owned rights to territory, dances, songs, and crests. The two largest clans were the Eagles and the Ravens, who lived in a state of mutual peace. They both relied on each other in many ways – they traded goods of cultural importance and cross-married between clans. Within each moiety, members of the different lineages resided at opposite ends of the village. Each was made up of a number of houses, and the Eagles included twenty-three families, and the Ravens, twelve. They both owned the rights to certain crests and displayed their specific clan-crests often in their artwork (an eagle for the Eagles, a raven for the Ravens). It was believed that the clan ancestors had obtained the crests from the animal spirits that they represented. All land mammal crests, apart from the beaver, are property of the Ravens, but all sea creature and bird crests, besides the cormorant, heron, hawk, and humming bird. There were many traditions two keep the two co-operative – for example, if an eagle chief died, the Ravens would arrange the funeral and the Eagles would thank them by giving a potlatch in their honor. All of the clan chiefs of a village formed a council, with the head chief of the clan in the majority acting as the village chief, but if his respectability was not kept intact he could be replaced.

Village Structure
There were more than one hundred Haida villages throughout the Queen Charlottes, the major ones including the villages of Skungwai, Cloak Bay, Kiusta, Dadens, Yaku, Masset, Yan, Kayung, and Skidgate. Villages were always built on the shoreline, so safe and protected coves were ideal sites. The layout usually consisted of two or more rows of longhouses that stretched along the beach, and the house of the chief was the largest of the village and located in the center of the first row. An average longhouse could shelter fifteen or twenty families, but a particularly large one could hold as much as twice that many. The house chief and his intimate family had their private area in the back of the longhouse. The fireplace in the center of the house was considered public area for cooking, working, and socializing. Families set up screens or partitions to mark their private space.
(see also Social Structure and Family Structure)

Family Structure
The society of the Haida people was matrilineal – children traced their ancestry through their mother’s side of the family. A man inherited his property from his mother’s family and his social rank from an uncle on his mother’s side, who was considered the family head. Property, names, titles, crests, masks, songs, and dances were hereditary privileges. Hospitality was expected to be extended to all members of the family, and war could not be waged upon them. A household often included thirty to forty members, about ten closely related families, but an important chief’s household sometimes included more than one hundred individuals. Each household had an acknowledged chief who led them in peacetime, and another ‘war-chief’ who led them in time of dispute.
When a woman was to give birth there were many taboos and rituals put in place to ensure a healthy delivery and a woman from the baby’s father’s family assisted in the birth. The arrival of a baby was greatly rejoiced, but girls were especially favored, as they carried lineage. A baby would be named after a relative in the paternal grandfather’s family and a small feast celebrated the name-giving. Babies had their ears were pierced when they were four days old, and tattoos followed as they grew older. Boys would have their arms, legs, chest, and back tattooed, and women would be tattooed on their arms and legs. When boys reached their childhood the father began teaching them with oral tradition, but they moved to their maternal uncle’s house at an early age to continue their teaching. It was important for them to learn their family’s heritage and proper social conduct. Their uncles also had the job of ‘toughening them up’, by making them complete such tasks as swimming in the winter. Swimming was an important skill, and they were required to eat dragonfly wings and suck on duck-bills to make them swift in the water and give them strong lungs. Girls were instructed by their mothers in cooking, loom-work, childcare, and in gathering spruce-roots, cedar bark, berries, and seaweed.
When a girl came of age she had to be part of the coming of age ceremony. She would be secluded behind a screen in her parent’s house and used a stone for a pillow, ate little, could not drink water, could not approach the house fire, could not talk or laugh, was kept away from implements of hunting and gambling, and was cared for by the sisters of her father. She would then have her lower lip pierced to wear a labret, the size of which reflected her social standing, as did the duration of her seclusion. When the ceremony was over she was ritually cleansed. The boys did not have a formal coming-of-age ceremony. Parents would arrange their children’s marriages when they were still in their childhood, or even infancy. If the couple was married young, their parents made the arrangements, but if they were older this was done by the man’s family and the woman’s parents and maternal uncle.
The ceremonies of death were the most elaborate. The higher the rank of the deceased, the more elaborate the ceremony. The women of the family of the deceased’s father had the job of cleaning, dressing, and painting the face of the body, which was then displayed amidst his/her material property at the rear of the house, in a coffin which had been built by the men of the deceased’s father’s family. People could then walk past the body and pay their respects to it. The body was kept in the house until the funeral was ready, when it was place under a mortuary totem. A man’s funeral was prepared by his heir whereas a woman’s was prepared by her husband. When a man died, his younger brothers and nephews inherited everything, leaving the widow, usually, with nothing but a empty house. When a woman died, her daughters inherited all of her former belongings. The spouse of the deceased fasted, and his/her friends and family cut their hair and blackened their faces with charcoal. At the funeral, a reincarnation promise was made, stating who would give birth to him/her in his/her next life. After the funeral potlatch, it was believed that the dead was carried to the Land of Souls in a beautiful canoe.
(See also Village Structure and Social Structure)

Material Culture

The Gathering of Food
The cultures of the Northwest Coast are unique in that they have become a very sophisticated civilization without the help of agriculture. This was partially due to the nature of their environment, this being abundant with food, housing, and clothing supplies. However, to take full advantage of this they had to do ‘Seasonal Rounds’, collecting what they needed from various sites at different times of the year - when and where what they needed was abundant.
The winter months were spent at home in a winter village, making and repairing tools and telling tales. By spring time, food that had been gathered the previous year began to run short, so the village would break up into family or house groups and go gathering. Bases were often set up at various gathering locations to serve as a temporary village and food storage site.
Staples that were gathered included seasonal fruits, nuts, barriers, bird’s eggs, oysters, mussels, clams, and others. Fish was probably the most important staple, especially salmon, halibut, black cod, eulachons, herring, and sturgeon. Salmon were dried or smoked and eaten all year around. Yakun River and Copper Bay were two of the most sought-for salmon fishing sights. Long canoe trips were made to the Nass River on the mainland to catch eulachons, which were used to make an oil that was eaten. Nets, hooks, lines, and traps were some of the implements used by the Haida for fishing, and sometimes, especially with salmon when they crowded the rivers, fish could even be caught by hand. Seals, sea-lions, and otters were commonly hunted, but, unlike some Westcoast peoples, the Haida only caught whales when they were naturally washed ashore. Deer, caribou, land-otters, and black bears were the most common land game. The Haida also traded with other natives for food that they could not get locally.
It was very important to the natives to leave the balance of nature undisturbed, for they knew that they relied on it and its health meant their wellbeing.

Housing
If salmon was the center of Haida diet, then cedar was the center of Haida shelter. Every part of the longhouse was made of it, from the frame to the sheathing to the roof. Longhouses ranged in size from twenty to sixty feet in length, and could house large numbers of people.
The frame was heavy and durable, consisting of corner posts supporting massive roof beams. Logs were notched and fitted together with extraordinary accuracy. The walls were made of split planks, and the roof was shingled with cedar bark or overlapping planks. Adzes, mauls, and wedges were some of the most common tools used. Lower quality shelters, such as canoe sheds and the houses of the lower-class commoners were usually roofed with cedar bark, which had to be replaced often. Support pillars of longhouses were elaborately decorated, and eventually the frontal house pole evolved out of them, which, with time, gave birth to the totem pole, some of which stood over fifty feet tall. The crests of the clan and family who inhabited the longhouse were incorporated in the design of the pole, together with myths involving them. The lower classes were forbidden from having house poles, but were allowed to decorate their lodgings with paint. It was believed that the art of housebuilding was divinely gifted to the Haida from the Raven, after he had stolen the knowledge from the Beaver.
(see also Village Structure)

Transportation
Transportation was by foot on land and by canoe by sea. Canoes were dug out of single cedar logs, and were finely crafted and sometimes decorated. They were extremely seaworthy and designed for long sea voyages. Large canoes could be over sixty feet long and could carry fifty people. Smaller canoes were used for fishing and short-distance transportation. Ceremonial canoes were often decorated with the crest of the family, as were some war canoes.

Warfare
The Haida were known to the neighboring peoples as fearsome warriors who were renowned for surprise attacks, great seamanship, and superior war canoes. The Charlottes were a safe haven from retaliation, blocked by the strait that only they dared to cross. Even so, fortresses were sometimes built some of which were credited by Captain James Cook to resemble the Maori pas of New Zealand. After the arrival of white-men swivel-guns were mounted on canoe bows, and their fortresses were armed with canons that defied even the Europeans who had introduced them. Haida warriors wore round helmets with wooden visors, breast-plates of wooden slates, and tough sea-lion or elk-leather tunics which were emblazoned with their family crests. War was considered a ceremonial act, and was mainly centered on the capturing of slaves.

Art and Ceremonies

Art
The Haida, it seems, did not really have such a thing as ‘art for art’s sake’, but they apparently enjoyed decorated anything that could be decorated – clothing, boxes, houses, canoes, implements, gambling sticks, ext. Most of this decoration depicted myths and stories, or family and clan crests. Art was often created as gifts to other families, clans, or nations, as well as for themselves.
Woodcarving was one very popular art form, and included masks, poles, bowls, boxes, canoes, and similar things, both in full size and as models. Dance masks were made to be worn by dancers to depict a character, and often could be mechanically operated to, for example, make a raven snap his beak or an orca paddle with its fins. Their totem poles and house poles could reach fifty feet in height, all of which was beautifully carved and painted. Boxes were used to store personal belongings in and varied in size from large chests to little cases. So fine was the workmanship that some carvers could make boxes that were completely waterproof, even when submerged under water.
Jewelry, especially bracelets, were made of precious metals such as copper, silver, or gold. They were engraved with designs and then beaten into shape.
Hand weaving was done by the women, who used it to make cloaks, rain hats, dance hats, baskets, mats, screens, wraps, and cordage. Spruce roots, the inside bark of young cedars, and other wood and grass fibers, were used to weave with. Some methods included checkerwork and twilled pleating. Some of the most popular forms of hand weaving were in basketry and hat making, where elegant simplicity was the goal. Baskets could be made in a wide variety of different styles, shapes, and sizes, some of which could be made watertight. Spruce-root baskets often had contrasting bands of dyed roots, whereas hat designs were usually skip-stitched or painted on. Haida hat makers wove from the crown and worked down to the brim, resting the forming hat on their knees.

Dance
Dances were an important form of oral tradition, in which the legends of their families or clans were acted out. Dancers wore magnificent masks and costumes to help them act the part of the character he was portraying. Dances were often considered as property and could only be performed by those that had rights to it, and they could be given or inherited. Most dances followed strict guidelines as to how it was to be preformed, but others were improvised. Dances usually followed the beat of drums and singers.

Ceremonies
There were many different ceremonies for different occasions among the Haida people – the birth of an heir, the building of a house, the raising of a totem, the death of a chief – but most of them took the form of ‘potlatches’. The word potlatch is derived from the Chinook “to give”. Status and wealth were very important, and the potlatch was a method of displaying it. Potlatches included the performances of dances, the eating of huge feasts, and the destruction or giving away of many gifts, including masks, expensive mountain goat wool, slaves, canoes, blankets, food, coppers, boxes, and, the most valuable gift of all, eulachon oil. Through potlatches wealth and food was distributed throughout the populence so that the rich didn’t get richer and the poor didn’t get poorer. They were usually held in the winter when people had time, as some guests would come from far away. When guests arrived they would come in ceremonial canoes and singing traditional songs.
Inherited rank chose where guests were seated. A high ranking man would devout years of hard work to aquire enough wealth to give away at a potlatch, as no man could be considered a noble had he not given a potlatch. The more a potlatches a man gave, and the more he gave away at each one, the more his social standing rose. To except a gift was to acknowledge the hosts standing. The guests were given large amounts to eat – seal, bear, and berries preserved in fish oil – and were expected to eat as much, or more, than possible. Speakers would retell family history, praise the host, and ridicule guests had they not eaten all of their food or had not expressed sufficient thanks for their gifts. Potlatches were sometimes likened to battles, as two men who were struggling for higher rank than each other would continuously host them. After a potlatch, the host would be left poverty-stricken, but soon someone else would invite him to a potlatch and he would regain much of his former wealth.

Conclusion

The Arrival of Europeans
The arrival of Europeans brought and disease decimated the populations of Westcoast peoples. The Haida were not so easily controlled as some others – they sometimes raided European ships, coming out by canoe at night. When the white-men retaliated to such attacks, they often found that the fierce warriors in their strategically placed fortresses, which were now armed with firepower, overpowered them. However, missionaries eventually subdued the outgoing natives, and peace was generally had. Threats to their culture, such as the confiscation of cultural items and the banning of potlatches discontented the people, and the natives actively protested the logging of their islands.
Today, most of the major Haida villages of old lay deserted, but their culture is re-emerging. The language, art, dance, stories, and other traditions are coming back. They are a reminder of one of the many sophisticated cultures of the world that is not to be taken for granted.

Note: More effort was made to make this report brief than to elaborate on writing technique, so I apologize for the unattractive writing style.

Bibliography

Bial, Raymond. The Haida Tarrytown, NY: Benchmark Books, 2001

Marilees, Andrew. Haida Gwaii: Queen Charlotte Islands Halifax, NS: Nimbus Publishing, 2006

Drew, Leslie. Haida: their Art and Culture Surrey, B.C.: Hancock House Publishers, 1969

Cranny, Michael. Crossroads: A Meeting of Nations Toronto, Canada: Prentice Hall, 1998