How do Indian artists make money?

Totem pole carved by Mungo Martin

There is a place in Stanley Park in Vancouver where you can see some Indian totem poles. They are quite nicely presented with a background of tall trees. Grotesque faces smile at passers by. Boards in front of them inform the styles of which tribe they were carved by and who was the carver of each pole. Bill Reid created the pole in the Haida style. Doug Cranmer carved the Kwakiutl pole. They bring a little climate of old Indian cultures into a modern city, a little presentation of what the Indians of this area do. Few people realise that the culture that created totem poles is a thing of the past and what we see today in city parks is just wooden echo of that past.

It is true that Indians of British Columbia have carved totem poles for a long time. The totem poles are mentioned by the first European sailors who visited that coast in the 18^th century. Captain Cook was most famous of them but there were Russian and Spanish sailors before him. One Russian captain even bragged that when he entered a village he chopped down all the “pagan idols”. He was later surprised that the Indians didn't like Russians except when there were some Russian heads to be chopped off. Alejandro Malaspina, a Spaniard, showed more understanding, his book published in 1791 had illustrations showing huge wooden sculptures. John Webber, a painter on board one of Cook's ships, painted interiors of Indian houses with roof posts sculpted as grotesque faces.

The Spaniards claimed the whole coast north of California as theirs but they weren't interested in trade. Russians wanted to trade but they had problems getting friendly relations with the natives. Captain Cook was very friendly towards the natives and one of the effects of his visit was an explosion of the trade in furs. The Indians had furs of sea otters which were very common in that area. Cook knew that the sea otter fur was considered a luxury item in China. The Indians not only didn't know how much they could get for those furs in Canton. They didn't know that China existed. They knew how to build beautiful boats that could go to sea, but they didn't go very far, they had no idea that there was another continent far beyond the horizon. They knew, however, that Cook (and the sailors that came later) had iron tools, which were much more useful than their own stone tools, so they exchanged their furs for iron tools. The sailors later sold these furs in Canton for huge profits.

A silver bracelet made by Charles Edenshaw

European sailors who wanted to trade with those Indians had to communicate with them somehow and they quickly found out that they don't speak just one single language, even though they build similar houses and carve similar totem poles. European travellers always classified ethnic groups they met. This wasn't too difficult in they encountered countries with more or less clear borders, a capital and a ruler who would be obeyed throughout the country. In British Columbia there were no countries in this sense, there was no political organisation bigger than a village. A single village could even have more than one chief because each clan would have their own chief. The Indians inhabiting the coast from Alaska to Oregon shared a similar way of life, similar beliefs and art but they spoke several different languages. The European explorers classified those languages, gave them names and groups of Indians that spoke one language they called tribes. Thus the Indians living along the southern coast of Alaska were named Tlingit, those living on the Queen Charlotte archipelago were called Haida, those from the northern coast of British Columbia were called Tsimshian, farther south lived the Kwakiutl, on the western coast of Vancouver island lived the Nootka. Farther south, in what is now the United States, lived the Chinook, whose language for some reason became a lingua franca used in trade in the region. However, these people themselves didn't feel any special solidarity even if they spoke the same language, sometimes the neighbouring villages fought bloody wars of extermination.

On the other hand the Indians of British Columbia didn't fight the white newcomers. There were no wars of extermination or indeed any other wars between the whites and Indians in the North-west. The Indians nevertheless almost became extinct as a result of diseases brought from overseas by friendly traders. The most lethal of them was smallpox which in 1860s killed nearly 90% of the population. The children of those who survived went to school and there they learned that in the old days the Nootkas, Kwakiutl, Haidas and others lived there. They kind of accepted it even though the languages mentioned were quickly disappearing. I wrote “kind of accepted it” because today some of those people question the names given to them by the explorers. Thus the Kwakiutl (at least some of them) say they should be called Kwakwak'awakl, the Nootkas prefer the name Nuu-chha-nulth. The Haida didn't change the name but they ceased to fight one another and created the Council of the Haida nation.

Miniature argilite totem pole

The great epidemics took place in 1860s but the preceding decades were the golden age of totem pole carving. There are 19^th century photographs of villages full of totem poles but deserted as a result of the terrible epidemics. Totem poles had clearly defined functions, they weren't just sculptures standing anywhere. They were always erected in winter villages. The Indians of this region lived in several places, depending on the season. When salmon came up the rivers to spawn they lived in temporary villages near the river, during a whaling season the villages were near an open beach, whereas the winter villages were located deep in fiords that sheltered them from gales and blizzards. The 18^th century sailors already noticed that some totem poles adorned tombs of great chiefs, others formed part of the front wall of houses whose entry was through a gaping mouth of a carved creature, still others stood indoors and served as pillars supporting the roof. According to legends each clan descended from an animal and a totem pole represented the mythical ancestor of the clan living in that house. To complicate matters clans often overlapped and not only more than one clan could live in a house, but one person could be a member of more than one clan. Consequently totem poles often represented not just one animal but several, one on the top of the other. Sometimes a totem pole illustrated a mythical history of a clan. One can say that a totem pole played a role similar to a coat of arms hanging over agate of a mediaeval European castle – declared who the owners were and informed visitors about their glorious past.

An erection of a totem pole was accompanied by a great feast called (in Chinook language) a potlatch. Similar feast was also a part of funeral celebrations after passing away of a great chief. The body of the chief was cremated and with him a few favourite slaves, who were killed for the occasion. A wooden box with the ashes was placed on the top of a carved pole. This pole was a sepulchre which was supposed in time to decay and fall. A year after the great chief's death another potlatch was held and a new free standing pole was erected. Thus there were four types of totem poles: the ones that stood indoors and supported the roof of the house; the ones that were a part of the front wall and sometimes (though not always) formed the entry; the sepulchres of great chiefs and free standing memorial poles. But this was not all. Bas-reliefs that decorated partitions inside the houses or wooden chests, painted decorations on boats or walls, masks used in dances performed during potlatches – all this impressed the white visitors. Some of them wanted to take a souvenir with them. They could not take the whole totem pole but perhaps somebody could carve a miniature? The white visitors were prepared to pay in silver coins. Some carvers did carve such miniatures for the purpose. But what can one do with a silver coin in a country, where Indians have enough salmon to be completely self-sufficient? The answer is simple – one can use it to make a silver bracelet, decorate it with Indian design and sell it to some other white visitor for two silver coins. Contact with white people was responsible for appearance of a new art genre – silver jewellery (Indians of that region did not know silver before) as well as miniature totem poles. Especially the tiny totem poles carved in argilite – black slate quarried only on Queen Charlotte Islands. One 19^th century Haida artist, Charles Edenshaw, became so famous carver of argilite, as well as a silversmith, that today his monographic exhibitions are organised in famous museums.

Totem poles carved by Bill Reid and Doug Cranmer

This art thrived until mid-19^th century, when the epidemics of 1860s brought a dramatic halt. Epidemics worse than the European Black Death or even the Jewish Holocaust. Carvers who could teach the next generations died out and storytellers who remembered old legends also died out. The epidemics facilitated work of missionaries, some of whom thought that totem poles were pagan idols and wanted to destroy them or at least advised their converts to ignore them. Moreover, the Canadian authorities decided that a potlatch was a barbaric custom and banned it. Last but not least Canada introduced universal education, all Indian children were sent to school and later they wanted to live like all other Canadians. They rejected their traditions, nobody wanted totem poles any more. Even if there were carvers who survived the epidemics, there was no work for them. In the beginning of the 20^th century the art of totem pole carving all but died out. In the villages deserted after the epidemics old totem poles slowly disintegrated and disappeared overgrown by the returning forest.

Half a century later, in 1950s, some white people from Vancouver decided to come to the rescue of the rotting heritage. According to the European approach, works of art should not fall and rot, if they do so they should be rescued, taken to a museum and conservation should be undertaken. A society for saving totem poles was created and the University of British Columbia organised expeditions to distant islands to find the rotting sculptures and take them to the anthropology museum in town. They also found a carver who could carve a brand new totem pole because he did this when he was young. His name was Mungo Martin and he lived on a Kwakiutl reservation of Fort Rupert at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. He was asked to carve a totem pole for a museum in Vancouver He did so and his totem pole is still standing on the hill behind the museum. It was a precedent, a little snowball that moved slowly at first but in time it changed into an avalanche.

In 1957 Mungo Martin worked in Victoria, carving totem poles for a museum there. He was approached by a young man from Vancouver, who was interested in Indian art because his mother was a Haida. This young man was Bill Reid who in time became the main catalyst of the rebirth of Indian art. He grew up in the city and worked as a radio presenter but he also had been trained as a silversmith. The jewellery he produced was very European in style until his first visit to the Queen Charlotte islands, where his mother came from. There he saw old silver bracelets made by his mother's uncle, Charles Edenshaw. These aroused the interest of the young silversmith, who later became interested in Indian art in general. He found Mungo Martin and helped him carve totem poles. Later it was Bill Reid himself who received an order from the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver not only to carve a totem pole, but to reconstruct a whole Haida village, with houses, totem poles and all.

Bill Reid's bronze cast at Vancouver Airport

The Museum of Anthropology can claim that a Haida Indian carved totem poles for them. Bill Reid mother was an Indian after all. Does it matter that Bill was brought up in town without any contact with Indian culture? He was over twenty when he first travelled to Queen Charlotte islands, where the Haida people live and the first totem pole he carved in his life was the one for the museum. He carved his pole in Haida style, unlike the poles carved by Mungo Martin, which were in Kwakiutl style. He knew the styles of various tribes because he studied them for several years. He was a member of the team that went to rescue the rotting totem poles from deserted Indian villages. Several poles from Skedans village were taken to the museum for conservation but it turned out they were too rotten to be conserved. It was then decided that copies should be made. All other members of the team were white Canadians, only Bill Reid was of Indian origin and he was given the job.

Doug Cranmer was a Kwakiutl Indian who also lived in Vancouver at the time. His father, chief Dan Cranmer of Alert Bay, was famous for organising potlatches despite the official ban and going to prison as a result. Bill Reid asked him to help carve the totem poles for the museum. Doug as a young man had worked as a tree feller so he knew what to do with huge tree trunks. Bill and Doug worked for several years and produced two longhouses and several totem poles which still can be seen on a hill behind the museum On the other hand the original rotting poles brought from the islands ceased to rot in the dry museum air and can be seen there as well.

This is how the fame of Bill Reid started, the fame of an Indian sculptor. The Haida Indians, those who still lived in their islands, began to be interested in their own tradition. If white people from the city come to look for totem rotting totem poles, then perhaps there is something in that tradition. Those white people didn't just come to pick those totem poles up, first they found the original owners and paid them, so there must be something in that tradition that can be measured in money. Unfortunately the tradition among the Haida had been interrupted and there was nobody like Mungo Martin, who would remember how to carve totem poles. Young people who wanted to learn the art of carving travelled to Vancouver to Bill Reid. Robert Davidson, a grandson of the great Charles Edenshaw, did exactly that. Today Robert Davidson is the most famous living Indian carver but when in 1960s he wanted to erect a new totem pole in his village of Masset, he was viewed askance by the villagers. Unlike Bill Reid, who grew up in the city, Robert Davidson grew up in the village of Masset where he lives today. Bill Reid socialised with white anthropologists and other enthusiasts who were interested in a tradition exotic to them. Robert Davidson grew up among the people who rejected this tradition, for him interest in it was an act of rebellion. For the people of Masset erecting a new totem pole was a strange thing to do, but this attitude changes when it turned out that totem poles are a magnet for tourists. Today any booklet about Haida villages at Queen Charlotte islands is full of totem poles and in a village of Skidagate (the one where Bill Reid's mother was born) a museum of old Haida art has been built.

Bill Reid's bronze cast in front of Vancouver Aquarium

But it wasn't just the Haida who lost their tradition, other tribes also turned to Bill Reid, famous by then, for help in rebuilding theirs. This was the case of Gitksan people who live in the valley of the Skeena river in the Rocky Mountains. By coincidence the town of Hazelton by that river has a number of well-preserved old buildings from the wild west era and is itself a tourist attraction. The Indians who lived there noted that there is demand for Indian handicraft but the tradition in that area had died out. Somebody came with an idea of creating a school of Indian carving. Bill Reid was asked to teach in this school. He could not accept it because he was engaged in another project but he recommended Robert Davidson in his place. Doug Cranmer also taught in this school for some time before moving to Alert Bay to teach Kwakiutl youth in U'mista craft centre.

In those schools created in 1960s young Indians could learn again the forgotten art of carving. Helpful also were books that analysed this art and classified styles of various tribes. Especially important was a book published in 1965 by Bill Holm, a curator of a museum in Seattle. He introduced the term “ovoid”, which is neither a rectangle nor an oval but something in between. It is a very common shape in Indian art, mythical figures in painting and bas-relief are built from such ovoids. Thanks to those books young Indians know in which style their tribe produced their carvings in the old days. They could produce authentic Indian sculpture and sell it to tourists. They could also carve authentic totem poles if there was demand.

This is not simply recycling of old forms; Indian art uses old forms but is not static. The most creative artists introduce new forms. Doug Cranmer experimented with an abstract totem pole; he never finished it but this unfinished pole can be seen in the U'mista Centre at Alert Bay. Bill Reid used new techniques not known to Indians before, for example bronze cast. This way he wasn't restricted by the shape of a tree trunk. His best known bronze sculpture is “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii”, which stands in the Vancouver Airport's departures hall. The legendary figures in that sculpture are the same as in totem poles but they don't have to sit one on the top of the other. They sit in an Indian boat around a central figure in a woven Indian hat.

The totem poles in Stanley Park stand in a charming corner of the park but they are not visible from afar, somebody who lives in Vancouver might never go there and so never see them. Totem poles standing in front of banks may also be overlooked, one can glance at them not knowing what they are. However, no Canadian can say that he has never seen the Bill Reid sculpture because it is reproduced on Canada's 20 dollar bills. Thanks to this reproduction the banknote looks good so it can be said that Bill Reid made good money.  

Canadian 20 bucks

You will find this article, and many others, in my book "ART ETHNO".