Why do Indian masks stick out their tongues?

Guardian totem pole at Ksan.

Wooden eyes of two guardian totem poles watch all those who enter the village. The faces are piled one on the top of the other, an eagle sitting on a head of a bear, a killer whale balancing on its nose. All this in a valley surrounded by snowy mountains, the totem poles look very picturesque with the distant peaks in the background.

The village is called Ksan and belongs to Gitksan people, but they don't live there. They built it as a tourist attraction because they were annoyed by questions like “Do you still live in wigwams?” The Gitksan never lived in wigwams. Today they live in houses like all other Canadians but for the sake of tourists they built a few houses like those in which their ancestors lived a century ago. These are solid plank houses that are entered through totem poles – through an open mouth of some fantastic creature or between its legs. This new old village is a museum, objects used by Indians in the old days are collected there. In one of those houses is a carving school in which young Indians learn how their ancestors carved fantastic creatures. Even when the young people are not there, a carver is there anyway carving another piece for the souvenir shop next door.

One can talk to the carver, he doesn't mind that. I guess he is there to talk to visitors, he has ready answers to most questions, very likely most of those questions he has heard many times before. For example the question about wigwams. I myself don't like to ask questions, I always find that the most interesting things I learn when somebody says something without being asked. Only this way on can learn something totally unexpected. But one has to start the conversation somehow, so I have to ask about something. Anyway' I would like somebody to tell me something about potlatch.

Reconstructed Indian village of Ksan.

“It is a legal system” says the carver. “In the old days it was like this: important decisions were announced during a potlatch and anybody who was present there was a witness. He could always say: I was there and this is the present I received at this occasion. A potlatch was given at various occasions, for example when a totem pole was raised. In the old days a totem pole was raised gradually, it took seven days to raise it. During that time anyone could protest if he thought that the person raising the pole didn't have right to include certain symbols in it. A totem pole can include only these symbols to which the owner is entitled. If this is not the case, a rightful owner of the symbol can come and protest – 'you have to eradicate this animal, you have no right to this crest'. Crests are not just symbols, a crest can give you right to use this or that piece of land, to hunt in this wood or fish in this river. A totem was like a coat of arms, everybody could see from afar what clan lived in a given house. Today nobody puts up a totem pole in front of his house but clans are still important. During a potlatch clans sit at their own tables.”

“Tables?” I exclaim. “Did they use tables in a longhouse?”

“No no, it was different then. Today potlaches don't take place in longhouses. Today they are in a community centre and everybody sits at a table.”

“Potlatch” is a strange word. It is used in literature as if everybody knew what it was, so nowhere it is properly explained. I came across this word for the first time in the seventies in a book by Marcel Mauss, a French anthropologist. There I could work out that it was a ceremony celebrated by Indians of the west coast of Canada and that during this ceremony a chief gave away all his possessions as presents. It was all very interesting and a long philosophical deliberation followed, but there was no information for what occasion the feast was held, what the procedure of the ceremony was, nothing about the fate of the chief who suddenly became a beggar.

An Indian carver with his work.

Sitting next to the carver I watch him carve, don't ask many questions. Every now and again other tourists enter and, of course, ask questions. Not necessarily about wigwams (although the carver himself told me that he hears this question every so often), but about what they see, for example the composition. I can hear the carver say, showing the shape he had just carved: “We call it an ovoid”. At this point something clicks in my head. Who does he mean when he says “we”? “We Indians”? Or perhaps “We Gitskan”? The word “ovoid” does not come from the Gitskan language. It is an English word created relatively recently and as it happens I know who used it for the first time. I know it because I did prepare myself for this journey. I haven't read much about the potlatch but I did read a lot about the art of Indian carving an so I know that the word “ovoid” was introduced in a book written by Bill Holm and published in 1965. A book about the art that flourished among the Indians of British Columbia for centuries, not only of totem poles but also of two-dimensional compositions carved or painted on house walls or wooden chests. These compositions were always made up of characteristic shapes, not quite rectangles, not quite ovals but something in between. This shape was called “ovoid” by Bill Holm. It is a very useful term if one talks about this art in the way the art critics do, if this art is bought and sold, exhibitions are organised, if it functions the way art does function in the western civilisation. But did the Indians in the old days have exhibitions, art critics, souvenir shops? The carver is an Indian but he sees his own art through the eyes of a modern Canadian. Which is hardly surprising as in all probability he went to school like all modern Canadians. I am allowed to take a picture of the carver and his work when the piece is finished. The piece wont be used in a potlatch, though. It goes straight to the shelf in the souvenir shop next door.

Indian masks in the Anthropology Museum in Vancouver.

In the old days some of these works of art were shown only during a potlatch. In the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver there is a big collection of carved in wood and painted masks that used to be shown only when used in dances. Grotesque not-quite-human faces or heads of birds with monstrous beaks, painted in bright colours, all now crowded in glass cabinets so crowds of spectators can see. Interestingly the descriptions themselves inform the viewer that these objects weren't made to be ogled by crowds like that, they used to be kept hidden and only used for the performance of dances that were dramatic illustrations of old myths. One of the descriptions states that all those masks were lawfully purchased from chief James Knox, who used the money for a good cause. It appears that the museum is concerned that somebody may ask some embarrassing questions.

Those concerns are not at all unsubstantiated. Collections like this found their way to museums when potlatch was illegal in Canada and the police confiscated artefacts used for it. Later, when the ban was revoked, the Namgis Indians sued the government of Canada and got the confiscated masks back. Today those masks are exhibited in U'mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay on a tiny island in the North of British Columbia.

The description in the Anthropological Museum stresses that chief James Knock sold those masks out of his own free will. But why did chief James Knox agree to sell them? Perhaps he, too, saw them with the eyes of a white man – as archaeological objects which can be viewed any time, whenever one wants to?

Wooden eyes painted in bright colours look at viewers from behind the glass. Some of the masks look as if they wanted to say something but the viewer couldn't understand. Others give an impression that they decided long ago that the viewer won't understand anything and just stick out their tongues at him.

You will find this text, 
and many more on the subject, 
in my book "DO THEY STILL LIVE IN WIGWAMS?":