# Indigenous American Culture Zones: The Pacific Northwest Coast **Channel:** Indigenous History Now **Source:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It4AiOLrQhs **Transcript page:** https://www.withtranscript.ai/video/It4AiOLrQhs ## Chapters - 0:00 — Cedar and Northwest Coast Life - 4:46 — Geography Shapes the Northwest Coast - 9:06 — Complex Hunter-Gatherer Societies Defined - 13:51 — Food Production and Silviculture - 20:30 — Sedentary Villages and Property - 25:20 — Land Rights and Elite Stewardship - 29:46 — Social Hierarchy and Clan Structure - 44:11 — Animism, Spirits, and Reciprocity - 54:14 — Potlatch as Public Ceremony - 59:39 — Art, Totem Poles, and Ceremonial Dress - 1:09:39 — Salmon and Cedar Material Culture - 1:15:15 — Sustainability and Resource Management - 1:22:06 — Closing Remarks and Support ## Transcript **[0:00]:** in a small clearing in the forest a young woman is in labor two women companions urge her to pull hard on the cedar bark rope tied to a nearby tree the baby born onto a newly made cedar bark mat cries its arrival into the northwest coast world its cradle of firmly woven Cedar route with a mattress and covering of soft shredded cedar bark is ready but first the baby must remain on the cedar mat until its umbilical cord Withers the young woman's husband and his uncle are on the sea in the canoe carved from a single red cedar log and are using paddles made from length of not-free yellow cedar when they reach the fishing ground that belongs to their family the men set out a net of Cedar Burke twine weight along one Edge by Stones lashed to it with strong flexible Cedar wides cedar wood floats support the Net's upper Edge wearing a **[0:54]:** cedar bark hat cape and skirt to protect her from the rain and the cold the baby's grandmother digs into the pebbly sand at the beach at low tide to collect clams she loads them into a basket of Cedar wide than root adjusts the broad cedar bark tump line across her forehead and returns home along the beach The Embers in the center of the big cedar plank house leap into flame as the Clam gatherer's niece adds more wood smoke billows past the cedar rack above where small split fish are hung to cure it curls its way past the great Cedar beams and Rises out through the opening between the long Cedar roof planks the young girl takes Red Hot Rocks from the fire with long tongs dips them into a small cedar box of water to rinse off the ashes then places the Rocks into a cedar wood cooking box to boil water for the clams **[1:41]:** her aunt has gathered outside the house stands a tall carved Cedar Memorial pole bearing the prestigious crests of her family lineage it had been raised with long strong cedar-wide ropes and validated with great ceremony the house chief of nobleman had taken out their ceremonial regalia from large storage chests of Cedarwood dancers had worn Cedarwood masks adorned with Cascades of soft-shredded cedar bark and performed in front of screens made from cedar planks guests have been served quantities of food from huge Cedarwood bowls and dishes wiping their hands clean on soft shredded cedar bark a young slave woman coils two fresh diapers from soft shredded cedar bark and goes to tend a crying baby while the child's father prepares long slender Cedar wives to lash a stone Hammerhead to its shaft when the hammer is finished he uses it to pound wedges into a cedar log and split off a plank for a tackle box to fit **[2:40]:** into the bow of his canoe he will use the other wides he prepared to sew the corner of the box once he bends the plank into shape in a year or more he will make a cedar wood cradle in a similar fashion for his sister's new baby when it grows too big for the woven Cedar root cradle he smiles at the reassuring cries of the newborn infant resounding through the forest that was an excerpt from Hillary Stewart's book Cedar where she documents the central role of the cedar tree in the lives of the Pacific northwest coast indigenous peoples and the truly absurd amount of uses they found for this tree this video is not about Cedars specifically but I love this passage because it's such a succinct and immersive introduction to the beautiful and unique culture Zone that is the Pacific northwest coast this video is the start of what will be an ongoing series **[3:32]:** on this channel exploring the major culture areas of indigenous American peoples now every nation and Community has their own distinct culture and history and that fact will certainly never be overlooked on this channel but there are shared cultural Trends beliefs practices and institutions that hold across whole regions and that's what we'll begin exploring today as a side note we'll be analyzing culture zones as they hold in their modern forms cultures change over time and it's quite possible that a given region had a very different culture several thousand years ago than today so we'll be focusing on the most recent iterations as held by modern indigenous peoples we'll describe them as they stood immediately prior to colonization and follow any changes that occurred between colonization and the present day for this video as will certainly be the case in all the others I am going to try to be as detailed as possible while keeping the **[4:26]:** video Within semi-reasonable length there's a lot that could be said that I'm gonna have to cut so I highly encourage interested viewers who want to learn more to check out my sources in the description now without further Ado let's get started **[4:46]:** to a certain extent every culture is defined by its geography and that certainly holds true in the northwest coast to understand Northwest coastal cultures and what makes them so unique we need to understand the terrain along the Pacific Edge of North America various mountain ranges rise just Inland of the coast from the Wrangle Saint Elias and chugach ranges in southern Alaska to the coast ranges of British Columbia the Cascades of Washington and Oregon and the coast ranges of Oregon and California they form a nearly continuous wall of mountains about 2 000 miles long 3 200 kilometers that leaves a narrow strip of land between them and the coast that is on average only about 100 miles wide 160 kilometers for anyone who passed middle school science this should look like a recipe for trapping moisture on the coast side of the mountains and you would be exactly right in fact so much moisture gets trapped **[5:39]:** in this thin strip of land that the area is a temperate rainforest by some definitions the largest temperate rainforest in the world receiving anywhere from 7 to 14 feet of annual precipitation that's 2.1 to 4.3 meters nowhere else in North America outside the tropics gets this much precipitation more than any other Factor abundance defines the region the high rainfall supports forests that are Lush dense and teeming with wildlife and trees that are huge three of the ten tallest tree species in the world and four of the ten largest are found in this rainforest alone the waterways team with life year round but especially during the annual salmon spawning when millions of salmon returned to their birthplaces to reproduce all of this abundance supported a large human population the northwest coast was the second most densely populated region in North America and one of the most densely populated non-agricultural regions in the world supporting a pre-contact **[6:48]:** population of about 200 000. communities could range in size from small villages of less than 50 to a full-blown town of well over one thousand the habitable zone along this Coastline isn't just surrounded by mountains in most places it's completely overrun with them a fact that made land travel very difficult this combined with a high population served to make the region a hotbed of diversity historically over 40 languages were spoken here from over a dozen language families making it linguistically the second most diverse area in North America behind only California it's also only California that surpasses the northwest coast in population density many of these families are very distinct from one another sharing few observable traits or relations between them and there are even a few language isolates like Haida that are completely unrelated to their neighbors when you also consider that the coast is dotted with thousands of islands and littered with countless inlets bays and rivers it probably **[7:46]:** will come as no surprise that water travel was the preeminent form of transportation the interplay of the mountains and the water is such an important component of this Region's geography that it affects the way northwest coast languages talk about Direction most if not all of the Region's languages don't have words for the cardinal directions of north east south and west that Paradigm was not the important one rather these languages couch Direction in relation to the landscape describing whether a person is moving towards a long or away from a body of water or towards a long or away from the mountains the northwest coast is one of the few places in North America indeed in the world where you can find natural copper this is copper or so pure that it can be worked without smelting consequently it was worked by the local inhabitants and the knives spear points and artistic items it could be a **[8:42]:** little hard to come by though so it was most commonly held as an item of wealth and Status by Elites rather than being an item of common use this purpose is seen in the practice of fashioning decorative shield-shaped plates known by anthropologists simply as coppers we'll talk more about pre-contact indigenous Metallurgy in a separate video **[9:06]:** a theme we're gonna run across repeatedly on this channel especially within the next few ancient history videos is the fact that the more we learn about them through anthropology archeology and ethnography the more we realize that hunter-gatherer societies are often much more complex and sophisticated and much less simplistic than we've previously given them credit for certain Hallmarks that have traditionally signified the transition away from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle towards an agricultural one like sedentism or Advanced Horticulture are popping up not infrequently in firmly hunter-gatherer contexts a good example of this is the 16 000 year old village of Monteverde in Chile Where the population appears to have been rather sedentary several thousand years before agriculture arose anywhere on the planet go watch my land bridge part 2 video for more detail on that we are having to redefine our image of hunter-gatherers societies as features emerge that blur the line between hunter-gatherer and farmer I mentioned **[10:12]:** this here because the northwest coast cultures break so many of the traditional hunter-gatherer rules that anthropologists had to create an entirely new category of hunter-gatherer to account for them the complex hunter-gatherer so what defines a hunter-gatherer Society well traditionally there are a couple major points first they haven't developed domestic agriculture the economy is focused on hunting wild animals and Gathering wild plants second they tend to be pretty nomadic following the migration patterns of animal herds and growth cycles of plants in different areas as a result the people tend to have few possessions and a relatively less developed and more practicality focused material culture third communally held land rights and no private ownership of land you can also fight Community held land in agricultural societies but so far as I'm aware you will never find private ownership of land in traditional hunter-gatherer societies and lastly socially they tend to be pretty egalitarian and Democratic there is **[11:14]:** very little social hierarchy or stratification and where it does exist leaders have little authority to make people do something they don't want to do as a result political structures tend to be very decentralized and you'll find little political organization above the village level all around 100 gatherer societies are traditionally seen as less complex than agricultural ones social political Financial economic and religious institutions all tend to be less developed and intricate you don't see things like written language Empires rigid and complicated class structures Advanced banking practices tax codes bureaucracy printed currency Etc now I want to make a point before we move on agricultural societies have always seen themselves as better than hunter-gatherer societies and they really don't need to point out that euro-american Society has especially held cultural supremacist views towards indigenous American societies we can all agree that Savage is only a slur because agriculturalists view themselves as Superior to hunter-gatherers this long history **[12:22]:** of cultural chauvinism has imbued words like complex simple sophisticated developed or development Etc with certain errors of moral judgment this is why I try to avoid progress narrative type words like this as much as I can but sometimes they're just the best words for the situation whenever I use these words I am just trying to describe the state of one people group in relation to another I mean absolutely no moral judgment good or bad towards the status of either group just because something is technologically complicated absolutely positively in no way whatsoever makes that thing morally Superior let us rid ourselves of those ideas as we continue our conversation so how does a complex hunter-gatherer Society differ from the traditional hunter-gatherer model side note a traditional hunter-gatherer is better known as a general or generalist hunter-gatherer this helps distinguish them from the complex hunter-gatherers who you will also see described as affluent foragers basically complex hunter-gatherers **[13:33]:** display a hunter-gatherer economy with lots of elements from a more agriculturalist Society let's analyze each of these points and how they relate to the northwest coast societies to get a better understanding **[13:51]:** it is true that northwest coast societies didn't have agriculture in the traditional sense with one exception that we will discuss in a bit the forests and waterways around them provided a wealth of foraging options as they were on land they would hunt mostly deer and Elk but smaller species like mink and beaver were also targeted additionally over 70 varieties of berry and vegetable plants were harvested such as salmonberry and thimbleberry both of which are objectively the superior berries Huckleberry currants and root plants like Camus however it was the riverine and Marine Resources that made up the majority of the diet with Coastal tribes like the Macaw obtaining anywhere from 70 percent to 90 percent of their food from the ocean from the water they would harvest clams oysters urchins kelp hunt sea mammals such as seals otters and among some groups whales and fish for species such as halibut Herring ooligan and the big one **[14:48]:** salmon however they didn't eat entirely at the mercy of Mother Nature and they certainly didn't leave the landscape around them a pristine untouched wilderness this is because northwest coast peoples practice what is known as silviculture I am going to be making a whole video about indigenous silviculture in the not too distant future so I won't go into excruciating detail here just know this is a brief overview of the practice there is a lot more that can be said on the topic silviculture is when people manipulate the natural environment around them to increase productivity of certain resources this can be done in many ways but by far the most common method and indeed widely used here in the northwest coast is controlled burning forests regrow after fires in predictable stages by understanding this and intentionally setting fire to a space people can encourage the growth of desired plant species and discourage the growth of undesired ones **[15:46]:** do this enough times and you can turn a wild patch of forest into a veritable garden with a high concentration of edible or otherwise useful plants clearing out underbrush also increases the population of game species such as deer and Elk because they're attracted to the specific plants that regrow first after fires it also makes travel through forests easier for both humans and animals northwest coast peoples would also take it a step further and use fires to prevent forest growth at all instead opting to create Meadow spaces in fact many of the lowland Meadows in this region didn't occur naturally but rather were intentionally created and maintained by anthropogenic fire and we know this because we can tell the difference in soil ecology between a forest fire and a controlled burn Meadows are advantageous not only for their unique plant species but also because the meadow Forest interchange is another attractive environment for game taking things **[16:48]:** even further sometimes instead of allowing a burned area to regrow naturally Northwest peoples would intentionally replant it with chosen species this was the case with Camas as it tested in numerous accounts they even took these silviculture practices into the ocean developing techniques to encourage kelp growth thereby creating cultivated kelp forests hunting and harvesting done purely at the mercy of natural cycles can be very unpredictable a bad year unusually inclement weather interference from animals Etc can all conspire to reduce food yields and threaten a Village's survival by managing their environments like this northwest coast peoples constructed highly productive Orchards of harvestable resources concentrated in chosen areas often your habitations thus reducing the unpredictability of natural food sources and increasing food security this isn't agriculture since that is the cultivation of domesticated species whereas this is the manipulation and cultivation of wild ones but it is similarly complex no less impressive of an innovation and accomplish the **[18:02]:** same results that of increasing food productivity and security one side note which I will elaborate more on in a separate video all of this environmental manipulation was incredibly healthy and sustainable for the forests silviculture done right doesn't damage forest ecosystems it actually makes them stronger healthier and more biodiverse the more we study and learn about silviculture the more widely we see it in hunter-gatherer societies it's becoming less of a diagnostic marker to distinguish complex hunter-gatherers from General hunter-gatherers and more of a tool that seems to have been accessible to all hunter-gatherers but so far we still see it more commonly on the complex end of the spectrum now there is one example of in my opinion a pretty undeniable practice of full-blown agriculture in the northwest coast they're woolly dogs you heard that right woolly dogs prior to contact there was a breed of domesticated willy dog which is tragically now extinct whose wool could be sheared and fashioned into Linens the same way sheep and **[19:15]:** goat wool camp and there are accounts of communities raising whole herds of dogs specifically to harvest their wool the same way agriculturalists do with sheep now this is a topic that has been criminally under researched in the region and definitely deserves more attention as we have no idea how widespread this practice was and to what extent it was developed but for my part I would say it's definitely a case of agriculture we have a domesticated crop being intentionally cultivated for human use I would not however reclassify the Northwest Coast Economy from a hunter-gatherer economy to an agricultural one solely based on the farming of blue dogs it wasn't so important of an innovation that it changed the nature of their whole economy and their societies did not revolve around it I've spent the last few minutes detailing other non-agricultural resource harvesting practices that were much more important socially and economically than Willie dog farming I **[20:16]:** would however definitely add this to the list of features that made northwest coast societies more complex than generalist hunter-gatherer societies **[20:30]:** you can probably assume that investing this much effort into terraforming the landscape would make northwest coast peoples less nomadic and you'd be exactly right nomadism is traditionally a Hallmark of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle as opposed to the sedentary agricultural life but Northwest indigenous peoples were not nomads they split their time between two permanent sites the main village generally along the coastal lowlands where the whole town would come together for the winter and satellite Villages generally farther Inland and Uphill where family and Clan groups would Splinter off for summer harvesting as mentioned these sites were permanent unless something made them uninhabitable the Village locations would not change thus Northwest peoples couldn't closely follow migrating herds of game to stay near their food supply like generalist hunter-gatherers instead their food economy revolved around harvesting large quantities of staple foods and storing them for when they went out of season by far the most important food staple with salmon **[21:33]:** which was so significant it's going to give its own segment in a few minutes since they lived in permanent towns and Villages Northwest peoples didn't need to have mobile dwellings like teepees instead building sedentary wooden long houses there were several different styles of longhaus scene up and down the coast as to be expected in an area of such high diversity but they all generally consisted of a cedar log frame overlaid with cedar planks these planks could be easily moved to let the breeze in during the summer time keep the rain out during the winter or let smoke out from the central fire around which the interior was organized woven Cedar mats could be hung strategically to act as room dividers which could then be easily removed for feasts or ceremonies these structures could be quite large capable of housing anywhere from a couple dozen to over a hundred inhabitants and were often an ornately carved **[22:25]:** and painted in the characteristic local art style Northwest peoples also had a much different relationship with their personal property than generalist hunter-gatherers that is to say they had a lot more of it take it from someone who knows there's no greater activity for reducing the amount of clutter you own than constantly moving but more significantly they had and still have today a highly developed sense of property rights individuals owned their personal items and items for their work a fisherman would own their Nets and their Hooks and artists would own their carving and painting tools Etc and taking somebody's property without permission did require restitution but also items of import to whole families would be owned by that family a family would own their canoes and their paddles and a family or Clan would own the long house that they dwelt in this system of property rights extended even further to intellectual property and this is **[23:24]:** probably where it was the most rigid the rights to sing certain songs Dance certain dances use certain crests and designs and artwork and even claim or give a certain name were all treated as property owned by an individual a family or a clan a person could not without explicit permission perform a song or a dance or use a Crest or a name to which they did not have the rights items of intellectual property were very intimately associated with ceremony so improperly using them without the necessary privileges was a serious offense it was not uncommon then and in traditionalist communities still is not uncommon now for offended parties to very publicly halt ceremonial proceedings and express their offense when someone tried to for example perform a dance that they didn't have the rights to and if you wanted to perform or use a piece of intellectual property you had to First produce the receipts to establish **[24:27]:** your right to that intellectual property failure to do so would result in your claim getting challenged intellectual property rights were mostly passed between family members by birth marriage or inheritance though they could also be given to unrelated persons as gifts to establish your claim to a given item you had to be able to recite the chain of marriages inheritances gift givings Etc that brought it into your hands other people would be able to verify your claim because all of this passage of Rights happened at public ceremonies known as pot latches which we will talk about at length later this system of property rights is significantly more complex than those present in most generalist hunter-gatherer societies though pretty recognizable to an agriculturalist **[25:20]:** related to the property rights system there were also land use rights it's pretty common knowledge that hunter-gatherer societies don't have a concept of private ownership of land in these cultures land isn't something that can be owned bought or sold by humans this was also true here in the northwest coast but that doesn't mean land isn't divided up between people at all what is far less well-known is that complex hunter-gatherer societies do have a concept of use of Rights of land userfruct is the right to use and benefit from a piece of property that doesn't belong to you we see this all the time today especially with anything that involves mining or Drilling for example you could own a piece of property that turns out to have oil on it and the oil company will either buy the land from you outright or buy the drilling rights while you still maintain possession of the property typically **[26:13]:** receiving some kind of the oil profits for the use of your land use of Rights amongst indigenous American peoples look different in every society in the northwest coast they were held by Chiefs a more accurate term would probably be high status individuals or Elites okay we'll elaborate more on the social structure in a few minutes but we need to lay down some basic concepts before we can move on northwest coast Society was organized around the family unit this wasn't the nuclear family like American society but the extended family including relatives so distant that family groups within a town could be several hundred individuals in size all members of a family group generally resided within the same Longhouse thus a town would have separate long houses for each family group though if a family group was big enough they would build additional long houses for their members sometimes if a town was small enough it could **[27:06]:** consist of only one family group but often there were multiple these family groups were headed by high status individuals who held a number of titles and Privileges and were responsible for directing the economic activities of their family group all of the land surrounding a town and also all of the water yes that includes the ocean within sight of that town was divided into separate tracks whose use of truck rights were owned by these title holding family heads thus all economically viable land and water along the entire northwest coast was parceled out and administered by Elites within the different towns and villages these use of worked rights included all economic activity within a certain tract of land or water Hunting Fishing Gathering whaling Etc but also any of the Preparatory work needed for those activities like building fish Weirs over rivers or conducting controlled Burns anybody who wanted to harvest on a certain tract of land **[28:04]:** needed first to gain permission from the title holder but here's an important point the title holder could not withhold permission from people if they were part of the title holders family group members had an inalienable right to harvest on their family's land though they were still required to seek permission from the title holder before exercising that right the title holder could deny permission to people outside of their family group thus the title holders ownership did not mean exclusive right of personal use it was more a case of stewardship and the right to direct the economic management of attractive Land by their family group they were the custodian of that land and responsible for ensuring it was harvested properly and not over exploited in addition to seeking permission Harvesters would also pay tribute to the title holder in the form of a portion of their Harvest title holders would thus get very wealthy by essentially taxing **[29:00]:** the use of their land however the tribute demanded was never excessive and title holder's wealth was expected to be regularly redistributed to the community in Potlatch ceremonies nobody in the northwest coast was going poor or homeless off of making somebody else rich and by expected I do mean expected a title holder could lose their status and privileges if they went too long accumulating wealth and not redistributing it and even when they were upholding the redistribution cycle if their Community felt they were being stingy and not generous enough they would be publicly shamed we'll talk about this more in the next section **[29:46]:** the social structures of northwest coast societies how can I put this have been absolutely obsessed over by anthropologists for decades Reams upon reams of paper have been exhausted documenting and trying to understand what one Anthropologist described as quote the most socially complex hunting and Gathering societies known on Earth there is so much I could say here and it's such a fascinating topic but for the sake of time we can really only scratch the surface today I'll leave some links in the description for interested viewers to check out more it is in the incredible complexity of their social structures perhaps more than any other single factor that northwest coast societies differentiate themselves from General hunter-gatherer societies rather than being classless and egalitarian there was a rigid social hierarchy that stratified Society on the basis of titles privilege and Status where upward social Mobility was quite difficult and slavery was practiced let's talk about slavery first in **[30:53]:** the northwest coast slavery made up an important part of the regional economy estimates differ on how much of the population was enslaved from as little as four percent to as much as 30 percent but everyone agrees it was practiced in every tribe and that slaves were a high-value trade commodity slaves could be acquired through purchase or taken as captives in war in fact slave raiding was the most common factor motivating Warfare also the children of slaves were born slaves slaves were not considered members of society and therefore excluded from ceremonial and religious life just as in euro-american Plantation slavery they were seen as property and their masters could treat them however they pleased including beating or killing them at will it wasn't uncommon for the slaves of very high status Masters to be ritually killed upon their Master's death or upon the dedication of important structures like a new longhouse unlike European slavery however the **[31:49]:** labor of northwest coast slaves was not especially brutal and the function of the entire economy did not center around the practice these were economies with slavery they were not slave economies slaves mostly did the same labor as lower class free folk menial tasks around the house that their masters just didn't want to do for other jobs high-class slave owners would themselves pitch in in which case the slaves would work alongside them as a helping hand things like cutting down trees to build a canoe or a longhouse there was no such thing as work that only slaves and no Freeborn person did furthermore slaves generally slept and ate in the long house with the freeborns rather than in separate slave quarters and were given the same food though slaves had no formal rights their rights to marry and own personal possessions were generally respected a slave could buy their freedom if they'd accumulated enough wealth or **[32:49]:** their Master could granted at will both of which were fairly common occurrences in fact many Masters treated slavery more like indentured servitude granting their slaves Freedom after a certain period of time rather than enslaving them for life though the treatment of slaves vary drastically from Master to master upon obtaining Freedom slaves were largely equal to any low status Freeborn though there was still social stigma attached to having been enslaved the freight class is often described as being divided into two further classes Nobles who held titles privileges wealth and Status passed on to them through inheritance and commoners who did not however this is a bit of an oversimplification and can leave a false impression of how Rank and Status worked in northwest coast societies so let's get into it northwest coast societies were not stratified on the basis of rank as in European feudalism there was not a finite list of inheritable positions with a **[33:48]:** determined hierarchy invested authorities nothing akin to a King Prince Duke Etc rather status in the Northwest was determined by the inheritance of titles Privileges and wealth which were stratified in relation to each other in other words rank did not determine the privilege privilege determined the rank for example the order of seating at a public Feast was an inheritable privilege and a more prominent seating position granted a person higher status they were high status because they had a better seat they did not have a better seat because they were high status the order of receiving gifts at or invitations to public feasts were inheritable privileges the higher one was in the order the more status they obtained the right to certain names crests dances and songs were all inheritable privileges names and crests were particularly important status symbols as they were imbued with the status of all people who'd previously held them for example a name **[34:49]:** which had been held by a revered and highly regarded ancestor would confer great status upon the inheritor use of fork rights to land were inheritable Privileges and although one particular tract of land didn't necessarily confer more status than another a more productive parcel would make its title holder wealthier and that would impact their status the list of all possible titles and privileges that one could hold would be massive and probably impossible to exhaustively enumerate one's position in society was thus determined by a complex interplay of all the different titles and privileges they held in addition to their wealth these privileges were all graded in relation to each other and no two privileges carried exactly equal status thus no two people carried exactly equal status this minute gradation displayed itself most prominently at potlatches public Gatherings of feasting gift-giving and ceremony gifts were handed out at potlatches one at a time and the Order of receiving **[35:46]:** gifts was a very public display of one's position on the status hierarchy every recipient being lower than the previous but higher than the next it was not possible for two people to have exactly the same status as this would require the names to be called out to receive their gifts at exactly the same time as one Anthropologist puts it every person was in a class of Their Own Privileges and titles were inherited but could also be obtained by marriage given as gifts for taken as Spoils of War inheritance practices differed across the region with some tribes passing things down strictly patrilineally others were strictly matrilineal and others allowed inheritance through both parents primogeniture was not a legal requirement and inheritances could be split between errors however the title holder saw fit men were preferred in inheritance but there don't seem to have been formal prohibitions on women gaining Privileges and status one status was not **[36:42]:** a stagnant and guaranteed thing it could be gained or lost thus a high status individual could not simply rest on The Laurels of their inheritance but had to constantly reaffirm their Prestige through concrete actions neglecting to do so would result in loss of social standing and even inherited privileges likewise a person born with no inherited titles and privileges could gain them and thus increase in status there were no formal barriers to title less individuals gaining titles as in European Society one of the most important factors in gaining and preserving social standing was wealth one could climb the social ladder and gain more Privileges and Status by accumulating wealth however wealth was not accumulated to be hoarded but specifically to be redistributed wealth only served as a status symbol if it was flaunted and in the northwest coast it was flaunted by being given away in Gatherings known as pot latches we will talk at length **[37:46]:** about potlatches in a few minutes but essentially they were public events put on by wealthy sponsors to assert their status in Prestige by giving away all their wealth and I do mean all their wealth a good pot latcher would have absolutely no possessions save probably their long house and a pair of clothes the day after they threw a pot latch contrary to the perceptions of some westerners this did not condemn them or their family to destitution as their public Prestige was never higher than after a potlatch thus the community would gleefully provide for their families material needs until they'd built their wealth back up again there were very strong social expectations for status individuals to throw pot latches at regular intervals and to be very generous with their wealth redistribution the higher end status a person was the more frequently and extravagantly they were expected to potlatch failure to put on regular pot latches and **[38:41]:** stinginess of gift giving would result in the loss of social standing and even hereditary privileges on the flip side a person of low or no privilege could increase their Prestige and gain privileges by accumulating enough wealth to throw a pot latch as mentioned before there were no formal barriers to this sort of social climate practically though it was a very difficult thing to do as inherited privileges gave one access to more wealth either by receiving tribute for someone's use of your land by getting invited to lots of potlatches Etc the fewer privileges you were born with the less access you had to wealth creation it wasn't too difficult for an already status Elite to increase the Grandeur of their pot latches and thus gain more prestige but for most people born with no privileges they were unlikely to ever accumulate the wealth necessary to break into the Potlatch cycle marriage was also not much of **[39:40]:** a social climbing option title holders tended to marry title holders of similar status with an eye towards marrying up rather than down so the best anybody on the social scale could hope for would be an incremental increase in status through marriage a title less individual could conceivably marry someone with a handful of low ranking privileges but any larger of a gap was unlikely to be bridged no marriages are recorded between a title less person and an extremely high status person thus even though there was no formal barrier between unprivileged and privileged there was very practically a gap in wealth and social clout that increased in size and rigidity the further up you look on the privilege scale still looking at this Gap as a gap between classes is misleading and overshadows the incredibly minute gradation of the northwest coast social scale a few more notes about the social structures that need to be mentioned privilege **[40:38]:** and Status carried with it much Social Prestige and wealth but it didn't honestly carry a whole lot of authority only certain figures within a town family Clan and Village heads held much real world Authority and even then they couldn't Force free people to act against their will this was more persuasive Authority than coercive Authority the vast majority of wealthy status holders held social clout but nothing akin to Legal authority over lower status Free People this lack of authority however had no impact on their social standing as mentioned before northwest coast societies were organized into family groups these family groups consisted of a high-class family their extended family as far as could be traced of any status level all the slaves owned by group members and finally a collection of low status free retainers who claimed lineage with the noble family whether or not there was actually any blood relation between the retainers and the noble **[41:35]:** family was immaterial the system was ostensibly organized around the extended family so a family relationship was nominally maintained between everybody and the group these retainers submitted themselves to the authority of the noble family but they were not bound to the noble family or the land in any way like a surf they had freedom of movement and could move to another Village and establish themselves with another family if they so desired a family group could hold property and privileges which were administered primarily by a family head this was not a rank that could be inherited but rather an honor bestowed upon the most statused member of the family among certain tribes the family organization extended further into a clan structure clans were ostensibly distant relations but again actual blood connection wasn't really the basis of Clan organization in fact nobody really knows how the clan systems began or what motivated their initial formation Clans extended across **[42:32]:** Villages and Incorporated multiple family groups within them just like family groups Clans have a clan head who is the highest status Clan member and can hold privileges on behalf of the whole clan the most common privilege held on the clan level is the Crestor totem unlike other indigenous totemic systems however in the northwest coast having a certain totem did not express any sort of special spiritual relationship between the clan and the animal of the totem the importance of Clan systems changed as you move north and south and seems to correspond with strictness of inheritance structures in the southern portion of the coast down in Oregon inheritance tended to be allowed from both the mothers and the Father's Side here client affiliations were quite weak as a person could choose to identify more with the clan of their mother or father up north in Canada and Alaska however inheritance tended to be strictly associated with a **[43:23]:** specific gender whether mother or father depends on the tribe thus a person could only associate with one clan and the importance of Clan identity is more firmly established marriage in these communities was strictly outside the clan whereas in Oregon one could marry within their Clan so long as they were sufficiently distant in relation and in Washington we see a gradation between these two extremes I'm doing a massive disservice to the client system for the sake of time just know there's a lot more that could be said and you can find info in my sources finally each town or Village also had a town head this person tended to also be the family and or Clan head of the most prominent and Powerful Clan and family within the town **[44:11]:** if you grew up in the United States like me you were probably taught that spirituality for all indigenous Americans revolved around Guardian spirits and spirit quests that a person would go on a solo Spirit Quest where a certain animal would reveal themselves to that person as their Guardian Spirit and the two would maintain a special connection for the person's entire life now to say this was the nature of religion for all indigenous peoples across the entire continent is grossly inaccurate however to be completely honest it isn't that far from a faithful description of northwest coast religious systems in fact given how much mature about this region anthropologists produced in the late 19th early 20th centuries I wouldn't be too surprised if this is where that perception came from it wouldn't be the first time a cultural element from a specific region got misapplied by Americans to all indigenous peoples so let's take a look at **[45:08]:** what's actually going on northwest coast spirituality can be described as a form of animism everything in the universe is believed to be a living sentient being with its own spirit Power no different from the condition of humanity every animal every plant as well as inanimate objects and forces of nature such as rocks water the wind or the force of a wave in fact in most Northwest mythologies all of these entities are actually people who live in another skin and that's how they're commonly referred to Salmon are called salmon people rocks Rock people Etc you can probably deduce that there is no separation between the physical and spiritual worlds in northwest coast cosmology spiritual forces interact with the physical world and each other all the time and it is this interaction of the spirits that makes the physical world function a balanced web of spiritual and physical relationships ties everyone and everything together and the healthy **[46:10]:** functioning of the world depends on proper maintenance of these relationships we'll talk about how this is done in a second first I want to talk about Guardian spirits each person develops an individual relationship with a specific Spirit power during their life parents encourage their children at a young age to begin exploring the spirit world and preparing this connection at some point during adolescence a person will venture on a solo Spirit quest to formalize this relationship it can last anywhere from a few days to a few weeks during which time the person fasts from eating and sleeping spending their time in prayer and ritual bathing a spirit Power will eventually reveal themselves to the person typically in the form of an animal and the two will be linked for life Spirit powers do many things for people they protect their person from illnesses Misfortune and death and can give their person success and prosperity in human **[47:03]:** Ventures Hunting Fishing Gathering healing other sicknesses skill and basketry and carving ease in childbirth ease in obtaining wealth Etc all of this is repaid by proper expressions of respect and reciprocity one respects their spirit Power by honoring ritual obligations and restrictions the relationship is very close and intimate one thus to speak openly about your spirit Power would be very disrespectful this doesn't mean nobody else can know what your spirit Power is though as another way to honor your spirit power is to represent them in artwork for example painting a representation of them on the bow of your canoe or carving their likeness into a post in your longhouse another form of respect would be to refrain from eating the animal that is your spirit Power thus if your spirit Power was a deer you wouldn't eat venison reciprocity mainly takes the form of gratitude expressed through ceremony in the northwest coast winter is the primary **[48:04]:** season for potlatches and religious ceremonies with an annual spirit Power honoring ceremonial cycle being observed these winter ceremonies as they're called are public Gatherings where people come together to sing songs and perform dances to pay homage to their individual Spirit powers they last for weeks and are critically important in renewing the spirit Power relationship less frequently a person may also repeat their solo Spirit Quest at certain points in their life where close communion with their spirit Power is very important women typically do this during pregnancy for example and among the Wailing cultures of the Macaw and neutron wolf a very dangerous occupation Whalers would do this before a hunt one side note that I need to discuss as mentioned the spirit Power relationship is a very personal and intimate one thus indigenous northwesterners today who observe winter ceremonies consider them sacred and close to Outsiders they will also rarely discuss details of their religious practice **[49:00]:** and experience Spirit Powers could also be called upon to enact malevolence on other people illness in the northwest coast was thought to be a physical manifestation of a spiritual imbalance often an attack by a hostile spirit Power that removed part of a person's soul another source of imbalance could be that a person had disrespected their own spirit Power who then removed their protection medicine men thus acted as both doctor and spiritual healer they would both treat the physical wound as well as perform spiritual cleansing through song ants or other rituals in order to retrieve the lost soul and restore Balance and Health medicine men relied heavily on their own Spirit powers to assist them in healing thus medicinal practices were highly individualized and no two doctors performed exactly the same rituals one may touch and massage the patient another simply sit and sing another burn Cedar Etc beyond the individual level Human Society maintained proper **[50:00]:** balance with the spirit world as a whole through the same key methods of respecting obligations and restrictions and ceremonial reciprocity this was most on display in northwest coast harvesting practices now you may be wondering if Northwest peoples considered all plants and animals to be humans in another skin how did they justify harvesting and eating them this is a very fair question the answer is this among the web of relations that is northwest coast cosmology most if not all beings rely on others for their livelihoods in one way or another the tree people must drink the water people to survive the dear people must eat the tree people to survive the bare people must eat the deer people to survive Etc this is how the world was created and everybody understands this thus the water people willfully give themselves as a gift of life to the tree people the tree people give themselves to support the **[50:53]:** dear people Etc and as recompense the givers asked the gifted for something in return usually permission to make use of their gift and gratitude for the offering of it humans being a part of the web of relations they are bound by the same system thus salmon oysters berries kelp Etc all willfully give themselves to support the lives of people Cedar and Spruce Tree is recognizing that food is not all that is required for human flourishing give their bodies so that humans can make houses canoes clothes art and so on what is asked in return are three things first that humans seek permission before harvesting and respect the answer you'll see some people still doing this today if someone needs to make a canoe for example they'll go up to a tree and ask in prayer for it to offer itself they'll then wait and listen if the tree says no they'll find another tree if **[51:54]:** they can't find a tree that will give permission they'll go home and come back another day second that humans Express gratitude for the gift through ceremony just like how winter ceremonies honor the relationship with Spirit Powers harvesting related ceremonies honor the relationship between people and their harvested counterparts for example when the salmon people begin their annual migration an initial catch of a small amount will be made and a feast known as the first salmon ceremony held the bones of the consumed fish are saved and ritually returned with water these dead salmon It is believed then returned to their people and attest to the honor and respect they were given if the first catch is not properly honored it's believed the salmon people will refuse to allow themselves to be caught third and perhaps most importantly humans must only take what they need Not only would it be disrespectful to say the salmon people to catch **[52:49]:** more than you can eat and have taken advantage of their generosity it's also robbing from the livelihoods of the bear people and the eagle people and all the others who rely on Salmon's gift so they are going to be less likely to share their gifts with humans thus over exploiting even one resource damages a whole set of relations and sets the world out of balance this principle quite literally makes environmental sustainability a factor of northwest coast religion as a result there were a whole set of practices and social pressures to regulate human behavior away from excess and towards sustainable levels of consumption for example just the simple requirement of holding a first salmon ceremony takes several days to fulfill during this time no salmon are being caught and thousands of fish are allowed to swim upstream unhindered and fulfill their roles in the environment as I mentioned before title holders who held land use of **[53:48]:** Ruck rights were seen as custodians of their tracks of land they were responsible for ensuring their land was harvested sustainably and if they allowed their Parcels to be recklessly over exploited or Worse demanded it in order to build wealth off the tribute they were liable to lose public prestige we'll talk about the sustainability a bit more later **[54:14]:** all right it's finally time to talk about the much alluded to pot batch ceremony the Potlatch was an extremely important component of northwest coast public life though there are Regional variations in this significance similarly to Clan structures the institution waned in importance to further south one travel Potlatch has served many and varied purposes almost anything you can think of that would warrant public attention and a bit of ceremony was done in the context of a pot latch there were wedding pot latches funeral potlatches Coming of Age pot latches birth pot latches pot latches for the dedication of a longhouse or a totem pole pot latches for legal functions such as investing a new Chief with their inherited titles you name it they weren't primarily religious ceremonies like the winter ceremonies were religion was present in Potlatch ceremonies and in some areas like the Central Coast of British Columbia was a more significant component than in **[55:12]:** other regions but it was never the primary purpose of potlatch as a ceremony rather economic political legal and cultural purposes to precedence they were pretty much the default public gathering as mentioned in the section on social stratification potlatches were put on by wealthy sponsors and served the critical social role in northwest coast economics of wealth redistribution as a potlatch's extravagance was a direct reflection of their sponsors available wealth and social pressures they ranged in scale quite widely and no two were equal pot latches could be put on just for the local community redistributing local wealth and cementing a title holder's position in their own Community or they could be more competitive events where High status title holders from neighboring towns were invited in order to establish an elite status in relation to their peers in this way wealth was not only redistributed from the rich to the average within a single Community it was also **[56:08]:** redistributed between the wealthy Elites of distant communities thus being invited to many potlatches was another way to accumulate wealth and by extravagant I do mean extravagant the most flamboyant to Paul latches could see several hundred guests and last easily for a week or several with the host providing everybody with gifts and food every single day when hosts were really trying to flaunt their wealth and build status they would even throw items in the fire and Destroy them as a demonstration that they had so much they could afford to do that blankets coppers and unfortunately sometimes murdering slaves there is probably no institution of northwest coast societies that has received more attention from Western anthropologists than the Potlatch but even then scientists have tended to document only the most opulent and extravagant ones it's quite likely that these Grand scale events of elite competition about which so much has been written were much less common than **[57:11]:** the Potlatch that just fed the hometown so what actually happens in a pot latch the two main components are feasting and gift giving these are interspersed with periods of performance singing dancing speech making storytelling as well as whatever other ceremonial function the Potlatch is achieving the wedding the title investiture the funeral Etc funeral potlatches are naturally more somber events than others and are often referred to as whaling pot latches as they afford people the opportunity to express their grief without restriction all of these parts are done very ritually and a potlatch can be a very Grand and impressive spectacle they're held within a longhouse so you can imagine how immersive the singing and dancing is in an enclosed space another critical function of the Potlatch was as a repository of public memory remember the discussion about intellectual property rights and everything we've talked about regarding inheritance these were cultures with no written languages there wasn't **[58:13]:** a county clerk who could hold the record of births deaths who holds the rights to what tracks of land or what crests or names or whatnot the Potlatch was where all of this was done anytime intellectual property rights were being passed from one person to another it had to be done at a pot latch so that there were Witnesses who could attest the recipient legitimately inherited those items if you'll recall I mentioned how people would sometimes lay claim to rights and privileges that weren't theirs and that they'd get challenged on this the only way anybody could know who legitimately possessed what rights was for those transfers to be made in public ceremony pot latches were times for hosts to bring out everything they laid claim to Not only would they flaunt their wealth but they'd tell their stories sing their songs display their crests Etc as an assertion of all the different rights they held **[59:07]:** guests would demonstrate their validation of the host's claims by accepting their gifts this formed a contract those guests would then return to their communities and vouch for whatever claims to rights a host made at their potlatch if a host made a claim to a right that a guest did not agree with they would refuse to sign the contract by refusing their gift of course it didn't just stay that subtle the host could expect to be verbally challenged as well **[59:39]:** no discussion of the northwest coast would be complete without mentioning their art without a doubt the most recognizable element of northwest coast material cultured Outsiders this gorgeous art style with its black form line its abstractness its signature repertoire of motifs and colors has gotten so much outside attention that many Americans again have a perception that this style was present throughout much of the continent that it's a general indigenous American art style not just a northwest coast one I myself was surprised to learn as late as 11th grade that it's specific to this region in fact the Seattle Seahawks football team took their name in branding inspiration from a Northwest Coast style Seahawk mask housed in the Burke Museum in Seattle Washington the designs on their logo and uniforms take inspiration from the northwest coast art style and yes I use this style for the artistic aesthetic on this channel for the sake of both the **[1:00:37]:** length of this video and because I want to do a full artistic Treatise of this style I'm going to make a separate video about it here we'll just cover some of the highlights again there's Regional variation in style in fact the Styles change so dramatically As you move north and south that it should be divided into a northern Northwest Coast style and a southern Northwest Coast style with the boundary around Vancouver Canada the northern style is the one that's traditionally gotten all the media and scholarly attention and it isn't hard to see why the solid black lines that weave and connect throughout a piece are called by Scholars form line for the main thicker lines and fine line for the smaller thinner ones this is where the art style gets its academic name of form line art in the northern region this form line plays a more significant role than in the South and there **[1:01:27]:** are more strict rules governing the components of a piece in the north than in the South thus in the north figures which represent animals humans and sometimes plants like trees tend to be more stylized and abstract and less lifelike than their southern counterparts the southern style makes use of similar design motifs as the north you'll see similar T and U shapes similarly thick eyes and eyebrows similar ovoid shapes Etc but their unification through the form line is less of a priority another side note you may have noticed by now A Familiar pattern along the coast of cultural transformation As you move north or south there are many reasons for this but perhaps most significantly the southern nations in the United States had much deeper ties with people in the interior outside the coastal culture area the Cascades in Washington and Oregon are much narrower and easier to cross than the Rockies in British Columbia so **[1:02:22]:** it makes sense that there was more Transit into the continent another figure of the Northwest Coast Economy that helps distinguish it as a complex hunter-gatherer Society is specialization of Labor people didn't tend to be labor generalists but tended to focus on one or a handful of crafts there was already a gendered division of labor common in all hunter-gatherer societies with men doing the hunting and fishing and women doing the shellfish and plant Gathering but even within a single gender people specialized fishermen tended to focus on certain fish and leave the hunting of seals and otters to Sea mammal Specialists whales were a specialization all of their own in the societies that hunted them and art was a specialization artists studied and honed the skills of their craft from a young age learning the style how to carve how to paint the qualities of the different materials they work with how to make the paints Etc **[1:03:17]:** and good artists earned high social prestige on top of usually being high status to begin with artists were employed using a patronage system very similar to the one in Renaissance Italy they wouldn't freelance their work as is common today rather they would receive commissions and all necessary support from wealthy patrons just about everything that had a surface was decorated long houses were painted both inside and out their support columns were often carved canoes were painted they were carved and painted knives bowls spoons boxes hats blankets coppers paddles headdresses ceremonial masks and of course totem poles another very well known and highly recognizable component of northwest coast culture totem poles are monuments usually serving as another status symbol for elite families by publicly displaying the powerful lineage and privileges of that family they're made out of vertically erected Cedar Logs that can be anywhere from 10 to 60 feet in height but sometimes over a hundred **[1:04:20]:** three to 18 meters but sometimes over 30 and are carved with a number of figures usually animal or human contrary to popular belief a pole does not necessarily tell a single story rather it serves to document the different stories about or familiar to a community or family for example a poll can be commissioned as a general celebration of a certain wealthy family or individual thus this sort of poll is decorated with status items to demonstrate the Privileges owned by the sponsor owned family crests scenes from own stories depictions of ancestors or crests of the family's Clan for obvious reasons this was commonly the purpose of the entrance polls that adorned the front of family long houses a totem Pole's direction is marked by ceremony and pot latching where the meanings of the different depictions and the purpose for the post-construction are explained thereby ensuring public knowledge of what the monument represents totem poles may be **[1:05:18]:** freestanding or as just mentioned they may be one of the external or internal house poles holding up a longhouse in which case they serve artistic commemorative and Architectural purposes there were Memorial polls erected to commemorate the death of a significant individual and even Mortuary polls that actually housed the deceased person's remains in a grave box thereby serving as both tomb and tombstone and then there's my favorite class of totem pole the shame Pole I mentioned a while ago that privilege holders who were stingy with their potlatching could be subject to public shaming this is how it was done a guest who was dissatisfied with the host's generosity would return home and commission a shame poll these were generally pretty simple in construction featuring little more than a representation of the shaming victim and some other elements emblematic of that person to make it pretty clear who the intended target was it was then either erected **[1:06:15]:** in a very prominent position in the guests Village or if possible hauled to the host's village and erected pointed at the host's Longhouse shame poles Were Meant to attract lots of public attention to this person's breach of Honor the victim of a shame pole could not take it down only the Constructor could in order to rid themselves of this very public embarrassment the shaming victim needed to throw a more generous Potlatch and only when the guest was satisfied with the host's Newfound sense of generosity they would take it down a shame pole could also be targeted at an entire town if the offensive Behavior was widespread enough in more recent times some people have utilized the tradition of Shane Poland as an act of political resistance to draw attention to the loss of traditional territory and other grievances against colonial governments and actors one famous example of this is a shame pole in Cordova Alaska **[1:07:12]:** commissioned by playing at fisherman Mike Weber as a protest against the environmental disaster and political mishandling of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. we're going to end this section on Art discussing two kinds of ceremonial clothing chill cap blankets and button blankets there is a long and Rich history in the northwest coast stretching back well before European contact of weaving wool into clothing a wool could be obtained from the wild mountain goats in the region as well as the domesticated bully dogs who most certainly were all very good boys out of this wool was woven many items of clothing including a particular style of ceremonial blanket known as chill cap blankets these are mostly present in the far north from about the central British Columbia Coast continuing through the Alaska Panhandle they're elaborately decorated with a representation of a personal or family crest done in Farmland art but it is quite a distinct style of form line straight lines boxes and 90 degree angles are everywhere and these don't appear in form line art done on any other medium **[1:08:18]:** it's usually an obsessively curvy art style another ceremonial blanket with more recent history is the button blanket these are also wool blankets but unlike the locally woven chill cats the wool material used in button blankets was acquired from European Traders making button blankets a very modern addition to the northwest coast material culture they consist of a blanket almost exclusively dark blue bordered on three sides in red and decorated in the center with a design also in red like the chill cats these designs are typically personal or family crests unlike chill cats they're done in standard form lens style not a unique blanket Style the blankets are also decorated with Abalone shells which can act as simple accent pieces to the borders and Crest or can form elaborate designs of Their Own as mentioned blue is the most common blanket color as it was the most available color in trade blankets during the fur trade era **[1:09:14]:** less often encountered was gray and most rare green thus these colors were more valuable and affordable only to very wealthy individuals becoming a status symbol button blankets have a much wider distribution than chill cats being used all along the coast though I don't know how prevalent they are south of the Columbia River **[1:09:39]:** there are two items that Define the material cultures of northwest coast peoples more than any other salmon was the staple food resource and Cedar provided a construction material for pretty much anything you can think of as seen in the passage I opened this video with if you were to walk around a northwest coast town for just five minutes you would be astounded at all the different things a person can do with one plant well okay two the Western red cedar and the yellow cedar were both harvested the woods served as the primary construction material for larger items and anything carved canoes were made by hollowing out a single-seater log logs also served as the frame for long houses and other buildings like smoke houses as well as for carving totem poles Cedar Wood splits very consistently so one can make planks by driving wedges into one end of a log and working the split down **[1:10:34]:** the log's entire length these boards were then used for roofing and siding structures making decks and platforms smoke racks and even plank drums smaller items were also made out of the wood storage boxes plates and bowls spoons canoe paddles Arrow shafts Quivers Hammer ax and ads handles mallets rattles decorative or ceremonial figurines ceremonial masks Spears for hunting or fishing digging in torch sticks cooking spits weaving looms toys and trinkets whistles and on and on and on boxes were usually constructed in a style called bent wood because a single seizure plank would be steam treated and bent to 90 degrees in three points the ends would then be joined together with either rope or dowels and a bottom attached in a similar manner these boxes could be so tight that they could hold water and were often used for cooking the bark of Cedar has two layers a hard outer bark and a soft inner bark **[1:11:35]:** this inner bark was removed and had its own long list of uses in an unprocessed state it could be used for making small structures like lean twos and even emergency canoes as well as smaller items boards bowls boxes baskets design templates used in carving and weak makeshift strings or rope for most uses the bark had to be shredded by pounding it between two hard surfaces in this process state it was softer and a prized material for anything braided or woven baskets mats canoe sails netting stronger rope and clothing items like hats and shawls to make it even softer it could be shredded again through a variety of methods that usually involved ringing shredded bark in your hands and treating it with oil sometimes soaking it in oil or water for weeks it could even get soft enough to make into comfortable mattresses blankets and diapers see their Roots as well as Spruce Roots where another **[1:12:34]:** prized weaving material usually being used for baskets or hats whatever the material Weavers and basket makers could achieve weaves so tight as to be waterproof thereby weaving waterproof clothing and watertight baskets for rope making the most valued material was the wides the little branchlets that hung from the main branch in Long drooping curves this is because they have an incredibly strong tensile strength up to ten thousand pounds per square inch they could be processed in a variety of ways to create ropes and Nets of differing strength and flexibility as mentioned repeatedly salmon was the major food source throughout the region I talked in the section on sedentism about these economies being storage economies that rather than following migrating herds or game they would build up stockpiles or processed and preserve staple foods for out of seasoned consumption due to the sheer volume of salmon available and their well-known annual migrations salmon smoked and dried was **[1:13:37]:** the most common stockpiled food resource by far the timing of the salmon runs varies throughout the region and according to species but generally occur in late summer through the fall perfect timing to stockpile for winter even today these runs are massive with millions of fish returning but before large-scale Western colonization habitat destruction and Commercial Fishing accounts a test that the numbers of the past were much much higher multiple sources describe Rivers choked with fish for weeks on end so much fish that one could almost walk across a river on their backs it's not hard to see why this was such a valuable resource and at least economically speaking the northwest coast year centered around the fall salmon runs I mentioned before how labor was specialized in northwest coast societies but the salmon runs were such an important time that it was an all hands on deck scenario with all the men required for fishing and **[1:14:35]:** the women for processing the catch many different techniques were used to catch the salmon but perhaps the most efficient was the construction of fish Weirs these were platforms built across the entire length of a river with barred fences extending beneath them into the water to Halt the Salmon's progress at regular intervals across the Weir gates in the fencing were installed that funneled the salmon into pens where the fishermen could net or spear salmon in droves from atop the platform these Weirs were so well constructed that they could hold the entire Salmon Run of a river at a single location **[1:15:15]:** it's here that I want to mention something that ties together a lot of what we've discussed there's a concept in Western economics which many of you were probably familiar with called The Tragedy of the comments traditional economists are generally very supportive of private land ownership as opposed to communal land ownership because they say communal ownership is less efficient and can easily result in over exploitation the scenario goes as follows they say that when land is communally owned and available to be harvested by everyone there's nobody to regulate how much of the land's resources people take thus people will over Harvest out of fear that everybody else is over harvesting and that if they don't take a lot now they may get none later this cycle of fear results in a race to the bottom that actually creates the scarcity everyone was so afraid of to remedy this so say the economists the land should be **[1:16:08]:** privately owned this creates an entity the landowner who can impose limits on harvesting or better yet exclude people entirely and have complete control over what is done when with the parcel the landowner is incentivized to harvest responsibly as overextending their land's resources would deplete their future earnings however I think we have all the evidence in the world that this system doesn't quite work as intended exhibit a climate change we have plenty of real world examples of private ownership of land not stopping that lands over exploitation however there are ways to deal with the tragedy of the commons other than assigning private property rights and northwest coast societies demonstrate a couple of ingenious strategies first is the use of use of Rights by assigning the rights to use particular tracks of land to particular family groups you disperse the population of a town to harvest in different areas thereby drastically reducing the amount of people trying **[1:17:10]:** to harvest on any one parcel likewise by vesting the use of frux holder with the authority to exclude non-family group members you've pretty much accomplished the goal of giving some entity regulatory power over the parcel's use while still holding the land in communal ownership the second strategy is one that is used in pretty much all hunter-gatherer societies that I know of and a point that I think most western economists traditionally Overlook or at least underestimate that is that sustainable harvesting practices are a vested value in the culture these cultures know that they depend on the health of their resource base for their survival they know that people are capable of taking more than they need and they know that unchecked overuse like this threatens everyone's livelihoods thus there are strong cultural values enforced through religious tenets and social pressures and communicated from childhood to encourage a sustainable level of harvesting and discourage Reckless exploitation title **[1:18:17]:** holders who had a bit of authority to regulate harvesting on their land were held personally responsible for ensuring it was done sustainably mismanaging and overextending one's land would result in loss of social Prestige among other consequences here's one example I mentioned in the last section that a fishweer could halt the entire salmon run at a single location well that would create quite a problem for everybody Upstream since everybody along these Rivers relied on the annual salmon migration for their survival including people in the interior outside of the coastal culture Zone if Downstream communities harvested too much salmon and didn't let enough continue Upstream they would both threaten the returns of future runs and risk Invasion from their Upstream Neighbors thus the title holders who operated the Weirs had strong social pressures to only permit as much fishing as their Community needed at the beginning of the season they would first allow the Weirs to sit **[1:19:17]:** open and the salmon to pass through unobstructed for several days once they'd commenced fishing they would observe the progress of the catch and call it quits once they'd harvested their fill could individuals and Elites violate cultural pressures and still over Harvest absolutely but people can also break private property laws too the point is it still usually succeeded in providing regulation and enforcement of human behavior the last strategy ameliorates the issues of both communal and private land ownership and that is the social requirement of wealth redistribution since title holders got rich off the tribute people paid for harvesting on their land you might assume this would encourage environmentally and socially destructive levels of exploitation however we don't see that because the incentive structure actually doesn't incentivize it if I know that I can only keep my wealth for so long and that I can only build so much of it before I have to give it **[1:20:22]:** all away then I have no incentive to destroy the health of my environment risk conflict with my neighbors or demand exorbitant labor quotas from my people because I'm not going to keep all that money anyway why damage a whole web of relationships to get rich when I can't even keep the money in fact the incentive structure actively works against these sorts of anti-social behaviors because I don't get socially rewarded just for having money I get socially rewarded for giving it away and what's more I also get socially punished through embarrassment shame or even legal action for hoarding piles of cash without redistributing it likewise for damaging my environment and community in the pursuit of wealth and before anybody says anything in the comments this system of wealth redistribution does not seem to have created droves of mindlessly lazy welfare leeches sucking off the government teat air quotes we have no indication of anything like that **[1:21:28]:** anywhere in the written record furthermore the vibrancy of northwest coast material culture obviously demonstrates people putting in work and effort Beyond just what they need to survive all of these strategies use of writes a cultural value for sustainability and socially required wealth redistribution enabled the communal ownership of land the existence of a wealthy Elite and a pretty good quality of life for everybody without over exploiting their natural resources maybe these economies are something worth taking lessons from **[1:22:06]:** I hope you all enjoyed watching that as much as I enjoyed writing it I lived in Washington for over a decade and this region was my introduction to indigenous cultures and Affairs as a whole so I enjoy any chance I get to talk about it if you like this Channel and the stories I tell please do consider supporting me on patreon even just a few dollars a month from a lot of different people makes a big difference and if you can't do that like subscribe leave a comment and hit that notification button to stay in the loop thank you all very much for watching and I will see you next time foreign