Tlingit

• The powerful Tlingit dominated the northern stretches of the Northwest Coast.  
  
• A 2,000 mile ribbon of misty, forested seacoast runs along the continents northwest margin, from the Gulf of Alaska to northern California, unfurling a landscape of astonishing beauty and abundance. A wall of snowcapped uplands-the Coast Mountains-rises abruptly on the landward side, its highest peaks cresting at more than 15,000 feet above sea level. Rivers cascade down the slopes, past majestic stands of cedar, hemlock, spruce, and fir. The climate is mild and moist; rainfall can measure more than 200 inches a year in the wettest sections. Deer, elk, mountain goats, and grizzly bear graze the high meadows.
  
  To the west, deep ocean currents flood in from the Pacific, spilling past a long chain of barrier islands into a labyrinth of bays, inlets, reefs, marshes, fiords, and estuaries and generating one of the richest concentrations of marine life anywhere in the world. Vast quantities of fish inhabit this coast, including flounder, cod, rockfish, 400-pound halibut, and enormous schools of herring and smelt. Seals, sea lions, and sea otters swim in-shore to feed. Clams, mussels, crabs, and sea urchins litter the beaches, along with thousands of seabird eggs. A procession of whales and porpoises cruises offshore.
  
  But from earliest times, the main resource was salmon in five different species. Beginning in late spring, the first huge runs would move inland, swarming over sandbars, battling river rapids, to spawn and die by the countless thousands. In just a few months, a Northwest Coast fisherman could spear or net enough salmon to sustain his family throughout the year. So massive was the influx, and so predictable, that some people came to think salmon were immortal. According to legend, a tribe of salmon people spent the winter in houses beneath the sea. Then, when the season warmed, they changed into fish and swam upriver to offer their bodies for human consumption. Their souls, released from the flesh, would return to the ocean.
  
• From the rain forest came the wood of the majestic red cedar-strong, aromatic, and resistant to rot. Massive cedar logs formed the framework of native houses, and split cedar planking sheathed their sides. The hull of each canoe began as a single cedar trunk, which the boat builders felled, scooped out with stone tools, then steamed to shape. Cedar boxes, intricately carved, served as storage space, household furniture, and containers for food and fish oil.
  
  Clothing and blankets were woven from cedar bark, which Northwest Coast women softened by pounding, then cut into strips. Split cedar root (along with spruce root and grasses) became the raw material for the region's superb basketwork, with mesh so tight that the baskets held water. And a cedar-root raincoat kept the wearer dry in any weather.
  
  This bounty of sea and forest gave rise to a way of life unique in all the Americas. Here such peoples as the Tlingit and Tsimshian, Nootka, Nuxalk and Chinook fished, feasted, and vied among themselves for power and prestige. Some were ferocious warriors-like the Haida, whose 60-foot battle canoes sped south as far as present-day Vancouver to take booty and slaves from the more peaceable Coast Salish. Most, like the Tsimshian, were also shrewd traders. All the region's people placed great importance on generosity, holding lavish ceremonies in which they gave out food, blankets, weapons, and other valuables. A visitor approaching a coastal village anywhere north of Puget Sound would find a row of large cedar houses above the beach of a sheltered cove or riverbank. The village might include only 3 or 4 extended families, each in its own house. Or it might stretch a mile or more along the waterfront and contain as many as 800 or 900 people. On some houses the facades would be painted with intricate totem figures-semiabstract shapes of birds and animals that proclaimed the family's clan affiliation. Carved cedar totem poles marked the dwellings of the most important families. To the rear, behind the beach front living quarters, were smokehouses, drying racks for fish, storage sheds, and the like.
  
• In each community the social order was built on family status. Centuries ago, as the coast people's forebears settled in, certain families gained control of the best fishing grounds, berry patches, and cedar groves, thus appropriating most of the wealth. In time,as the rights to these assets passed from one genaration to the next, a complex social hierarchy developed that contrasted sharply with most other cultures in native North America.
  
  At the top stood a handful of aristocratic families-the taises, or chiefs of the wealthiest lineages and their close relatives. Some might be warriors, others powerful shamans, and still others trade chiefs who controlled the lines of commerce with other tribes or villages.
  
  Below these elite families were their more distant relatives-the michimis, or ordinary people. Unlike their rich cousins, who almost never soiled their hands in labor, the nonelite relatives did much of the community's physical work. They felled the cedars, built the houses, hunted the game, repaired the fish weirs. On occasion, an aritsan of unusual skill might rise above his normal station. But as a rule, rank was dictated by birth.
  
  Except for the slaves. Up and down the coast, slavery was the bitter consequence of defeat in battle. Ambitious nobles would raid distant villages, looting valuables and seizing hostages. High-ranking prisoners might be sent home in exchange for a ransom payment, but all others remained the property of their captors. They were generally well treated. Slaves lived in the houses of their owners, ate the same food, and performed the same day-to-day tasks as other villagers. But their lives were always in jeopardy. When erecting a new family house, for example, some chiefs observed a custom of burying the body of a freshly killed slave under each corner post.
  
• There was no mistaking who belonged where, particularly among the northernmost tribes. A high-ranking Tlingit spoke with grave authority, and he dressed in style. On ceremonial occasions he draped his body in a handsome fringed cloak of cedar bark and mountain goat hair, worked with intricate designs, and wore a broad-brimmed hat emblazoned with family insignia. Sometimes he wore a seashell or a ring in his nose.
  
  High-ranking women proclaimed their status by the size of their labret, a shelflike wooden plug inserted horizontally into the bottom lip. The labret force the lip to protrude, and it generated a flow of saliva-an effect that repelled the first European visitors. But to most people along the coast, the bigger the labret, the higher its wearer's status.
  
• Within each village the more powerful lineages took precedence. But the chief of every household automatically held noble rank. He presided from a raised platform along the rear wall, opposite the door, where he lived with his wife and younger children; an elaborately carved screen often separated this private space from the rest of the building. Other families in the household, all related to the house chief, lived along the two side walls in order of rank. Slaves laid their blankets near the entrance. Social standing only told half the story, however. Each household chief belonged to one of several hereditary clans-Owl, Whale, Sea Lion, Beaver, and others-in which everyone was presumably descended from a common ancestor. Additionally, communities were divided into two groups of roughly equal size. Every individiual in a Haida village, for example, besides having a regular clan affiliation, also came into the world as either an Eagle or a Raven.
  
• The distinction between the two sides was a s basic as the difference between day and night. All Ravens, no matter how distant their blood relationship, felt a sense of spiritual kinship and commonly addressed each other as "brother" or "sister." At the same time, neither side could get along without the other. When a Raven chief wanted to build a new house or erect a totem pole, he would appeal to his Eagle counterpart, who then sent workmen to do the job. The very survival of the tribe depended on such cooperation, since marriage could occur only across group lines: Ravens wed Eagles, never other Ravens.
  
  
• In northern communities like the Tlingit and Haida, clan memberhsip came down through the female line: the children of a Raven mother were Ravens.
  
  Among most coastal groups, family heritage was a matter of great consequence. The most dramatic celebration of family pride was the potlatch, an elaborate ritual of feasting, dancing, storytelling, and gift-giving that was a vital part of every Northwest Coast society. Whenever an important family moved into a new house, the occasion demanded a potlatch. So, too, did any dynastic event-a birth or a marriage, the death of a chief, the succession of an heir. Sometimes a clan leader would host a potlatch to repay a debt or erase a shame. No honors or titles were deemed valid until the recipient gave a potlatch "to make my name good," as the saying went.
  
  The festivities could last for days or even weeks. There would be formal speeches recounting the family legends, dance performances, a display of heirlooms and family emblems-all certifying the right of the host to his titles and privileges. Finally, he would hand out presents, divesting himself of blankets, animal pelts, carved boxes, shell necklaces, cartons of fish oil, weapons, and-most valuable of all-engraved metal slabs called coppers. The more lavish his generosity, the more honor he gained for himself and his lineage. Some truly great chiefs were said to have distributed all they owned, then burned down their houses and executed their slaves. Such willful extravagance was the ultimate social gesture, worthy of enduring praise and esteem. (In practice, at least some of the wealth given out at potlatches came back to the owner, since the principal guest was honor bound to host a potlatch in return.)
  
  Potlatches were generally held in winter, when the coastal people turned from hunting and fishing to a virtually nonstop round of festivals and ceremonies. It was the season of spirits and demons, of mythic beings from distant worlds who arrived in the villages to the accompaniment of rattles, drums, and eerie whistles, inspiring awe and terror among viewers. Secret dance societies marked the occasion with ancient and sacred rites.
  
  
• Like most events in this coastal land of plenty, the forces of change arrived by sea. One day in the 1780's, some Tlingit traders were paddling their canoes up the Alaska coast when two tall sailing ships rose into view. To the Tlingits they seemd not nothing so much as two enormous white-winged birds flying low across the water. On the terrible chance that one "bird" might be Raven, the great creator spirit, the Tlingits sped to shore and took cover. Looking directly at Raven could turn a person to stone, it was said, so they cautiously peered out through rolled-up skunk cabbage leaves. Then one of them, an old man who had seem much already-and knew that sometimes stories were exaggerated-paddled back out for a closer look.
  
  And so the Tlingit elder met his first Europeans. They invited him aboard, showed him around, and gave him food and a tin plate. In return, he presented them with his sea otter cloak. As it happened, sea otter furs were precisely what these strangers had come thousands of miles to get.
  
  
• By the late 1700's European vessels were visitng the Northwest Coast in increasing numbers, drawn by the prospect of fabulous trading profits. The first had been Danish navigator Vitus Bering, who sailed from Siberia in 1741 on a voyage of exploration for the tsar of Russia. Reaching land at Alaska's Prince William Sound, slightly to the west of Tlingit country, he found little of interest.
  
  But on the return voyage, cruising past the 1,000 mile chain of the Aleutian Islands, the expedition discovered large rookeries of sea otters. No creature on earth grows a sleeker, softer, or more lustrous coat. Bering's crewmen collect a number of pelts, and on reaching port, they sold them to Chinese merchants for enormous sums.
  
  
• By the 1790's, the Russian-American Company, backed by the power of the tsar, expanded down the coast, building forts at Yakutat Bay and at Archangel, near present-day Sitka. This was the land of the Tlingit, and there was trouble from the start.
  
  No self-respecting Tlingit leader had any intention of working for the Russians or anyone else. Through trade with the British and Americans, they had acquired steel knives, rifles, and ammunition; already they were using them to defend their waters from poaching by Aleuts employed by the Russians. During the night raid into Prince William Sound, Tlingit warriors killed two Russians and nine Aleuts. A truce was patched together, with the Russians offering gifts in exchange for permission to hunt in Tlingit territory.
  
  But tensions continued to simmer, and at the new Russian fort on Sitka they came to a boil. The Tlingit had leased the site for a respectable sum, but as they watched the stockade walls go up-and saw the Aleut boats return laden with sea otters-they had second thoughts. Chief Katlian, the local war leader, quietly gathered support from tribes down the coast. Haida canoes arrived with arms and ammunition from the British, who had their own reasons to contain the Russians. By June 1802 Katlian was ready.
  
  More than 60 war canoes under his command approached by sea. Oher forces moved in from land.  On June 18 they attacked. Some 600 men wearing wood-slat armor and heavy wooden helmets charged through the settlement, shouting the war cries of their crest animals, firing rifles, and wielding knives with lethal skill. Only a handful of Russians were there to defend the fort. In a few minutes they all lay dead. Others had been out fishing and berry picking, and as they returned, the Tlingit overwhelmed them as well. In all, Katlian's men killed 20 Russians and 130 Aleuts, and they captured a group of women and children whom they sold back to the company for a large ransom.
  
  
• The Tlingit attack sent shock waves through the Russian headquarters on Kodiak. It also aroused the ire of the company's manager, Alexander Baranov, the most powerful white man in Alaska. As the chief architect of Russian expansion, Baranov could not allow a Tlingit victory to go unpunished. So in 1804 four company-owned ships carrying 1,000 Russians and Aleuts set sail for Sitka, where they joined a government warship. The Russian guns methodically pounded Katlian's men into submission.
  
  It did not end there. Tlingit warriors struck back in 1806, demolishing the Russian fort at Yakutat, and the next year they prepared for another assault on Sitka. Gradually, however, the Russians established control. Trade pacts and gift exchanges helped to stabilize relations. Tlingit families began moving back to the villages they had evacuated during the conflict. A new economy developed in which native suppliers provided the Russian colony with fish, game, and even vegetables-which the Rusians taught them to grow.
  
  
• During the fur trade era, most whites came only briefly to Northwest Coast, conducting their business and then departing. Then, in scarcely more than a decade, everything changed. The governments of Canada and the US settled a long-standing boundary dispute in 1846, in effect opening the region to settlers. Before long, shiny yellow nuggets began showing up at the trading posts.
  
  Within a year, the sleepy town of Fort Victoria of some 300 souls, swelled to 3,000 permanent inhabitants, with another 6,000 transients camped nearby. As usual, disease took a dreadful toll. It scythed through the Tlingit, wiping out village after village. The one exception was Sitka, where the Russian authorities had seen fit to vaccinate all residents, Tlingit and white alike. Elsewhere, down the length of the Northwet coast, an estimated 20,000 native people died.
  
  
• Decimated by illness, reviled by white settlers, their community life disrupted by alcoholism and other social problems, native people increasingly found consolation in another alien intrusion: Christianity. The first converts were Aleuts and others in the Far North, who in the brutal early days of the fur trade found a sympathetic ally in the Russian Orthodox Church. An Orthodox priest arrived in 1824-Ivan Veniaminov, who built a church, founded schools, and devised an Aleut alphabet.  He then moved south to Sitka and began to minister to the Tlingit.
  
  The Tlingit initially showed little interest; but Veniaminov persisted, and in time he began drawing in converts. Showing a wise tolerance for native customs-and a keen understanding of the Tlingit love for sumptuous display-he erected the imposing Cathedral of St Michael, and when possible he endeavored to blend Christian belief with Tlingit ceremony. It was just the right strategy. Thousands of native Alaskans flocked to the Orthodox Church, which would remain a lasting legacy of the Russian colonial presence in North  America.
  

Tsimshian

• The Tsimshian dwelled directly south of the Tlingit. Please refer the Tlingit above to read about their bountiful lifestyle in the Northwest Coastal regions.
  
  
• Being the shrewd traders the Tsimshian were, one of the most sought-after trade items was the pungently aromatic oil of a smeltlike fish called eulachon, or candlefish-so named because its oil-saturated body, when dried, would burn like a torch. Eulachon oil was the region's universal condiment, used to flavor everything from dried salmon to mountain huckleberries. So much of it passed from the coast to the interior that the cross-mountain trade route became known as grease trails. And the Tsimshian were accustomed to exacting the highest prices they could get.
  
  So when the Europeans brouth their glass beads and cloth blankets, the local traders were well equipped to deal. Before long, the price of sea otter pelts began to soar. At the same time, village markets were becoming glutted with the cheap metals, like iron and brass, that at first had been so popular. As a result, visiting traders were increasingly hard pressed to come up with commodities that the local residents found acceptable. Joseph Ingraham, in 1791 found that copper necklaces were held in high esteem, and he had an idea-have the iron rods he had with him shaped into neck rings of similar design. Several prominent chiefs purchased the new iron rings and they became great favorites, worn by the wealthy and coveted by all. This soon changed to sheets of copper, which became the only worthy trade item.
  
  
• After the Russian war, mainly between the Tlingits, Aleuts and Russians, peace was restored just as the region's original source of wealth-the sea otter-was declining. By the late 1820's, after decades of overhunting, this once plentiful mammal was close to extinction. To satisfy the demand for furs, traders switched their attention to the region's large population of land animals, such as marten, river otter, bear, and mink. At virtually the same moment, a powerful new entity-the Hudson' Bay Company-emerged from the deep Subarctic forests and planted itself on the coast.
  
  Following in the track of explorers like Mackenzie and Frazer, the Anglo-Canadian fur giant had pushed its way west through the mountains, establishing trading forts as it went. In 1824 it merged with its main rival, the North West Company, picking up an important post in  Chinook territory: Fort Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River.
  
  It then moved up the coast. The lure of special trading benefits drew scores of native families to the new Hudson's Bay forts.  Nine separate Tsimshian groups-more than 2,000 people-switched their winter quarters to Fort  Simpson, on the coast just south of the Alasksa border.
  
  That greatly enhanced the status of one already high-ranking tribal leader, Chief Legaic. By family inheritance Legaic held the right to trade with the Gitksan of the upper Skeena River, one of the region's richest fur sources. In addition, he had the good luck to marry his daughter to Fort Simpson's chief trader. So secure was his position that when the company tried to deal directly with the Gitksan, it had to pay Legaic for the privilege.
  
  No other native leader at Fort Simpson could claim this kind of prominence-and therein lay a problem. While each noble family knew exactly where it stood within its own ancestral village, no mechanism in Tsimshian culture served to fix the status of families from different villages. So in order to establish their rank, newcomers to the fort resorted to a system of competitive potlatching. One after the other, Tsimshian leaders tried to outdo each other in the splendor of their entertainments, the number of guests, the quantity of food, and the extravagance of their gifts.
  
  Besides showing off how much they could give away, the leaders found other ingenious devices to flaunt their wealth-and humiliate their rivals.  One powerful chief, Tsibasa, installed a set of trick stairs in his reception hall designed to unbalance an unsuspecting climber. Tsibasa's main target was his arch competitor-none other than Chief Legaic.  Like an European monarch, Legaic typically arrived last in order to make a grand entrance. When he came late to a feast at Tsibasa's house, the steps "revolved" and threw him unceremoniously into the room, in full view of the delighted guests.
  
  Legaic himself was not above using a bit of theater, and to demonstrate his power he once staged an impressive show of reincarnaton. First he located a slave who closely resembled him. Dressing the slave in his own chiefly regalia, he went into hiding, thereby allowing the villagers to think the slave was Legaic. The slave was then killed and cremated.  In a sensational performance that awed everyone who saw it or heard about it, Legaic arose from the box containing the slave's ashes, restored majestically to life.
  
  While the land-based fur trade opened new opportunities for those who lived close to the inland forsts-the Tsimshian and Kwakiutl most dramatically-it spelled disaster for some others. As sea captains stopped calling on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the Nuu-chal-nuth quietly declined.
  
• After the gold rush decimated many of the tribes and villages (estimated 20,000 native people died), Protestant missionaries arrived on the heels of the Hudson's Bay Company to convert the local population.  None cut a wider swath than William Duncan, an Anglican lay preacher who came to Fort Simpson in 1857 to preach to the Tsimshian. Though impressed by the natives' intelligence and artistic skill, Duncan was appalled by just about everything else-the rites of the shamans, the extravagance of the potlatches, the cannibalistic dances at the Winter Festival, and the rising levels of drunkenness and prostitution. To save the Tsimshian from the dual temptations of "pagan" traditions and modern vice, Duncan saw only one remedy.  He would isolate his congregation in a separate community built on principles of strict Christian virtue.
  
  He picked Metlakatla, site of the abandoned Tsimshian winter camp. In May 1862 he moved in with just 58 converts; two days later the smallpox epidemic reached Fort Simpson, and hundreds more were suddenly inspired to join him. Hetlakatla soon developed into a thriving Victorian town of more than 1,000 souls living in tidy rows of two-family frame houses. Self-contained and self-sufficient, Metlakatla had its own sawmill and blacksmith shop, plus a salmon cannery to provide employment. There was a town hall, a firehouse, a police force, and a large wooden church with gables, buttresses, and bell tower. No one drank and no one danced-though the town's brass band held frequent parades. Shamans and potlatches were banned.
  
  So successful was Metlakatla that it became a model for other missionary endeavors. The community continued to flourish until 1887, when Duncan, following a dispute with the Anglican bishop, left town and moved across the border to Alaska with 823 followers. Obtaining a land grant from the US government, he promptly founded New Metlakatla, a close replica of the old, and propelled it to similar heights of virtue and prosperity.
  
  Some people resisted the invasion of the missionaries, to be sure, and clung fast to their own traditions. Potlatches among the tribes of British Columbia became so lavish and wasteful-in the eyes of white authorities-that in 1885 the Canadian government outlawed the practice entirely. It continued in secret until the ban was finally lifted in 1951.
  
  
  
  

Tuscarora

• The Tuscarora, Iroquoian speakers, inhabited the Carolina coastal plains. They were northeast of the Catawba and east of the Secotan, each part of the Southeastern tribes.
  
  
• Victory over the Powhatan's in the late 1500's made the Europeans bold. English explorers and traders began pushing in land to the lands of theTuscarora,Catawba, and Cherokee. In 1670 another group of English colonists founded Charles Town (later Charleston) on the Carolina coast. Charleston was to become the hub of trade between whites and Indians throughout the Southeast; within a few decades its wharves were lined with ships that brought in manufactured goods from Europe and took back to London's merchants the wealth of American's natural bounty.
  
  For the most part, however, commerce worked to the short-term advantage of both Indians and whites.  It was what came next that did the real damage. By the early 1700's the peoples of the deep Southeast discovered what the Powhatan had learned nearly a century earlier: prolonged contact with whites eventually brought terrible disruption.
  
  Among the first to suffer were the Tuscarora, an Iroquoin tribe living in the piedmont region of what is now North Carolina. For years they had bartered deerskins for hatchets, cloth, and other goods. But not all traders dealt honestly, and time after time the Tuscarora found themselves defrauded. Raids by hostile Indian neighbors-encouraged by Charleston slave traders who dealt in Indian captives-were depleting their numbers. Then, during the first decade of the 18th century, the Tuscarora watched with mounting apprehension as white settlers from Charleston and elsewhere began pouring into their traditional hunting territory. Reluctant at first to fight, they turned for help to the Quaker government of Pennsylvania, which had a reputation for fair dealing. The Tuscarora leaders presented eight separate petitions, each accompanied by a wampum belt, ranging from a request for hunting rights to a plea for asylum. But the Quakers, with problems of their own, turned them down one after another.
  
  Rebuffed by the whites, the Tuscarora took up arms. Aided by warriors from nearby tribes-Coree, Pamlico, and others-they attacked the Carolina settlements with devastating effect.  The Carolinians struck back even harder, marching into Tuscarora country in 1712 with a powerful force of colonial militia and more than 1,000 Indian allies. Within a year the Tuscarora had been routed, and some 700 men, women, and children were captured and sold into slavery in Charleston. The tribe's survivors made their way north during the next decade to find refuge among their Iroquois kin, later winning formal adoption as the Sixth Nation of the Iroquois Confederacy.
  
  The experience of the Tuscarora was hardly unique, for the rise of the slave trade in the late 1600's had injected an explosively volatile fuel into the commerce between Indians and whites.
  
  
• During the American Revolution, the Tuscarora and Oneida generally supported the Americans. With the Mohawk, Cayuga, Onondaga, and Seneca siding with the English, the great Longhouse confederacy was truly ended. At Oriskany, brother fought against brother in bitter hand-to-hand conflict, leaving the ground heaped with bodies and tinting the streams red with blood, in an engagment long remembered with horror by those who survived it.
  
  In New England, unpaid Revolutionary War soldiers were given Indian lands instead of currency. The Revolution left the Iroquois Confederacy in ruins. The government of the Iroquois was now permanently divided between some in Canada and groups remaining in New York. To mark the split, tribal leaders physically cut the great founding wampum belt of the confederacy into two separate parts. The New York chiefs then began negotitating their own peace agreements with the Americans.
  
  They met at Fort Stanwix in 1784, and under the circumstances they probably did the best they could. The Americans, as victors, held most of the high cards. Maintaining that Washington's troops had "conquered" the Iroquois, the American treaty commissioners demanded huge land concessions as the price of peace. The terms were an exercise in humiliation. All Iroquois-held territory in Pennsylvania and Ohio and much of the western New York hearltand-the same areas that soldiers in the Sullivan expedition had praised for their rich, productive soil-had to be signed away. The domains of the Seneca, the Cayuga, and the Onondaga shrank to a tiny portion. Even the Oneida and Tuscarora, who as wartime allies had expected to remain whole, lost out.  
  
  Virtually all Northeastern Indians who opted to remain in the US found themselves living an increasingly marginal existence. With their homelands gone (twice now for the Tuscaroras) and the fur trade long since exhausted, many people took jobs as day laborers working for meager wages. Some coastal groups went to sea as sailors. Others eked out a living peddling baskets and other tribal handicrafts. Other Indians dwelt anonymously in the towns and cities of the new nation. Families broke up. Alcoholism increased dramatically.