Along the Pacific coast between southern Alaska and British Columbia live peoples such as the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakwaka'wakw and Nuu-chah-nulth. Salmon fishers, great seafarers and carvers of red cedar, they developed one of the most complex ceremonial cultures on the continent. Two of their institutions have become famous worldwide, and often misunderstood: the potlatch and the totem pole.
What the potlatch is
The word potlatch comes from the coastal trade jargon, Chinook, and means roughly «to give». It refers to a great ceremony in which a family or chief invites other groups, hosts them, offers food, songs and dances and distributes gifts to the guests: blankets, carved objects, preserved food, worked copper.
The potlatch accompanies the decisive moments of social life:
- the transmission of an inherited name or title;
- mourning and the commemoration of a deceased chief;
- the raising of a pole or the building of a new house;
- marriages and changes of rank.
The guests are not mere spectators: they are witnesses. By accepting the gifts, they publicly acknowledge that the name, right or privilege has legitimately passed to the one who received it. In societies without writing, the potlatch worked as a living record of memory and law.
Gift, rank and wealth
European scholars were struck by the quantity of goods distributed and, in some cases, destroyed. The anthropologist Franz Boas described the Kwakwaka'wakw potlatch at length, and Marcel Mauss's work on the gift, from 1925, made it a classic example of the logic of ceremonial exchange.
The underlying idea is that prestige is measured not by what one accumulates, but by what one is able to give. Those who receive find themselves in a debt of honour and will in turn have to reciprocate. Wealth circulates, creates bonds and confirms social positions. Among the most precious goods were the large embossed copper plaques, each with a name and a history.
The ban and the confiscation
Canadian missionaries and officials saw the potlatch as waste and an obstacle to conversion and «assimilation». In 1884 an amendment to Canada's Indian Act made it illegal. The United States adopted similar repressive measures in Alaska.
The ban was enforced unevenly, but it had serious consequences. In 1921 a large Kwakwaka'wakw potlatch held at Village Island led to the arrest of dozens of people; to avoid prison, many had to surrender masks, coppers, rattles and other ceremonial objects, which ended up in museums and collections. The law against the potlatch was dropped in 1951. In the following decades communities obtained the return of part of those goods, now kept in cultural centres run by the peoples themselves.
Totem poles: not idols, but documents
Totem poles are great red cedar trunks carved with stacked figures: Raven, Eagle, Bear, Wolf, Killer Whale, Beaver, Frog, sea beings and characters from stories. The outside world has often taken them for idols to be worshipped. They are not.
The figures are above all crests: symbols of clans and families, asserting their origin and their rights. A pole may tell the story of an ancestor who met a supernatural being, remember a deceased chief, proclaim the identity of those living in a house or, in some cases, ridicule someone who had not paid a debt. There are several types:
- frontal poles, placed in front of the house, sometimes with an opening to enter through;
- memorial poles, raised in honour of someone who has died;
- mortuary poles, which once held the remains of high-ranking people;
- house posts, which supported the beams inside.
The raising of a pole is always accompanied by a potlatch: without guests to witness it, the pole would have no standing.
The cycle of the wood
Traditionally a pole is not restored indefinitely. Cedar exposed to coastal rain wears away and, after many decades, the pole falls and returns to the forest. Many communities consider this cycle natural and prefer to carve a new pole rather than artificially preserve the old one.
A common English phrase, «low man on the totem pole», suggests that the bottom figure is the least important. It is a cliché: often the lowest figure, the one seen up close, is entrusted to the most skilled carver and is anything but secondary.
In short
- The potlatch is a gift ceremony that makes names, titles and rights public before witnesses.
- Prestige is measured by what one gives, not by what one accumulates.
- Canada banned it in 1884 and lifted the ban in 1951; many confiscated objects have been returned.
- Totem poles depict family crests and histories, not deities to be worshipped.
- Every pole is born with a potlatch and, over time, returns to the forest.
