Totems of the Haida
Western Arrival
Trade
Although there is evidence that Russians and Spanish traders and explorers arrived in the late 1600s, Western trade interests first arrived in Haida Gwaii in the mid/late 18th to early 19th century (Peabody 1982; Acheson 1995). Circumstantial evidence, like the arrival of iron tools from the west and others, suggests that the Haida would have been able to refine and improve their wood carving abilities, potentially increasing the level of intricacy and precision in their carvings (Peabody 1982). Though there is no definitive evidence to back this up, it seems probable.
What is known, is that some small Haida art was specifically designed for European consumption (Peabody 1982; St. George 2012). Carved from a locally sourced material called argillite, they were used to trade for non-essential goods and initially contained Haida totem motifs. This was the first example of the Haida altering their material folklore to satisfy an exogenous audience. It suggests the planting of seeds of Western cultural ideals that would lead the Haida to deterritorialize from their long held traditions - and lose their connection with traditional cultural norms (Gross 2008).
Though, they were never directly colonized, in time, their societal constructs would begin to fracture under an influx of wealth and cultural interference from the west. Later alterations to Haida carvings included pipes carved from argillite that included masted ships to appeal specifically to European audiences, but these tchotchkes were not meant for tribal members – they were a strictly exogenous affair meant to satiate Western appetites (Peabody 1982). Internally, Haida art remained mostly unchanged even as societal structures compressed and the arrival of imported disease like small pox and tuberculosis began to take their deadly toll.
The End of
the Totem Pole
Christian missionaries later brought with them the first major change to Haida culture by revising the practice of Totem air burials. In pre-contact Haida culture, it was common practice for high status/high wealth individuals of society that were recently deceased, to be placed in a compartment carved into the totems and raised high into the air, where they would remain until the tree could no longer stand and was allowed to collapse and eventually return back to the environment (Blackman 1973).
Early missionaries altered this mortuary practice at a time of particular societal weakness for the Haida people. Having already suffered from Western foreign-borne disease, and work conditions that contributed to an increased reliance on trade, among other social pressures, the Haida may have been particularly susceptible to the missionaries who arrived bearing modern medicines and technology (Blackman 1973; Peabody 1982).
As Christianity gained prominence with the Haida people, missionaries began to pressure them to inter their dead in the ground, marking their graves with headstones instead of totem poles (Blackman 1973). In fact, all of Haida's dead, for whom it was once customary to have been buried above ground, were now interred in that way. These changes suggest some of the first substantial de-territorializing of Haida culture by Western imperialist ideals (Gross 2008). The Haida remained on their home land, but significantly apart from their culture. Even so, all of the mortuary rituals that surrounded the totems were simply re-adapted to the headstones (Blackman 1973).
Because Totem burials were also demonstrations of wealth and prestige, the Haida simply shifted their attention towards the increased expense of the headstones (Blackman 1973). The fact that they, for a time, also required significant manpower to transport and set in place meant that much of the communal effort involved in erecting them could go unchanged as well. The cultural traditions that they attached to headstones meant that they could preserve much of their identity while acquiescing to Western pressures (Gross 2008).
In any case, what Bauman called an "intertextual gap" - the improvisational features built into folkloric practice - in this case a substantially "amplified" gap, permitted the Haida to freely improvise on the use of their totems and their surrounding traditions, and helped to make the transition easily (Bauman 2008). In that way, the movement away from Totem air burials was relatively seamless even as it continued a process of cultural decay. That decay was further sped along when the poles were ordered to be cut and burned from Old Masset by Christian missionaries (Auchter 2019).
By essentially banning the poles, the missionaries began a long period of Haida decline; a total decoupling from their most prominent traditional art form. And yet there was reason for hope. The practice of carving totem poles shifted dimensions, intertextually advancing away from the judgemental eyes of the missionaries, and secreted into the homes, bedrooms and workshops of Haida craftspeople where they could be carved into a new medium; argillite (Bauman 2008; Peabody1982). That simple shift would set the stage for their eventual return in the later half of the 20th century.
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Argillite Totem Pole by Robert Davidson
~7.5" tall