Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the evidence for human trophy taking on the Northwest Coast from archaeological, historical, and ethnographic records. Although trophy taking has been commonly associated with raiding and warfare, whether this was the cause or the result of these practices will be examined from an ethnohistorical perspective. The chapter examines the purposes and functions of Northwest Coast trophy taking and display, with particular regard to its relationship to warfare, slave taking, ritual, ideology and the appropriation of prestige prerogatives associated with status.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Ames, Kenneth M., and Herbert D.G. Maschner (1999). Peoples of the Northwest Coast: Their Archaeology and Prehistory, London: Thames and Hudson.
Archer, Christon I. (1980). Cannibalism in the Early History of the Northwest Coast: Enduring Myths and Neglected Realities. Canadian Historical Review LXI 4:453–479.
Archer, Christon I. (1993). Seduction Before Sovereignty: Spanish Efforts to Manipulate the Natives in Their Claims to the Northwest Coast. In Robin Fisher and Johnston, Hugh (eds.), From Maps to Metaphors: The Pacific World of George Vancouver. pp. 177–159. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Ayyar, A.V. Venkatarama, John Hosie, and F.W. Howay (1982). James Strange's Journal and Narrative of the Commercial Expedition from Bombay to the Northwest Coast of America. Fairfield, WA: Ye Galleon Press.
Beresford, William, and George Dixon. (1968). A Voyage Round the World: But More Particularly to The North-West Coast of America, North Israel, Amsterdam.
Berman, Judith. (2000). Red Salmon and Red Cedar Bark: Another Look at the Nineteenth-Century Kwakwaka'wakw Winter Ceremonial, BC Studies 125/126:53–98.
Bishop, Charles, and Michael Roe. (1967). The Journal and Letters of Captain Charles Bishop on the North-West Coast of America, in the Pacific, and in New South Wales, 1794–1799. Roe, Michael, ed. Cambridge, MA: Hakluyt Society at the University Press.
Black, Martha. (1989). Looking for Bella Bella: The R.W. Large Collection and Heiltsuk Art History, The Canadian Journal of Native Studies IX 2: 273–291.
Boas, Franz (and Hunt George). (1897). The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians. Annual Report of the National Museum Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Boas, Franz. (1921). Ethnology of the Kwakiutl, Based on Data Collected by George Hunt. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Boas, Franz. (1943). Kwakiutl Tales. New York: Columbia University Press.
Boas, Franz. (1966). Kwakiutl Ethnography, Codere H. (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Boyd, Robert T. (1990). Demographic History, 1774–1874. In Suttles, W. (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, pp. 135–148.
Bracken, Christopher. (1997). The Potlatch Papers: A Colonial Case History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Codere, Helen. (1950). Fighting with Property, Glûckstadt, Germany: J. J. Agstin.
Cole, Douglas. (1985). Captured Heritage: The Scramble for Northwest Coast Artifacts. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Cole, Douglas. (1999). Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858–1906, Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.
Collison, William Henry. (1915). In the Wake of the War Canoe: A Stirring Record of Forty Years' Successful Labour, Peril, & Adventure Amongst the Savage Indian Tribes of the Pacific Coast, and the Piratical Head-Hunting Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands. London, BC: Seeley, Service & Co.
Cook, James. (1784). A voyage to the Pacific Ocean undertaken by command of His Majesty for making discoveries in the Northern Hemisphere: performed under the direction of Captains Cook, Clerke, and Gore, in the years 1776, 1777, 1778, 1779 and 1780, being a copious, comprehensive and satisfactory abridgement of the voyage. London: Printed for John Stockdale, Scatcherd and Whitaker, John Fielding, and John Hardy.
Coupland, Gary. (1989). Warfare and Social Complexity on the Northwest Coast. In Tkaczuk, Diana Claire, and Vivan, Brian C. (eds.), Cultures in Conflict: Current Archaeological Perspectives. Proceedings of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Archaeological Association of the University of Calgary. Calgary: University of Calgary Archaeological Association. pp. 205–214.
Curtis, Edward S. (1914). In the Land of the War Canoes (In the Land of the Head Hunters), Milestone Film Release (rereleased 1972).
Curtis, Edward S. (1915) [1978]. The North American Indian, The Indians of the United States, The Dominion of Canada and Alaska. New York: Johnson Reprint.
Cybulski, Jerome S. (1978). Modified Human Bones and Skulls from Prince Rupert Harbour, British Columbia, Canadian Journal of Archaeology 2:15–31.
Cybulski, Jerome S. (1994). Culture Change, Demographic History, and Health and Disease on the Northwest Coast. In Larsen, Clark Spencer, and Milner, George R. (eds.), In the Wake of Contact: Biological Responses to Conquest. pp. 75–85. New York: Wiley-Liss.
De Laguna, Frederica. (1960). The Story of a Tlingit Community: A Problem in the Relationship Between Archaeological, Ethnological, and Historical Methods. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
De Laguna, Frederica. (1990). Tlingit. In Suttles, Wayne (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast. pp. 203–228. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Donald, Leland. (1997). Aboriginal Slavery on the Northwest Coast of North America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Drucker, Philip, and Heizer, Robert. (1967). To Make My Name Good; A Reexamination of the Southern Kwakiutl Potlatch. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Drucker, Philip. (1951). The Northern and Central Nootkan Tribes, Bulletin Smithsonian Institution. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Drucker, Philip. (1965). Cultures of the North Pacific Coast. Harper & Row, New York.
Fee, Margery. (1999). Review of Hamatsa: The enigma of Cannibalism on the Pacific Northwest Coast. B.C. Studies 123: 87–91.
Ferguson, Brian R. (1984). A Reexamination of the Causes of Northwest Coast Warfare. In Ferguson, Brian R. (ed.), Warfare, Culture and Environment. pp. 267–328. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Fisher, Robin, and Hugh Johnston (eds). (1993). From Maps to Metaphors: The Pacific World of George Vancouver. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Galois, Robert. (1994). Kwakwaka'wakw Settlements 1775–1920: A Geographical Analysis and Gazetteer. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
Gibson, James R. (1992). Otter Skins, Boston Ships, and China Goods: The Maritime Fur Trade of the Northwest Coast, 1785–1841. Montréal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Goldman, Irving. (1981). The Mouth of Heaven: An Introduction to Kwakiutl Religious Thought. Huntington, NY: Robert E. Krieger.
Gunther, Erna. (1972). Indian Life on the Northwest Coast of North America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Halpin, Marjorie M. and Margaret Seguin. (1990). Tsimshian Peoples: Southern Tsimshian, Coast Tsimshian, Nishga and Gitksan. In Suttles, W. (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast. pp. 267–284. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Hawthorn, Audrey. (1994). Kwakiutl Art. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Holm, Bill, and George Irving Quimby. (1980). Edward S. Curtis in the Land of the War Canoes: A Pioneer Cinematographer in the Pacific Northwest. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.
Hoskins, Janet. (1996). Introduction: Headhunting as Practice and as Trope. In de Raedt, Jules, and Hoskins, Janet (eds.), Headhunting and the Social imagination in Southeast Asia. pp. 1–43. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Howay, Frederic William, (ed). (1969). Voyages of the Columbia to the Northwest Coast, 1787–1790 and 1790–1793. New York: Da Capo Press.
Hudson's Bay Company Archives. 1834. Report on Millbank Sound, March 15, 1834, by Alexander Caulfield Anderson, B.120/e/1.
Hudson's Bay Company Archives. 1850. Fort Rupert journal 1849–1850, April 13, 1850, B. 185/a/1.
Inglis, Richard, and James C. Haggarty. (2000). Cook to Jewitt: Three Decades of Change in Nootka Sound. In Hoover, Alan L. (ed.), Nuu-chah-nulth/Voices Histories, Objects & Journeys. pp. 92–106. Victoria, BC: Royal British Columbia Museum.
Jacknis, Ira. (1991). George Hunt: Collector of Indian Specimens. In Jonaitis, Aldona (ed.), Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch. Pp. 177–226. New York: American Museum of Natural History.
Jewitt, John R. (1807). A Journal Kept at Nootka Sound. Boston: Printed for the author.
Jewitt, John R. (1816). A narrative of the adventures and sufferings of John R. Jewitt: only survivor of the ship Boston during a captivity of nearly three years among the Indians of Nootka Sound: with an account of the manners, mode of living, and religious opinions of the natives. Middletown CT: Loomis and Richards.
Jonaitis, Aldona. (1999). The Yuquot Whalers' Shrine. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Jopling, Carol F. (1989). The Coppers of the Northwest Coast Indians: Their Origin, Development and Possible Antecedents. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society.
Krause, Aurel. (1956). The Tlingit Indians: Results of a Trip to the Northwest Coast of America and the Bering Straits, Translated by Erna Gunther. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Lovisek, Joan A. (2007). Aboriginal Warfare on the Northwest Coast: Did the Potlatch Replace Warfare? In Chacon, Richard, and Mendoza, Ruben (eds.), North American Indigenous Warfare and Ritual Violence, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Marsden, Susan. (2001). Defending the Mouth of the Skeena: Perspectives on Tsimshian Tlingit Relations. In Cybulski, Jerome S. (ed.), Perspectives on Northern Northwest Coast Prehistory. pp. 61–106. Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Maschner, Herbert D. G. (1997). The Evolution of Northwest Coast Warfare. In Martin, Debra L., and Frayer, David W. (eds.), Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past. pp. 267–302. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach.
Maud, Ralph. (1986). Did Franz Boas Witness an Act of Cannibalism? Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 22:45–48.
Mauss, Marcel. (1985) [1935]. A Category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; The Notion of Self. In M. Carrithers, M., Collins, S., and Lukes, S. (eds.), The Category of the Person. Pp. 1–15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mauzé, Marie. (1994). The Person, Reincarnation, the Kwakiutl. In Mills, Antonia and Slobodin, Richard (eds.), Amerindian Rebirth: Reincarnation Belief Among North American Indians and Inuit. Pp. 177–191. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
McDowell, Jim. (1997). Hamatsa: The Enigma of Cannibalism on the Pacific Northwest Coast. Vancouver: Ronsdale Press.
Newcombe, C.F. (ed). (1928). Menzies' Journal of Vancouver's Voyage April to October 1792. Victoria, BC: Archives of British Columbia, Legislative Assembly.
Niblack, Albert P. (1890). The Coast Indians of Southern Alaska and Northern British Columbia, Annual Report of the U.S. National Museum for 1888. Pp. 225–386. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Ousley, Stephen, and Richard Jantz. (2001). 500-Year-Old Questions, 100-Year-Old Data, Brand New Computers. In Krupnick, Igor, and Fitzhugh, William W. (eds.), Gateways: Exploring the Legacy of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, 1897–1902, Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of History. pp. 257–277. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Provincial Archives of British Columbia. (1857). Fort Rupert Letterbook MS A/B/20/R2A.
Provincial Archives of British Columbia. (1908). Mss 1077, v. 44, fo. 14, August 12, 1908, Newcombe Family Misc. Ethnological. Descriptions of “Slaughter Illahee” between Bella Indians and Owikeno Indians as told by Ned Wesley, 1908.
Ruby, Robert H., and John A. Brown. (1993). Indian Slavery in the Pacific Northwest, Spokane: Arthur H. Clark Co.
Sapir, Edward, and Swadesh, Morris. (1978). Native Accounts of Nootka Ethnography, New York: AMS Press.
Sapir, Edward. (1966). The Social Organization of the West Coast Tribes. In McFeat, Tom (ed.), Indians of the North Pacific Coast. pp. 28–48. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Smith, Maria Ostendorf. (1997). Oseteological Indications of Warfare in the Archaic Period of the Western Tennessee Valley. In Martin, Debra L., and Fayer, David W. (eds.), Troubled Times: Violence and Warfare in the Past. Pp. 241–266. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach.
Sproat, Gilbert Malcolm. (1868). Scenes and Studies of Savage Life. London: Smith, Elder.
Stocking, George, W. (1987). Victorian Anthropology. Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan.
Suttles, Wayne. (1990). Central Coast Salish. In Suttles, Wayne, (ed.), Handbook of North American Indians, Northwest Coast. pp. 453–475. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution.
Suttles, Wayne. (1991). Streams of Property, Armour of Wealth: The Traditional Kwakiutl Potlatch. In Jonaitis, Aldona (ed.), Chiefly Feasts: The Enduring Kwakiutl Potlatch. Pp. 71–134. Vancouve: Douglas and McIntyre.
Swadesh, Morris. (1948). Motivations in Nootka Warfare, Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 4:76–93.
Tolmie, William F. (1963). The Journals of William Fraser Tolmie: Physician and Fur Trader. Vancouver: Mitchell Press.
Vancouver, George. (1801). A voyage of discovery to the North Pacific Ocean, and round the world: in which the coast of north-west America has been carefully examined and accurately surveyed: undertaken by His Majesty's command, principally with a view to ascertain the existence of any navigable communication between the North Pacific and North Atlantic oceans; and performed in the years 1790, 1791, 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, in the Discovery sloop of war, and armed tender Chatham, under the command of Captain George Vancouver. London: John Stockdale.
Walens, Stanley. (1981). Feasting with Cannibals: An Essay on Kwakiutl Cosmology, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Walker, Alexander. (1982). An Account of a Voyage to the North West Coast of America in 1785 & 1786. Bumsted, J.M., and Fisher, R.A. (eds.). Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Wike, Joyce. (1952). The Role of the Dead in Northwest Coast Culture. In Tax, Sol (ed.), Indian Tribes of Aboriginal America: Selected Papers of the 29th International Congress of the Americanists. Pp. 97–103. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Wike, Joyce. (1984). A Reevaluation of Northwest Coast Cannibalism. In Miller, Jay, and Eastman, Carol, M. (eds.), The Tsimshian and Their Neighbors of the North Pacific Coast. pp. 239–254. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
LOVISEK, J.A. (2007). Human Trophy Taking on the Northwest Coast. In: CHACON, R.J., Dye, D.H. (eds) The Taking and Displaying of Human Body Parts as Trophies by Amerindians. INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTRIBUTIONS TO ARCHAEOLOGY. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-48303-0_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-48303-0_4
Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-48300-9
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-48303-0
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawSocial Sciences (R0)