The term has been used to represent any large feast at which food and belongings were given away by the hosts to the guests. There have been many descriptions and interpretations of potlatches, but they can probably be best understood in the context of relationships between clans.
A very general definition of Tlingit potlatch is as follows: it was a large-scale ceremonial party of several usually eight days' duration. It was given by the clan of a recently deceased individual, for the purpose of honoring that individual and announcing who was to take his place in clan social structure. The host clan invited clans who were of the opposite moiety from themselves: the guests of honor were members of the clan of the dead person's father.
Since members of the father's clan had performed the cremation and burial duties for the deceased, the potlatch was given to honor them and to repay them for their services. In actual practice, since potlatches were extremely costly to give, a single joint potlatch was often given for several recently:deceased members of the clan.
The potlatch was then sponsored, organized, and paid for in large part by the heir of the most important and wealthy of the recently deceased deLaguna A clan began planning for a memorial potlatch shortly after the body of its deceased member had been cremated. Ceremonial costumes were refurbished; songs were practiced; and members of the opposite moiety were hired to fix up the old house or build a new one, or to erect a grave marker for the deceased.
Guests were also notified a year in advance of the potlatch. This allowed them time to compose songs for the event, and to practice clan crest songs and dances. When preparations for the feast had been completed, messengers were sent to the households of those guests who lived in the village, and to appropriate households in other villages as well.
The guest list basically included the clan of the deceased's father, as well as all local clans who were of the moiety opposite that of the hosts. The clans most honored were those which stood in a relationship of having taken care of the dead of the host clan.
All guests were members of the moiety opposite that of the hosts, and there were at least two guest during the eight-day potlatch will illustrate this. The ceremonial honoring of the dead, with its formalized speeches, songs, and dancing, took up one whole day or evening.
But on the other evenings during the eight days guests entertained their hosts. They performed songs and dances illustrating a clan crest or story. The performances by guests evolved into contests between guest clans, to determine which clan could remember more clan songs and dances, which clan presented the most flawless group of dances, which clan danced most dramatically, and so forth. Another component of the potlatch was the feast.
Huge amounts of food were served by the host clan. Here, too, guests competed with each other in eating contests: who could drink a whole bowl of fish oil; who could eat a huge four-foot long serving dish full of food, and so forth. The rivalry between guest clans ranged in character from extremely tense contests which sometimes erupted into violence, to good natured contests with a lot of joking and laughing. After the eight days of ceremonies, eating, dancing, and generally having fun, the guests and hosts alike were exhausted from the activity, the mental strain which accompanied the competition, and lack of sleep.
Guests returned to their homes, and life settled down for a time to the slow-moving cycle of winter activities. During the winter, there were daily chores to be performed, and hunting and trapping for immediate consumption, but the major portion of the time was taken by up manufacturing activities: weaving baskets and blankets, carving tools and ceremonial items, making canoes and preparing boards for a new community house to be put up the following summer.
In addition, during mid-winter November to February , important sources of pleasure and excitement were games, stories, and potlatches Oberg Chapter IV. The beginning of spring meant to the Tlingits, as it does to all peoples, a renewed sense of vigor and enjoyment of life. Spring meant fresh fish again, fresh plant-foods, and a greater portion of the time spent outdoors.
Spring also meant easier and more comfortable traveling, and thus trading activities picked up, particularly after the first harvest of eulachon oil. The art of the Northwest Coast Indians, from the Nootka in the south to the Tlingit in the north, has long been recognized as a well developed and beautiful design tradition.
North Americans have appreciated and purchased the art work from this area of the continent since the late nineteenth century, and the current market value of Northwest Coast art in the New York and London auction houses is higher than it has ever been. There is, thus, no doubt that this particular style of art has great appeal to people brought up on European styles. What is less often recognized than the style is the fact that this art, unlike the post-Renaissance art of Europe, was not developed solely as art.
That is, although the decorative element was important to Northwest Coast Indians, this element never existed apart from other elements of life and culture. The relationship between art and life is one of the key concepts of this unit. Northwest Coast art is a double representation. First, the designs represent certain animals. Second, they represent single moments in the life and history of a particular clan. For instance, a frog design on a Tlingit button blanket or totem pole represents both the actual frog and the story about how the Kiksadi clan came to own the frog crest.
Crests are property, just as houses or boats are. In fact, no other clan in Sitka is allowed. Similarly, only the Kiksadi version of how the Kiksadis came to own that particular crest symbol is considered the correct one, for only a clan member has been educated in the folklore of the clan since birth.
Thus, there has traditionally been a copyright on designs and stories in Northwest Coast folklore and art. There are complexities in the rules of who is allowed to reproduce which design. First, several different clans may have the same crest animal, although the stories behind those designs and the experiences which led to the clan obtaining the crest symbol from the animal itself would be different.
Secondly, the carver or painter of a design was often not a member of the clan. Rather, he was hired by a member of the owner clan to carve the totem pole, bentwood box, or other artform.
The designs he used were the crests of the clan that was hiring him. A complex bond was established between clans that carved and painted designs for each other, tied in with marriage between the clans. In the days since tourists began to visit the coast of British Columbia and the Southeastern portion of Alaska, the relationship between crest and clan has become somewhat altered.
Never before the coming of tourists did a Northwest Coast artist carve an object unsolicited, then sell it to someone completely unknown. Before that time, everyone knew the rules governing the use of crests and stories; but with the influx of tourists, many people ignorant of the rules owned and used heretofore private property without obtaining permission. In those cases, the symbol was still considered the clan's exclusive property by the elders. In addition, with the entry of the Northwest Coast area into the Western economic system, the obvious way for a Native artist to support himself was by doing what he knew best: carving, painting, weaving.
If you like, you can give another bit of information to your class clans. Students know their main crest; you can now tell them which parts of Lingit Aanee their clans settled. Using the following list and map, locate each of the clans in their own parts of Southeastern Alaska. The division lines on the map show the locations of the Tlingit "kwans", which were geographical regions.
Each kwan had one or more villages in it, and was settled by more than one clan. Kwans were not political units with chiefs; those men who were leaders were leaders only of their own clan, not of a certain territory. You might make clan markers on the Language Map or Tonga. Tlingit Kwans in pdf Geographical Areas. Introduce the Tlingit Trade Game to students at this time and have them play it once. When thee students have mastered the rules, they can play it during indoor recess, when other work is completed, or at other times you may assign throughout the course of this unit.
The game itself at first seems harder than it really is, and the learning students gain from it is worth the time it takes to teach the rules. They will not learn unless they have a chance to play it a number of times, however. At this point in the unit, you are interested in the students attaining two objectives. A later, important objective, the trade system itself, will be discussed by you and the students later in the unit see pp. Explain the purpose of the game to students.
There are five game boards per set. Divide your class into five groups of five or six. It would be best not to use the clan groups as game groups. Instead, divide the clans up so that each clan member is playing with members of other clans. Each group should be given its own trade game and copy of the Tlingit Trade Game Rules card. Explain the components and rules of the game to students. Tell students that each player is the representative of his clan. Then provide time for them to play.
An alternative method of teaching the rules is to instruct five students at some point on a previous day. Each of the five then becomes the teacher for a group of students. Read aloud and discuss Chapter 2 in The Tlingit World which describes the various commodities which the students encountered in the Trade Game.
When the first Tlingits settled Southeastern Alaska, they chose their villages according to the resources they found there. One group, for instance, noticed that the Stikine River had a heady run of candlefish, or eulachon. The oil from this fish was nutritious and delicious, and was the necessary part of their diet.
This made the mouth of the Stikine a perfect choice for a village site. Each village had many resources near it. In fact, each village has more than enough of some resources, so it traded those for others which it lacked. The Tlingit villages could be divided into two groups. All of the villages, both mainland and island, were on the sea and so used these resources most of all.
And although villages depended on salmon as their main food. But the villages on the mainland had an added advantage: they were at the malice of rivers which had, not only a salmon run, but also a eulachon run. These people had a surplus of the very valuable eulachon oil to trade.
In the days before becoming of white men to Southeastern Alaska, the Tlingits were master traders. They traded with Haidas, Tsimshians, and other southern groups. They kept some of the things they got from them, and took other items farther north to trade to the Athabascans. They were middlemen, and the made a profit by it. Without the Tlingits, the northerners and southerners could not get goods from each other.
The Tlingits knew that being middlemen was profitable, so they made sure that they, and the alone, could fill this role. They controlled to trading routes to the Interior. They would not allow travel over the mountain passes without permission. In this way, they were able to charge both the southerners and northerners for transportation of goods.
Each Tlingit Trade Game should have the following numbers of commodity cards:. The cormiodities which are associated with those towns reflect their sea orientation as well as the slightly more moderate climate of the islands. Thus, the sea otter pelts, dried halibut, seal oil, and clams, mussels and sea urchins were eagerly sought by mainland Tlingit villagers and were readily available to the islanders. In addition to these maritime resources, the islands had an easily accessible source of greenstone used in fashioning tools , and the milder climate of the islands allowed for the growth of more and larger cedar and yew trees than in the mainland river valleys.
Dried deer meat was made available by virtue of the many Sitka black-tailed deer on the islands, which was one of the few land animals actively hunted by the island Tlingits. The importance of most of the above-mentioned commodities is apparent; however, some were considered especially valuable.
Seal oil, for instance, was in demand by mainland villagers, for it was a commonly used condiment eaten with most dried foods. Cedar bark and wood were also valuable for use in carving, weaving baskets and mats, and being entwined with goats' wool to make the beautiful ceremonial Chilkat blankets produced by mainlanders. Finally, yew wood was used in making bows, boxes, and dance batons. Most of them were located in the slightly colder micro-environments along river valleys.
Fur-bearing animals were thus more readily available to mainlanders, as were river products such as the highly prized eulachon oil. The land orientation of these villages is apparent in the spruce root baskets used for a large number of household tasks , cranberries in oil, sheep or goat horn spoons, rabbit or marmot skin blankets, moosehide, and ceremonial Chilkat blankets which were woven from mountain goat wool and cedar bark.
Of these commodities, three deserve additional mention: the eulachon oil, Chilkat blankets, and sheep or goat horn spoons. All were extremely valuable because of their rarity and importance in ceremonies potlatches.
Located along a major trade route the Copper River , and having access to twb very important commodities, the Copper River Athabascans Ahtnas and Eyaks were in a good position to trade with the Tlingits. Raw copper was traded for use as daggers, mask decorations, and the prestigious "coppers" or "tinnehs" which were the foremost symbol of wealth to a Tlingit clan.
Wolf moss actually a lichen was also valuable as the dyestuff used in producing yellows in Chilkat blankets. Like the mainland Tlingits, Southern tribes had access to the valuable eulachon oil rendered from river-run eulachon.
The Tsimshians, occupying the river valleys, were especially wealthy in their eulachon oil supplies. In addition, it was in the south that huge cedar trees grew, and the Haidas in particular traded trees large enough to make cedar canoes and totem poles to the Tlingits.
Dentalium shells were obtained from the west coast of Vancouver Island by the Nootka, and were traded far up the coast. They were important as decoration on the ceremonial garb of the Tlingits, and were perhaps even more important as symbols of wealth though not as actual currency among the Athabascans in the interior of Alaska.
Abalone shells were also used in decorating carvings and ceremonial garb. Finally, ironwas available from the southern tribes, and came originally from the European settlers far to the south. The Interior tribes, or Athabascans, desired many of the commodities available in the more temperate Tlingit environment, but they also had certain valuable commodities to trade. Both moosehide and caribou hides were welcomed by Tlingits: moosehide was used in making moccasins and was also thick enough to serve as a protective shirt in combat, while carjbou hides made the warmest garments and sleeping robes.
Wolf moss, as mentioned above, was used in making the yellow dye for Chilkat blankets. And two types of handiwork, decorated moccasins and birchwood bows, were highly prized by Tlingits for their workmanship and usefulness.
Students may notice that the towns in this game do not correspond exactly with the kwans they just learned. This is because the kwans sometimes contained more than one town. So, for instance, Chilkoot and Chilkat were both part of the Chilkat kwan. The object of the game is to trade with different groups so that you have, in the end,. Each player starts with 9 cards, which are either all Island Tlingit cards or Mainland Tlingit cards.
To determine which type of cards a player starts out with, divide the town cards into two groups, the.
Shuffle the two piles separately and place each pile face down on the table. Half the players draw one card each from the island town pile; the other half draw one card each from the mainland town pile. Woven Hats. The Tlingits were and still are! They wove everything from clothing to baskets, including hats woven from roots. As a fun craft, provide students with inexpensive straw hats, paintbrushes, and craft paint. Invite them to decorate their hats in the style of the Tlingit people - with animals and other symbols important to the tribe like the ones found here.
You may wish to consider templates or stencils for you preschoolers to follow. This game, played by the Tlingits with wooden sticks and wooden hooks, is similar to Pick-Up Sticks, providing your preschoolers with counting practice as well as a way to strengthen manual dexterity. While they'll most likely need supervision to play, your students will enjoy this taste of Tlingit culture! Played with a "chair" shaped die, this game could be adapted for the use of a regular die.
You'd need to change the scoring rules, etc.
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