THE TOTEM POLE — BARBEAU 497 



Masks are also commonly used in Asia. The Tlingit patterns on 

 Chilkat blankets, among other things, resemble those on the garments 

 of the Ainiis in northern Japan. The northwest coast people are not 

 the only ones at the edge of the Pacific to have erected tall carved 

 memorials or totems. These are also known under various forms in 

 Japan, Korea, and in the South Seas. Some of the New Zealand 

 carved poles so closely resemble the older poles on the Nass Eiver, in 

 British Columbia, that one might easily be mistaken for the other. 

 The technique of erecting them, besides, was identical. It is quite pos- 

 sible that the Hawaiians and Kanakas of the South Seas, brought over 

 to the coast of British Columbia and Alaska by the early circumnavi- 

 gators, may have had something to do with the development of this 

 local art in America, or vice versa. 



Indeed, the sea hunters and seamen on board the sailing ships 

 cruising the Pacific and following the schools of sea otters and hair 

 seals in their migrations around the Pacific — from the northwest 

 coast to South America and to the South Seas — consisted largely of 

 Haida, of Coast Tsimsyan, and of Hawaiians; and this for many 

 years. In the course of this prolonged intercourse, cultural ex- 

 changes must have taken place. Many Kanakas settled and inter- 

 married among the natives on the North Pacific coast. Indian 

 families at widely scattered points — on the Nass, on the lower Skeena, 

 among the Kwakiutl and on Burrard inlet near Vancouver — now 

 claim a Kanaka for an ancestor. For instance, Oyai, the best carver 

 of totem poles on the Nass, is said to have been partly of Kanaka 

 extraction; as was also the noted Kamano family of Alert Bay, 

 among the Kwakiutl. Charles Edenshaw, Massett, was fond of rep- 

 resenting his canoemen with curly hair (like the Kanaka's), in his 

 argillite carvings. The Kanakas, from the earliest days of circum- 

 navigation almost to the present time, were numerous on the North 

 Pacific coast. Not a few wood carvings found on the coast of British 

 Coliunbia and Alaska undoubtedly were from the hands of South 

 Sea islanders. And it is possible that South Sea carvings may be 

 from the hands of Haidas, as it is still remembered on the Queen 

 Charlotte Islands that at least a shipload of Haidas, once not so long 

 ago, started on a long hunting cruise across the Pacific and never 

 came back. The Haidas themselves picked up, in the tropical seas, 

 the abalone shells, which were extensively used in the decoration of 

 their wood carvings and ceremonial blankets; these shells were also 

 used in the same way by the South Sea Islanders. A further study 

 of exchanges between northwest coast Indians and the Polynesians, 

 from the end of the eighteenth to the end of the nineteenth centuries, 

 would disclose that obvious cultural resemblances among them are 

 recent and due to the stimulus of incessant contacts and mutual 

 inspiration. 



