212 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 192 



or the stages of development of this art? For, despite the early- 

 development of stone and bone carving on the southern Northwest 

 Coast and whatever general stimulation or specific design elements 

 this may have imparted to the north, it seems impossible to derive in 

 toto the typical (northern) Northwest Coast art style, with its dis- 

 sected and reassembled totemic animal forms, from the ancient art of 

 southern British Columbia. 



It is obviously impossible with the data at hand to establish a 

 convincing hypothesis about the development of Northwest Coast 

 culture. Yet it is also clear that without this knowledge we cannot 

 imderstand Yakutat culture, especially in the periods represented by 

 the Old Town remains. This archeological material is not old enough 

 to give us a view into the remote past, nor is it rich enough to serve as 

 a complete inventory of material culture in late prehistoric and 

 protohistoric times, despite the happy circumstances that preserved 

 so many wooden objects through carbonization. 



One has the impression that a good deal of Northwest Coast culture 

 is of relatively recent growth and elaboration, and it is just those 

 aspects — the spectacular uses to which wood has been put, and the 

 rich social and ceremonial life — which are most characteristic or typ- 

 ical of the Northwest Coast, and which perhaps in their familiar forms 

 are the most recent. Strip away the wealth that makes possible the 

 validation of titles and ceremonial prerogatives, reduce the elaborate 

 lineage and sib crests to representations of guardian spirits, restrict 

 the products of woodworking to small single-pole gable houses and to 

 small dugouts — is this not what Northwest Coast culture may have 

 been before the development of its spectacular patterns? What 

 then is the basis of that culture? Might it not have been a style of 

 life to which the loosely organized village communities of the Coast 

 Salish or the simpler culture of the Eyak and of the older Yakutat 

 people would not have appeared marginal? 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Barbeau, C. M. 



1929. Totem poles of the Gitksan. Nat. Mus. Canada, Bull. 61. Ottawa. 

 Barnett, Homer G. 



1939. Culture element distributions; IX. Gulf of Georgia Salish. Uiiiv. 

 California Anthrop. Rec, vol. 1, No. 5, pp. 221-295. 

 Bbresford, William, see Dixon, Capt. George. 

 Birket-Smith, Kaj. 



1953. The Chugach Eskimo. Nationalmuseets Skifter, Etnografisk Raekke, 

 vol. 6. Copenhagen. 

 Birket-Smith, Kaj, and Laguna, Frederica db. 



1938. The Eyak Indians of the Copper River Delta, Alaska. Det. Kgl. 

 Danske Videnskabernes Selskab. Levin & Munksgaard, E. Munks- 

 gaard, Copenhagen. 



