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When we compare his work at close range with that of Haesem-hliyawn, 
to whom he must have been indebted for his traditional art, perhaps his 
training, we cannot help concluding that the elder of the two was by far 
the greater artist. Haesem-hliyawn belonged to the generation (1840-1880) 
where the totem pole art was still in its period of growth and all at once 
at its apogee. The small human figures on Hsesem-hliyawn’s poles, with all 
their amusing contortions are one and all among the outstanding achieve- 
ments of North West Coast art at its best.^ Their facial expression is 
thoroughly characteristic of the race. Although their delineation pre- 
serves the traditional style and technique, it passes into a new and effective 
realism. The treatment of the birds and other monsters on these poles 
is not inferior to that of the human figures. The Mountain-eagle and the 
Woodpecker are about the best we know of these two mythic beings, which 
are a familiar theme elsewhere. The Gitwinlkul artist freely resorted, in 
the shorter of the two poles, to the device of supplementing the pole with 
external additions affixed with pegs, so as to enhance the features of his 
characters by means of high relief. 
To Haesem-hliyawn goes the credit of having emerged from mere 
traditional conventions and reached into the higher sphere of art, where a 
creator obeys his own instinct and freely expresses himself in terms that 
belong to humanity as a whole. 
The older pole (on the right), if it is not actually from the chisel of 
the same carver, is not a whit inferior to the other two in craftsmanship 
and genuine feeling for form and decoration. No one could ever hope to 
draw more out of a plain tree trunk than has the carver. His figures are 
among the finest and most perfect of their kind. And their resemblance 
to those of Hsesem-hliyawn leads us to believe that, if they actually are from 
a different maker, the two artists must belong to the same school or else 
must be still more intimately correlated. 
(37) Poles of Willits and Trawawq, at Gitwinlkul 
OWNERS 
The origin of Willits and Trawawq, of Gitwinlkul, is lost in obscurity. 
It is the same, according to various statements, as that of Weerh®, the 
head-chief of Gitwinlkul; personal names and myths being used in common 
among them. Hence they would belong to the oldest Wolf clan of the 
Tsimsyan, and their migration from the seacoast would have taken place 
fairly early. Yet, their traditional rights have several points in common 
with those of Malee, their other tribesman of the Wolf phratry, whose 
distinct origin is traced back to Larhwiyip, the Prairie clan of the northern 
plateaux. The analogies, particularly as to crests, may come merely 
from prolonged contacts and interchanges; the coast and interior clans 
gradually merging into each other in the course of time. The crest of 
Running-back wards (Wuden-bebah), for instance, is used elsewhere by 
iThey deserved a closer individual study than we could give them, in difficult circumstances. W© were not 
supposed to photograph or draw them; and our stay at Gitwinlkul was very short. 
84628-fl 
