and “crests.” The last, largely zoomorphic symbols, comprised the subject matter of most Haida art. Carved and painted on totem poles, feast dishes, chief’s seats, frontlet headdresses, screens, housefronts, and canoe prows and paddles, among other items, crests symbolized the lineage affiliations of their owners.
The more than forty Haida lineages were grouped into two matrimoieties—Eagle and Raven—which, like the lineages, were exogamous, but unlike them, were not corporate. In addition to their marriage function, the moieties were ritually significant; one feasted and potlatched members of the opposite moiety and called upon them to perform mortuary functions. The larger significance of the Haida moiety division is exemplified in their classification of mythical beings and deities into this same dual schema.
Sources and Lacunae
There are several well-known ethnographic accounts of Haida culture, beginning with geologist George M. Dawson’s 1878 study appended to the report of his geological survey of the Queen Charlotte Islands (Dawson 1880). Some thirty years later, John R. Swanton, a member of the Jesup Expedition of the American Museum of Natural History, conducted what still stands as the most thorough investigation of traditional Haida culture. His extensive Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida (1909) was augmented a few years later by the ethnography that Edward S. Curtis prepared in 1916 as part of his twenty-volume study of North American Indians. Brief field research conducted in the summer of 1932 by G. P. Murdock resulted in important additions to our understanding of Haida social and ceremonial organization (Murdock 1934a, 1936). Additionally, Murdock provided a summary of Haida culture in Our Primitive Contemporaries (1934b). Ethnographic as well as ethnohistorical data on Haida culture are also found in the numerous accounts of eighteenth-century trading voyages to the Queen Charlotte Islands (e.g., Bartlett 1925; Dixon 1789; Ingraham 1971; Marchand 1801), in the published and unpublished writings of missionaries (e.g., Collison 1915; Harrison 1912–13; Harrison 1925), government agents (e.g., Deasy 1911–20), and museum collectors (e.g., Swan 1883).
Although the Haida have been well recorded in the ethnographic literature, there are certain lacunae in this material. Perhaps most importantly, ethnographic as well as historic sources on the Haida chronicle a male world seen through the eyes of male writers, a bias present in most earlier ethnographic literature from all areas of the world. The lives of women are described primarily as they impinge upon or complement the lives of men. Menstruation, pregnancy, and childbirth, for example, had wide ramifying effects upon the Haida community and consequently these aspects of the female life cycle have been of sufficient interest to be reported in some ethnographic detail. But what of girlhood, the learning of female roles, the availability of power and authority to Haida women, achievement in female terms; what of the experiences of aging, menopause, and widowhood? We know little or nothing of these cultural domains from the literature.
In short, the culture of Haida women has not been described. Yet, in order for a life-history narrative to have meaning, one must understand the traditions from which it derives. In this chapter I draw together scattered data from ethnographic and historic sources and from Florence Davidson’s remarks upon Haida women in “the olden days” to form a picture of the cultural position of traditional Haida women. In particular I have dwelt upon the life cycle, the division of labor, ceremonialism, and the value system. By the time Florence Davidson was born, the Haida had been exposed to Euro-American culture for over one hundred years and were considerably acculturated in many respects. More changes followed during the long years of Florence’s marriage. These changes are also briefly reviewed in this chapter, in terms of their effect upon the lives of Haida women.
THE LIFE CYCLE
Traditionally, the Haida preferred female to male children (Murdock 1934b: 248). Female children signified future expansion of the matrilineage, and their marriages brought males into the household to assist their fathers-in-law in “making canoes, fishing and hunting” (Harrison, November 25, 1912). On the other hand, it was important that a woman also have male children so that her brothers would have nephews to assist them and to succeed to their positions when they died.
Males and females were treated differently from the moment of birth. The umbilical cord of a baby girl was cut with a knife belonging to her mother; that of a boy was cut with the father’s knife (Murdock 1934b: 248–49). Personal names (as opposed to honorific names) were bestowed in infancy and were sex linked. According to Murdock (1934:249), the mother, after consultation with the child’s father and grandparents, named a male infant after his real or classificatory paternal grandfather, while a female was named after one of her “grandmothers,” a second-generation woman of the infant’s own or the father’s father’s lineage. Harrison (November 25, 1912) notes that a shaman was often called in to determine which matrilineal ancestor had been reincarnated in the newborn and to name the infant accordingly.
While still infants, both males and females had their ears pierced, and, if of high rank, children of both sexes were tattooed on the arms, hands, and legs, and occasionally on the chest and back. It was customary, Harrison reports (December 16, 1912), for the parents to give small potlatches when their child was named, when its nose and ears were pierced, and again when it was tattooed.
The item of adornment that marked the Haida female, the labret or lip plug, was acquired during girlhood. An early maritime explorer (La Pérouse 1798:165) remarks that all Haida women wore the labret, while most other ethnographers have claimed that the lip plug was a distinguishing mark of high-status women. Former missionary Charles Harrison described the procedure of insertion and the significance of the implement:
… a hole is cut through the lower lip and an ivory or bone plug is inserted until the wound had healed. After healing the hole is stretched from time to time until it reached about half an inch in diameter and about an inch in length…. These labrets are increased in size according to the rank of the person wearing them, and according to the number of children she had become the mother of. [Harrison, May 20, 1912]
A visible marker of both female status and high rank, the labret was evidently also symbolic of the emphasis the Haida placed upon female fecundity.
No formal restrictions seem to have been placed on the association of the sexes during childhood. Swanton (1909:60) mentions two games that were played together by boys and girls, but otherwise there are no ethnographic data on childhood play activities. Children’s activities seemed to be generally sex segregated by Florence’s time, as she noted that “boys played together and girls played together.” Work activities during childhood were definitely sex differentiated and became more marked when a boy at age ten or eleven left his mother’s household to reside with one of his mother’s brothers. Under the tutelage of his mother’s brother a boy received formal instruction in ceremonial roles and assisted his uncle in various economic activities. He was toughened by harsh discipline and rigorous physical activity.
Rigid and ritually maintained differences between the sexes began with a girl’s puberty ceremony. The təgwəná, or first menstruation seclusion, marked a very real change of life for a girl because, upon her emergence from this ritual seclusion, she was acknowledged to be a woman and was now marriageable. Charles Harrison described the ritual as follows:
In the olden days when a girl reached maturity she had to pay strict attention to the order of the medicine man and pass through certain trying ordeals and ceremonies. A small tent was generally erected for her accommodation at the back of her father’s house and in this tent she had to exist for fourteen days and sometimes longer.1 Her face was generally painted and she had very little food given her. Should she during this period be compelled to go outside of her tent and accidentally meet a man, her face had to immediately be covered with her blanket. During this trying time she also wore a peculiar cloak made out of the inner bark of a cedar tree which covered her head and reached down to her knees, leaving only a small aperture for her eyes so that she could see where she was going. This cloak was only worn on this peculiar occasion
