Artifacts of the Northwest Coast Indians

Jenifer Lepiano was a writer and drama teacher in Toronto.

This is the bright paperback revision of a work originally published in 1973. The dedication “to the Indians of the Northwest Coast ... of the past ... present ... and future ...” remains, the first of many clues that Hilary Stewart intends her book to do more than acquaint the curious with the handiwork of a past civilization. It does this admirably, but she hopes that the reader, in appreciating the artifacts, “will also gain a deeper understanding and a greater respect for the coastal Indian of today, whose cultural heritage in this land goes back a great deal further than that of the white man.”

Stewart begins with a chapter called “The Dig,” a vivid presentation of the delicate procedures archeologists follow in order not only to retrieve artifacts but to record as well the minutiae of the site where an artifact is found. In Chapter Two, “The Incredible Coast,” she describes the environment of forests and waters abounding in wildlife that made the lifestyle of the coastal peoples possible. Each of the final chapters deals with a different material (stone, bone and antler, and shell) that the Indians used to fashion tools, household and sacred objects, and ornaments. The author’s illustrations of the artifacts are pleasant to look at as well as accurate; they’re organized into groups to show the relationship between form and function, and indexed for easy identification of both provenance and present location. There are also serviceable figure drawings that demonstrate the use of the objects, and a selection of photographs that bring the reader back to the more recent past and present.

This is the kind of book a teacher searches for to supplement classroom materials in the presentation of a unit on North American Indians. Stewart speaks for the artifacts and then urges the reader to let them speak for themselves:

So when you look at an artifact, created perhaps from the bone of an eagle, on the tip of a wapiti antler, look upon it and marvel. It is a legacy of the past that has chanced to survive, to span the gap of time. It reaches out from the one who made it to the one who now beholds it. It is like finger tips touching finger tips.

The question posed by the elipse following the dedication to the Indians of the future is, can these fragile linkings between two times, two civilizations, help build a more dignified future?