Indians of the Northwest Coast

by Philip Drucker

Written by an outstanding authority and profusely illustrated, this is a comprehensive study of the Indians that lived from Yakutat Bay in Alaska to the northern coast of Callifornia.

Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

Reviews

[Aartjan ter Haar · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting 1963 anthropological overview of the indigenous people of the Northwestern United States is given in this book. But after sixty years, the book is definitely out of date. Terms like "native Americans," "aboriginal," and "primitive cultures" indicate more than just this. It is essentially the author's choice of scientific methodology. Not individuals, but items are described and related to in the book. I like reading "Indians of the Northwest Coast," but I don't like how dehumanising it is.

[Charlotte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for ANTH 135

[J.D. Steens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Drucker describes the Indian cultures from southern Alaska to northern California. Initially, these were tied to the Eskimos (“all the light of modern evidence fits the hypothesis that the source of the Northwest Coast civilization, as we know it from modern ethnography, was a derivation of that of the ancient Eskimo.”) before their dispersal along the coast. At the broad scale, there are kindred connections in language and culture and Drucker believes he can identify four distinctive “provinces” (northern, central Canada; Washington and Columbia River; southern Oregon and northern California), with the latter three also having “relationships…with non-coastal cultures of adjacent regions.” In spite of these groupings, Drucker also sees considerable autonomy and diversity among the various groups. There's no sense of a single, geographic nation, though he does identify two “basic principles” common throughout the region where lineage (“a formalized, named group of relatives who trace descent to a common ancestor exclusively through one line”) and social status (“involving the so-called system of rank, derived neither from heredity alone, nor from wealth, but from a combination of the two”) prevail.

Today "only fragments” of this “aboriginal” civilization remain and, Drucker notes in his introduction, “Northwest coast culture must be regarded as having disappeared, engulfed by that of the modern United States and Canada.” The Indians now “are more at home with gasoline and Diesel engines than with the canoes of their forefathers. Membership in one or another Christian church is universal….Men no longer have time to carve and paint when they have to make a living in the competitive modern society.”