Technology

Southeast Alaska’s temperate rainforest, with its massive spruce and cedar trees, was a plentiful source of high-quality wood.  Spruce and cedar wood is light, strong, and durable, making it the ideal material for many purposes and the primary manufacturing material for the Tlingit and Haida. Houses, totem poles, canoes, daily utensils, storage and cooking boxes, ceremonial objects, jewelry, and even clothes were all made from wood or wood products. The tools used to work the wood into usable items were adzes, mauls, wedges, and digging sticks. Wood was cut with chipped rocks, bones, beaver teeth, shells, and, after European contact, iron. 

Clothes were made from animal fur, mountain goat wool, tanned skins, and cedar bark. The inner cedar bark was pounded to make capes, skirts, shorts, and blankets (shawls). Hats made of spruce roots and cedar bark kept the frequent rain off their heads. 

Various means were used to harvest the seasonal salmon runs. Fish traps were the most common method of catching salmon. One variety was a wooden fence (fish weir) stretched across a stream or river, preferably at rapids. Salmon swimming upstream passed through the openings and into specially woven baskets placed there by the fishermen. Another trap consisted of rows of posts placed closely together across a stream. These posts hampered the salmon on their upstream journey and allowed fishermen to spear them from wooden platforms. Dip nets and hooks were also used to harvest salmon and other fish. A specialized hook, shaped in a ‘V’ or ‘U’ form, was used to catch specific-sized halibut.

Various baskets were used for cooking, storage, and holding clams, berries, seaweed, and water. The Tsimshian used baskets to make ooligan (smelt) oil. Basket weaving techniques were also used for mats, aprons, and hats. Mats woven of cedar bark were used as room dividers and floor mats, as well as to wrap the dead before burial or cremation. The Nass River Tsimshian are credited with originating the Chilkat weaving technique, which spread throughout the region.

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