Unidentified Kwakwaka’wakw Artist

In the middle 19th century, some First Nations artists in the central and northern Northwest coast of North America began carving diminutively sized model totem poles for sale and trade to North American and European visitors. The form of the model poles reflected monumental counterparts whose origins predated European contact, but may have also been informed by small scale precursors, such as speakers’ staffs.

Couched in the aesthetically complex and sophisticated visual languages of the Coast’s peoples, totem poles gave material form to their mythology, proclaimed the rights of their owners, memorialized them in death, and demarcated the territories in which they lived.

The present pole is an important, large, and detailed model of the Alert Bay house portal pole of Kwakwaka’wakw Chief Wakius, of Owikeno and Nimpkisk descent. Erected in 1899, the full scale Wakius pole was carved by the eminent artist Yuxwayu, about whom very little is known. One of the most sculpturally elaborate poles to come from the central coast region, the work drew the attention of painter Emily Carr during her 1912 visit to Alert Bay. Carr documented the portal pole in her painting Thunderbird of Wawkyas, Alert Bay, British Columbia Archives Coll. No. PDP02157.

Figures on the pole proclaim the hereditary rights of Chief Wakius referring to stories of human beings’ acquisition of the dances, songs and masks pertaining to the mythical ancestor of Wakius, Wise One, and his sons’ defeat of Cannibal-at-the-Noth-End-of-the-World [See the 35th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology (1913-14, Part 2, pp. 1222-1248) for Tlingit-Kwakwaka’wakw ethnologist George Hunt’s recounting of the lengthy legend.]

Figures represented on the Wakius pole include Thunderbird, Lord of the Upper World, then Fin Whale or Killer Whale, Lord of the Undersea World, then Wolf, then Wise One, a human figure, then the mythical Cannibal Bird, a consort of Cannibal-at-the-North-End-of-the-World, then Bear, and below, Raven.

While the masterful carver of the full scale Wakius pole is identified as Yuxwayu, the maker of the present exceptional model pole is not currently known. Notably the present model is closely related to a pole in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, Cat. No. 2011.154.40, formerly in the collection of Ralph T. Coe, which has been misattributed to the Heiltsuk.

Please see lot 86 of the current auction for another rare iteration of a model of the Wakius pole.

“Grand Hall Tour Central Coast House”, Canadian Museum of History, https://www.warmuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/grand/ghhe4eng.html
Marius Barbeau, Totem Poles, Vol. II (Ottawa: Dept. of Northern Affairs and National Resources, National Museum of Canada, 1964), 680-681.
“Totem Pole Model Heiltsuk ca. 1900”, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319080