Word: kwakiutls
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...Kwakiutl chief once explained. Warriors, squaws and children worked feverishly to amass a sufficiently impressive array of gifts to "put down" a competitor at the next potlatch. Materials were close at hand: spruce and cedar for the elaborate carved totems and 60-man canoes, horn for spoons and charms, root fibers for baskets, and mountain-goat wool for blankets. Today the brightly colored wood carvings still bear rough adze marks, but they rank high as primitive art, ranging in style from naturalism to symbolic abstraction (see Color Pages). As demonstrated in the permanent collection of Oregon's Portland...
...Benedict's Patterns of Culture: 1) the Pueblo Indians are peaceable and cooperative, with little violent emotion; 2) the Dobu Islanders in the Pacific are suspicious, jealous of women and property; they spend their lives trying to get something for nothing by magic, theft or fraud; 3) the Kwakiutl Indians of the Pacific Northwest are highly competitive, but their rivalry consists in conspicuous consumption: burning up their blankets and even their houses to show off. Riesman asks the class which type the U.S. most resembles. Some say the Dobuan and some the Kwakiutl; almost none say Pueblo-which Riesman...
...clarify and dramatize all this artistic tomahawkery, the exhibition's directors, René d'Harnoncourt, Frederic Douglas and Henry Klumb, had carpentered one of the trickiest jobs of installation in the museum's history. Towering South Alaskan Kwakiutl idols leered from dimly-lit corners; ceremonial masks hung like primitive waxworks in their showcases, their hollow eyes lit at shadowy angles by concealed spotlights...