A collection of five tales of the Northwest Coast Indians.

A collection of folktales from long ago about the Northwest Coast of North America and the Indians who lived there.

Don Smith, or Lelooska, (1933-1996) was well-known in Washington and Oregon as an artist and storyteller. Of “mixed-blood” Cherokee heritage, he was adopted as an adult by the prestigious Kwakiutl Sewid clan. Initially producing Indian curio items for sale to tourists, he emerged in the late 1950s as one of a handful of artists who proved critical in the renaissance of Northwest Coast Indian art.

Rosanne Parry, acclaimed author of A Wolf Called Wander and Heart of a Shepherd, shines a light on Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest in the 1920s, a time of critical cultural upheaval. Pearl has always dreamed of hunting whales, just like her father. Of taking to the sea in their eight-man canoe, standing at the prow with a harpoon, and waiting for a whale to lift its barnacle-speckled head as it offers its life for the life of the tribe. But now that can never be. Pearl's father was lost on the last hunt, and the whales hide from the great steam-powered ships carrying harpoon cannons, which harvest not one but dozens of whales from the ocean. With the whales gone, Pearl's people, the Makah, struggle to survive as Pearl searches for ways to preserve their stories and skills.

The button blanket is eye-catching, prestigious and treasured -- one of the most spectacular embellishments to the Indian culture of the Northwest Coast and a unique form of graphic and narrative art. The traditional crest-style robe is the sister of the totem pole and, like the pole, proclaims hereditary rights, obligations and powers. Unlike the pole, about which countless books and papers have been written, the button blanket has had no chroniclers. This is not only the first major publication to focus on button blankets but also the first oral history about them and their place in the culture of the Northwest Coast. Those interviewed include speakers from six of the seven major Northwest Coast Indian groups. Elders, designers, blanket makers, and historians, each has a voice, but all do not conform to any one theory about the ceremonial robe. Rather, the book is a search for the truth about the historical and contemporary role and traditions of the blanket, as those relate to the past and present Indian way of life on the Pacific Northwest Coast.

A rare look into the traditional ways of creating the beautiful masks that have brought such admiration to the Native American carvers of the Pacific Northwest. Each step to carving such a mask is illustrated and described in this book.