Potlatch coppers: wealth and power on the Northwest Coast
John Davy, Collaborative Doctoral Student, British Museum

Last year I began a Collaborative Doctoral Award at the British Museum and UCL studying NativeAmerican material culture, having worked for the Americas section of the Department of Africa,Oceania and the Americas at the Museum since 2008. In this post I want to introduce two newacquisitions that help the Museum illustrate the complex wealth-exchange systems of the NorthPacific coast of North America.

At times of celebration, the wealthiest and most powerful chieftains among the tribes of theNorthwest Coast would hold great ceremonial events, known as potlatches. These occasions could lastseveral days, featuring a series of expansive feasts accompanied by dancing, singing and thetelling of ancestral stories in the chieftain's plank-built longhouse. During the potlatch, opennegotiations over hunting territories and trading rights would be conducted, the host demonstratinghis power and wealth by ostentatious demonstrations of disregard for danger.

The anthropologist Franz Boas describes an event that took place among the Kawkwaka'wakw:

At the climax of the event the host would address his guests in a ceremony centred on thedistribution of lavish presents. Most significant of all gifts would be large sheets ofshield-shaped copper decorated in a variety of tribal crests. These objects are known by variousnames: tináa to the Tlingit, t'agu to the Haida and collectively in English as 'coppers'. Oftenindividually named with complex life-histories, coppers carried a nominal value measured inblankets or slaves, but their importance lay primarily in the obligation they placed on therecipients as part of a network of wealth and power distribution.

To the people of the Northwest Coast, copper was an exotic item, originally traded from thenorth and later with Europeans. It held supernatural properties, and to present a guest with acopper or a piece from a broken copper placed on them a powerful obligation. A host who hadreceived coppers from his guests at their potlatches was compelled to present them with a greatervalue of coppers than he had previously received and thus obliged his guests to present coppers ofeven greater value at their next potlatch. The wealthiest chieftains would even smash coppers orthrow them into the sea to demonstrate their superiority and strength. A leader who could notafford to make these presents or did not possess coppers could not hold a successful potlatch tocelebrate important events and would consequently be considered a man of little importance amonghis peers.

In the late 19th century, colonial authorities saw the potlatch as a dangerous, wasteful andsubversive event and sought to stamp it out. It was outlawed in Canada in 1884 and in 1921 DanCranmer's potlatch at 'Mimkwa_mlis (Village Island) was raided by the local police who seized andconfiscated hundreds of items of regalia. Potlatching did not cease, but it was forced underground,becoming invisible to the authorities as the regalia which supported it was gradually dispersed tomuseums and private collections around the world. Since the removal of the anti-potlatch laws in1951 however, potlatching has once again become a prominent part of life for the people of theNorth Pacific.

To read the complete article, see:
Potlatch coppers: wealth and power on the Northwest Coast(blog.britishmuseum.org/2014/10/01/potlatch-coppers-wealth-and-power-on-the-northwest-coast/)