HOUSE FRONT PAINTINGS

References:

Plate 3, Figure 1. House Front — Eagle - Beaver

- Whales. Haida.
Plate 5, Figure 2. Detail of Eagle on Figure 1. Haida.
Plate 5, Figure 3. Black Bear Crest. Tsimsyan.
Plate 3, Figure 4. Killer Whale. Bella Coola.
Plate 3, Figure 5. The Moon. Bella Coola.
Plate 3, Figure 6. Thunderbird and Whale. Bella Coola.
Plate 3, Figure 7. Crest of Bella Coola Chief,

"The North Wind." Bella Coola.

The painting of House Fronts antedated the carving of totem
and other poles among the Northwest Coast tribes. These paint-
ings usually represented the crest of the owner of the house,
which might be highly conventional in form or on occasion realis-
tically natural. An illustration dated 1793 of Cheslakee!s vil-
lage situated at the mouth of the Nimpkish River shows the
majority of the houses thus decorated. The figures were outlined
in black; white, dull red and blue-green being used for the
decoration and delineation of faces, eyes, joints and other de-
tails. The dimensions of these paintings were very large, cover-
ing the whole front area of the community houses; often they
measured £0 feet by 30 feet. The same methods obtained in these
designs as in other forms of artistic decoration such as chests
or screens, symbolism playing its part. Thus a house belonging
to the Killer Whale people showed a front almost entirely covered
by the representation of a huge mouth, the fins being depicted
on each side of the entrance, while sea-lions appeared on each
of the huge cross beams as they were supposed to serve the Killer
Whale as dogs serve human beings. Such symbolism might also ex-
press itself in the colour selected by the artist; for example,
when a Tsimsyan house front showed the crest of the Raven people
it was painted entirely in black.

Plate 3, Figure 1 reproduces the model of the house of a
Haida Chief, such as was seen by the first white men to dis-
cover Vancouver Island and to visit those of the adjacent coast
in 1778 and following years.

This house belonged to the Beaver sub-clan of the Eagle
Phratry, the Beaver Crest being carved on the totem pole through
which access to the house was gained by a central opening. On
each side of this pole were painted the Eagle Crest of the clan
in characteristic profile form, and above on boards appear paint-
ings of Killer Whales. These are hard to explain, as the Eagles

2 §93—