POTLATCH GUESTS ARRIVING AT SITKA, WINTER 1805

12 x 21 Giclée print on archival inks on acid and lignin-free paper

Original painting in acrylic on canvas, 24” X 40”

Collection of the Alaska State Museum

This painting illustrated my article “The Head Canoe” for the Sheldon Jackson Museum’s centennial volume, Faces, Voices, and Dreams. I wanted to show three canoe styles, the head canoe, the early form of the classic Northern canoe that superseded the head canoe in the first decades of the nineteenth century, and the northern Tlingit “spruce”      canoe that was related in form to the head canoe and continued in use until the twentieth century.  Since the setting of the picture is the beach in front of the Sitka village, the time had to be before the Russian trader Alexander Baranov drove the Tlingits from this site in 1804.  When they returned to Sitka in 1821 the head canoe had gone out of use.  Since the early form of the Northern canoe was just being developed at the beginning of the century I chose 1803 as the date of the picture.  At that time the classic Chilkat blanket was just on the verge of appearing, so all the twined blankets in the picture are of the early geometric “Raven’s Tail” form or the transitional design.  The Tlingits had trade relations with Europeans for nearly a decade by that time, so trade blankets and European shirts would have been seen among them.

It is a clear winter morning, with the sun low in the south and Mount Edgecombe looming over Japonski Island to the west.  The host chief, in the shadow of the houses above the beach, greets his guests who are dancing and singing in their canoes clustered in the channel just offshore.