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Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009) Photo Essay

The Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka’wakw) and

Nootka (Nuu-chah-nulth) of Vancouver
at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, 1904
Nancy J. Parezo

Native peoples have had their cultures displayed in world fairs for over
a hundred and fifty years. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, held in
St. Louis from May to December 1904 to celebrate the territorial expan-
sion of the United States, was no exception. Canada, unlike most other
countries, intentionally did not include displays of its Native peoples in
its pavilion, but instead emphasized natural resources awaiting exploita-
tion by a modern, capitalist society. Only two small Canadian exhibits
even mentioned that Native peoples existed. Both of these were historical,
confining First Nation peoples to the European exploratory period past.
The first, placed in the Education building, was a map of the Mississippi
River that showed the route followed by French explorer Father Jacque
Marquette and the territories of the peoples he met. The second was or-
ganized by St. Mary’s College of Montreal and documented missionary
activities in New France, principally the martyrdom of the first missionar-
ies sent into the upper Mississippi Valley. It focused on the Hurons and
primarily contained examples of Bibles translated into Huron, Seneca,
Onondaga, and Algonquian. This exhibit was shown in the history section
of the Anthropology building.
Living Native peoples from Canada, however, were featured in the
exhibit of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Corporation’s Department of
Anthropology, directed by William J. McGee, an evolutionary anthropolo-
gist and geologist who had recently worked at the Bureau of American
Ethnology in the Smithsonian Institution. McGee’s goal was to bring all
the races of the world to St. Louis and display them in an evolutionary
sequence, starting with the most “primitive”—Pygmies from central
Africa—and ending with the most advanced—civilized Indian tribes and
boarding school children who were being acculturated to “enlightened
American civilization.” McGee wanted to illustrate a matrilineal kinship
stage as an example of Lewis Henry Morgan’s evolutionary typology, as
well as display symbolic totem poles and heraldic art, which he knew visi-
tors would find fascinating. He felt that the most traditional contemporary
instances of this hypothetical developmental stage were on the Northwest


 Parezo, “The Kwakiutl and Nootka”

Coast. “The best surviving type is the Klackwaht clan-house, built of

heavy puncheons and squared logs and decorated with carved and painted
totemic devices” (McGee, 1905d, p. 107) [no 1905d in Refs]. McGee
hoped that a house decorated with elaborate totems would visualize how
social organization facilitated the maintenance of law when each person,
family, and clan had a fixed place within an ascribed social hierarchy.
In mid-March 1904, McGee asked Charles F. Newcombe of Vic-
toria, British Columbia to locate individuals willing to demonstrate
house building, carving, fishing, pottery making, singing, and ritual
performance. Newcombe turned to his collaborator and guide, Charles
Nowell ([?]), a member of a high-status family of the Kueha branch of the
Kwakwaka’wakw from Fort Rupert (New Vancouver), who was dedicated
to preserving traditional ways. Together, the two men convinced seven
individuals to undertake the long journey. They also located a clan house
(which McGee referred to as a “tribal temple”), house poles, canoes, and
other impressive artifacts. Nowell agreed to go to St. Louis if his friend,
religious specialist and clan brother Bob Harris (Xa’Niyus or Xexa’niyus)
from Denaktok in Knight Inlet, could accompany him. Newcombe agreed.
After a good deal of negotiation, they convinced two Nootka (Nuu-chah-
nulth) families from Clayoquot, Vancouver Island to come under the
direction of Dr. Atlieu, a noted healer. Atlieu did not undertake the trip
lightly. “I depend on you to have the same mind toward us as we have to
you,” he wrote Newcombe. “There are those of the tribe who think it is
too great an undertaking for me for they have never been far away from
home. But I have no fear. I also want to see the place where we are going
and meet the great chiefs who will be there” (Atlieu, 1904). His daughter,
Annie Atlieu Williams, and his half-brother, Jasper Turner, accompanied
him. The second family included Jack Curley (Salitzin), his mother Mrs.
Ellen Curley, and Mrs. Emma George, a noted basketmaker from Gold
River, Vancouver Island. The men agreed to build a clan house and perform
dances while the women agreed to demonstrate basketry techniques.
The group traveled first to Chicago, where they worked for a few
days with anthropology curator George A. Dorsey at the Field Columbian
Museum, identifying artifacts, posing for museum dioramas, and creating
replicas for display. They arrived in St. Louis on 22 May and decided to
stay only until the end of September. Their encampment was sited south
of the railway station, near the Rosebud Dakota Sioux compound and
next to the Cocopa. Unfortunately, the building and the Nootka’s arti-
facts, lost in transit, arrived very late [the building arrived late?]. On
 Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009) 

8 June, Newcombe told reporters that the lack of appropriate food was a
real problem. “The Clayoquots are accustomed to fine fish, salmon, etc,
taken fresh from the water. They were taken to the market in St. Louis a
few days ago June 5, and looked with scorn on the fish displayed. They
were astonished that the white people would eat it, and declined to accept
it as a gift” (“Exhibit news,” 1904). Meanwhile, the groups lived in tents
and tried to eat the food given to other Indian groups. It was not until
August that the First Nation participants could move into their clan house
and visitors admire the totem poles and Dr. Atlieu’s whaling canoe. Their
food, regalia, and basketry materials arrived in mid-June.
The men were extremely active in performance activities for which
each had hereditary rights and which were seasonally and culturally ap-
propriate. These included wearing their masks and ceremonial attire in
staged demonstrations, storytelling lectures, and pantomimes of impor-
tant legends. Unlike other performers, the Northwest Coast contingent
charged people to see performances and in return received a small wage.
Nowell and Harris could tell stories to visitors and explain the iconog-
raphy and symbolism of their ceremonial attire as soon as they arrived
because, fortunately, they brought the necessary materials with them.
Nowell demonstrated a skin-piercing ritual that was part of a Kwakiutl
war dance. This was a highly theatrical production in which blood flowed
from a kelp tube concealed in the hemlock headdress. He and Harris also
brought Hamatsa raven masks with twisted cedar bark hair. These masks,
a favorite with visitors, opened and closed with a loud clap. Harris, as
was his right, wore a cedar bark, killer whale tunic. The Nootka men
performed part of a winter ceremony in which the participants wore a
magnificent eagle-and-wolf ceremonial cape and wolf headdress once
their regalia arrived. Jack Curley, whose name supposedly meant “The
Heir of a Chief,” brought his thunderbird headdress. All the men brought
enough regalia so that their performances would be appropriate to the
season. The most spectacular ceremony at the Exposition, according to
dozens of newspaper accounts, was the “cannibal dance performed repeat-
edly by the Kwakiutl priests with the help of their Klaokwaht neighbors”
(McGee, 1905, p. 108).
At the beginning of October, Nowell, Atlieu, Jasper, and Harris
went to Chicago to work again at the Field Museum. Here they posed
for Charles Carpenter, whose photographs of them in ritual attire were
used later as the basis for exhibit dioramas, including one on the Hamatsa
installed at the end of the year (Grumet & Weber, 1982, p. 68). Atlieu
 Parezo, “The Kwakiutl and Nootka”

and Jasper worked on the museum’s mask collection while Harris made
drawings of elaborate ritual attire on cedar bark and paper and recorded
their explanations. Newcombe and Dorsey asked the men to make items
that could no longer be purchased, such as old style cradles, as well as
a number of models and miniatures. They also critiqued the permanent
ethnographic exhibits and assessed their accuracy, repositioned misplaced
masks, dressed mannequins appropriately, and painted the faces of singers.
Nowell and Harris recatalogued the entire Northwest Coast collections.
As Dorsey (1904) told McGee, “I was greatly pleased to find that the two
Kwakiutl, which we brought up, recognized at once the large majority
of the specimens as having come from their tribe. In fact, Bob himself
made many of the pieces. The gain, therefore, to the Museum … has been
very great.” The men were paid well for their services—Harris and Atlieu
received $50 per month while Nowell received $75 for interpreting. The
eloquent Nowell also stood inside an exhibit case, “a big glass room,”
and answered visitor questions. “Some of the people would come up and
shake hands with me, having money in their hands which they gave to
me, besides what I was paid which was $7.50 per day” (Ford, 1941, p.
191). These were quite good wages for this time period.
Returning from their excursion, the Northwest Coast participants de-
cided that it was time to return home, for life in St. Louis was not to their
liking. Luckily no one had become sick. However, following their return
to Vancouver, Atlieu had a severe attack of pneumonia but recovered.
The others fared well, and by mid-December they were requesting that
Newcombe and Dorsey send them their awards, certificates of merit, and
copies of photographs taken of them in St. Louis (Newcombe, 1904).

The Field Museum Photograph Collections

One of the main features of the anthropology department exhibit was
an anthropometry laboratory where racial differences were measured as
part of an evolutionary agenda. One test assessed body type and manual
dexterity documented in photographs. In some cases attire was also pho-
tographed to illustrate cultural variation, especially for ritual regalia, and
how it should be worn. Documentary headshots, from the front and side,
were also considered critical physical anthropological data that could tell
scholars much about races, but which today remind us more of the shots
taken of prisoners than the romanticized portraits of photographers like
Edward Curtis. During the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, Dorsey had
Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009)


the Field Museum’s photographer, Charles Carpenter, take over three

thousand ethnological photographs and portraits of American Indian
participants (including students at the Indian Service’s model Indian
school), people from the Philippines, and many from Asia and Africa.
He also took photographs of habitations, buildings, crowds, activities,
and people producing art.
In June, Carpenter photographed some, but not all, the Canadian Na-
tive participants in staged stances specified by Dorsey to provide him with
models to build mannequins for the permanent ethnographic exhibits. The
extant photographic collection at the Field Museum consists of a dozen
images that highlight ritual attire and paraphernalia, as well pottery mak-
ing and carving. All participants were posed and photographed in front
of a cloth screen in the Indian School, rather than a natural setting or on
stage, as can be seen from the photographs shown here. In September,
Dorsey sent Newcombe a copy of each photograph to be given to the
subject. In return, Newcombe was to obtain information on the name of
the tribe, blood mixture, and age. To Dorsey, this information was abso-
lutely essential for making the photographs scientifically useful. Dorsey
held Newcombe responsible for obtaining this information.

References
Atlieu, Dr. (1904). Letter to Charles Newcombe, 4 April. Anthropology
Department files, Field Museum.
Dorsey, G. A. (1904). Letter to William J. McGee, 5 October. McGee
Papers, Box 19, Library of Congress.
Exhibit news. (1904, 8 June). Indian School Journal, p. 1.
Ford, C. S. (1949) Smoke from their fires: The life of a Kwakiutl chief.
New Haven: Yale University Press.
Grumet, R. S., & Weber, R. L. (1982). Maritime peoples of the Arctic and
Northwest Coast at the Field Museum. American Indian Art Magazine,
8(1), 66–71.
McGee, W. J. (1905). Report of the Department of Anthropology to Fred-
erick J. V. Skiff, Director, Universal Exposition of 1904. Division of
Exhibits. 10 May. Louisiana Purchase Exposition files, File Series III,
Subseries XI. Missouri Historical Society.
Newcombe, C. (1904b). Letter to George Dorsey, 10 December. Depart-
ment of Anthropology files, Field Museum.
 Parezo, “The Kwakiutl and Nootka”

Figure 1. Chief Atlieu, whose name is generally translated as

“canoe-maker,” holds a yew-wood war spear with a snake at
the end, which he brought from his home village along with
a 38-foot whaling canoe and harpoons to demonstrate fishing
techniques at the Exposition. Atlieu wears traditional attire,
a basket hat, and a copper nose ring. A renowned carver, he
received several medals from the Canadian government, one
of which he wears in this photograph, taken 1 June 1904 in the
Indian School hallway. The Field Museum, CSA 13568.
Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009)


Figure 2. Jasper Turner models Eagle ceremonial outfit of head-

dress (no. 85845) and robe (no. 85897) at the Indian School. He
stands beside a carved and painted miniature house pole that
was produced on commission for the Field Museum. Nootka
men produced and sold miniature totem poles, model houses,
war weapon reproductions, masks, and “emblems.” The totem
poles ranged in size from one foot to three feet in height and
were painted with appropriate totemic designs. The Nootka
men also brought miniature replicas (three to four feet high)
of totem posts from this home, which they set out in front of
their lodge. The Field Museum, CSA13585.
 Parezo, “The Kwakiutl and Nootka”

Figure 3. Bob Harris (Xa’Niyus), who told people his name

was Klakoglas (translated as “Man-who-has-copper”), sits on
a mat and demonstrates wood working techniques by carving
a bentwood box front. The box was commissioned by the Field
Museum along with thirty-six items—masks, ceremonial para-
phernalia, and utilitarian objects—that Nowell and Harris pro-
duced during the Exposition. The Field Museum, CSA13572.
Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009)


Figure 4. Annie Atlieu Williams weaves baskets in the In-

dian School front hall. Raw materials and finished baskets
are placed around her to illustrate all steps of the process. All
the women made mats and small, lidded baskets of red cedar
bark and grasses that were sold to tourists. The Field Museum,
CSA13533.
10 Parezo, “The Kwakiutl and Nootka”

Figure 5. Mrs. Emma George, a noted basketmaker, and Annie

Atlieu Williams weave the foundations of baskets in the Indian
School front hall. Note how the materials from the earlier pho-
tograph are used as props in this photograph. Souvenir items,
such as a basket cup and saucer and a small-shaped basket, are
more prominently displayed. The women sit on a handmade
mat, whose construction the men demonstrated in St. Louis.
The Field Museum, negative no. 12545.
Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009)
11

Figure 6. Bob Harris (l) and Charles Nowell (r) pose for a
museum diorama at the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago
in September 1904. Both wear items from the museum collec-
tion, which they identified, including a beaded hat (no. 19454),
headdress (no. 79548), and Chilkat blankets (nos. 19570 and
19585). They pose over an echo mask (no. 85815) and pretend
to smooth it with a copper [a copper what?] and unidentified
tool. The Field Museum, CSA13591.
12 Parezo, “The Kwakiutl and Nootka”

Figure 7. Bob Harris in Hamatsa dress that depicts the killer

whale crest and pendant skills of wood and cedar bark on the
tunic and Ganatsa attire with mythological animal figures. Har-
ris had hereditary rights to use these materials and gave several
noteworthy Hamatsa performances while in St. Louis. The Field
Museum, CSA13583.
Native Studies Review 18, no 2 (2009)
13

Figure 8. Charles Nowell, who told people that his name was
Klalish (translated as “Whale-on-the-beach”), models Hamatsa
attire, a cedar bark tunic (no. 85799) with emblems of thunder-
bird and sisuitl designs representing the Cannibal Society, in the
Indian School hallway. He had a hereditary right to discuss and
use these materials. The Field Museum, CSA13581.
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