The Shoalwater Bay Indigenous Exhibit
A meticulously assembled collection of maritime technology and daily life from the Shoalwater Bay tribes prepares for the World's Fair.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The collection of Indian curiosities which has been made under the direction of Mr. Franz Boas, first assistant to F. W. Putnam, chief of the ethnological department at the World's Fair, has been completed and will be shipped at once. It is an interesting collection, illustrating the life of Coast Indians before white settlement. It includes four different styles of canoes: the Humptulips, Cowlitz, Cathlamet, Shoalwater Bay, and Chinook—all hollowed-out logs. The Cowlitz canoe is the most artistic, while the Chinook is the largest, commonly used on Willapa Harbor. Another curiosity is a spearhead of iron and bone, demonstrating that the Indians used iron from shipwrecked schooners long before modern trade. The collection includes sail matting, yew wood needles, and the full court costume of a 'tyee' Indian woman. The most notable object is an Indian cradle, with bedding and head-flattening apparatus. The collection was curated with the aid of Caltee, an elder of Bay Center and one of the few survivors of the original Shoalwater Bay tribe.
“The Cowlitz is the only one which has a figurehead, which is fearfully and wonderfully carved, representing as it does an animal which was principally mouth.”
This article highlights Franz Boas's early ethnological work in the Pacific Northwest. Today, the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe remains a sovereign nation, and the preservation of these traditional technologies remains a vital part of tribal cultural sovereignty and education.
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