The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

The Elizabeth Cole Butler Collection.

Gift of the Artist.

Gift of Gail Robertson Bergevin in memory of Margery Robertson.

Lillian Pitt is a local Native American artist whose work reflects her Wasco heritage. She did not become an artist until age 38 when she began working with clay. Now, Pitt works with a variety of materials and is a renowned sculptor, jeweler, and printmaker, as well as an advocate for Native American art. She is especially well known for her masks and other small clay figures that are inspired by the stories of her people that she was taught as a child. The petroglyphs along the Columbia River and other traditional Wasco images have also served as a major source of inspiration. In Wasco Totem, Pitt has created clay forms with traditional Wasco motifs that are similar to those found on baskets, beadwork, and stone carvings. These clay pieces are then assembled on a rough-hewn board and attached with brass nails and wire. The result serves as a monument to the Wasco people. The similarity of the image to a crucifixion also refers to the tremendous struggles that the Wasco and other Native Peoples have endured.

Gift of Joyce E. Osika.

Rasmussen Collection of Northwest Coast Indian Art; Gift of the Native American Art Council.

The huxwhukw, or mythical Raven, represents one of the supernatural associates of Baxwbakwalanuksiwe’, the cannibal spirit, which appears in the form of birdlike masks in the tseyka, or red cedar-bark ceremony. These masks are commissioned as part of the inherited privilege of being a hamat’sa society initiate. The masks and the dances in which they are worn pacify and tame the hamat’sa, who personifies the cannibal spirit and the insatiable nature of life, and who ultimately exhibits the honored behavior of a high-ranking person. The articulated beaks clap dramatically during a performance, accompanied by the dancers’ characteristic cries.

Worn during the winter ceremonial dances that accompany a potlatch feast, this mask represents the prestigious inherited privilege of a high-ranking individual. The layers of commercial paint reveal that this mask was repainted at a later date, perhaps to refurbish it when passed to a new owner, a hamat’sa society initiate dancer. Masks such as this one are still carved and worn in dances by Kwakwaka’wakw artists and inheritors of this privilege. Ironically, at the time of its creation, First Nations’ ceremonial practices, including the dancing and display of this headdress, were illegal under Canadian law. The artists working during those arduous years of forced assimilation and oppression are celebrated for carrying on traditions that continue in practice today.

The grizzly bear is one of the important crest animals of the Kwagiutl. Masks such as this one were worn in the Tlasula ceremony, which dramatizes the original acquisition of a crest animal by the ancestors of the Kwagiutl. This mask, with its rather blocky carving style, has been attributed to Charley George, Sr., a carver from the community of Blunden Harbor.