International studio (32.1907)

Louis Potter

OUIS POTTER’S BRONZE GROUPS
OF ALASKAN INDIANS

In 1899 Mr. Louis Potter made a roving
expedition to Tunis in the north of Africa,
where the characteristics of the native life and char-
acter caught his eye with notable results. His in-
teresting series of Tunisian statuettes has now been
succeeded by a series of studies of the Alaskan In-
dian. These figures, several of which are here
reproduced, and which have been cast in bronze by
the Gorham Company, are not founded on a hasty
acquaintance, for the sculptor has lived with these
people, listened to their own story of their history
and traditions, and taken part in their daily occupa-
tions, joining the hunters in the chase and the fisher-
men in their rude canoes. Hardly less interesting
are the types of American prospector intruding his
enterprise into the older order.

It should be said that these Thlinket Indians,
comprising about a dozen tribes along the coast of
Southeastern Alaska, are in no way related to the
Esquimaux or the Aleuts. Physically they are
short in stature, sturdy and vigorous. Mentally
they show no little poetry of imagination in their
myths. Their religion seems originally to have
been a form of nature worship, in which the univer-
sal spirit took many forms, including such phe-

BASKET-WEAVERS

nomena as the wind, as well as birds and beasts and
reptiles.

In the Taku Wind, Mr. Potter has conveyed the
spirit of an odd legend, by which the natives explain
the presence of the glacier, which is known to us
as the Muir. Two young girls, according to the
legend, occupying a hut in the neighborhood, found
after washing their clothes that it was impossible to
dry them. They rashly invoked the spirit of the
North Wind, which impatiently overdid the thing
and froze the streams. The ice, so formed, was a
swiftly moving danger. It was reduced to its pres-
ent immobility, for the Indians believe that the gla-
cier now stands stock-still, by the sacrifice of the
foolish virgins, who were thrown into its then dan-
gerous path.

The Spirit oj the Night symbolizes the personifi-
cation of the long winter night, which plays an im-
portant part in the lives of Alaskans. Being quite
innocent of all controversy over nature stories, they
delight in attributing natural results to unverified
causes. Darkness, light, heat, cold, flood and
drought are the work of kindly or ill-disposed
spirits, the “ Yekh” of the air, of the land and of the
sea.

The conical hat worn by the old man in the group
of Clam Diggers is a characteristic detail, pointing
by its shape to the supposed ethnic relationship with
Mongolian peoples and
emphasizing the native
aptitude in this sort of
weaving, a department of
arts and crafts which is in
a flourishing state among
the Thlinket s. Their
baskets are said to be
hardly rivaled by any
others, unless those of the
Japanese, from whom the
handicraft may have de-
scended. The material
used is., either a coarse,
tough grass, or some form
of vegetable fiber, such as
the finer roots of the yel-
low cedar. Two meth-
ods of weaving are fol-
lowed: the “twining,” in
which the strands are
twined around one an-
other, and the “coiling,”
in which the fibers are
coiledaround a framework
by louis potter of stiff but fine rods.

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