House 43 Digest Online

The Great Start

Having the assist,
in the first game, for the win,
splendid for the team.

The First and Only Loss

The difficult loss,
yesterday,
it was a strange finish,
a 3-2 loss.

Clothing of the Northwest

My topic is clothing of the northwest coast. I will cover why cedar trees are important for clothing, types of clothing, other types of clothing that are useful for the Native Americans. The northwest is the coast north of California and south of Alaska. The climate is very rainy, so the houses and the things they used had not to rot. That is why they used cedar that I will tell you more about later. This paper is about the Native Americans of the northwest coast is before the European contact. Some of the tribes that lived there are Salish, Hupia, Kalapua and Yakama.

Cedar trees are very important to the northwest coast Native Americans because of what I am about to tell you. In the northwest coast, it is very rainy so wood would rot. One of the things that cedar is used for is houses because of an oil in the cedar stops it from rotting. The northwest is a rainy place. Cedar wood is also a great for canoes and cooking pots. masks and totem poles were also made from cedar wood.  Everything was used from a cedar tree. The long thin roots were used for strong waterproof baskets. Strips of cedar bark are woven in to baskets, hats and mats. When strips of inner bark were pounded with a bark beater the bark turned in to soft long fibers that were used for clothing. Mot of the northwest clothing was made from a cedar tree. All the rest of the clothing was made from other skins for warmer clothing.

Clothing is very useful to the Native Americans. But not as much as other groups. The northwest coast Native Americans don’t wear much clothing. I’ll tell you why. Native Americans of the northwest coast wore almost nothing. IT is that way because of the climate ad location. It was warm, but rainy. It was also very useful for ceremonial wear. It was like that because the Native American were very ceremonial. That was one of the biggest uses for the Northwest coast Native Americans. Half of the clothing was made from materials that came from animals. But almost all of the things that could be used were used. Also somethings were used for special occasions. I’ll talk about that next.

The next thing you will read about is clothing for special occasions and cold weather. To ceremonies the people wore deerskin tunics with designs, fancy leggings, sometimes painted basket hats, or seashell jewelry. Blankets were used a lot. The Chief wore carved headdress with fur, sea lion whiskers and a woven blanket. Maybe even a necklace or bracelet of sea lion whiskers. In colder weather, they wore buckskin leggings, but in the summer they wore doeskin leggings. In the mountains while hunting they wore a simple snow-shoe. In the mountains, they also wore mittens. The used mountain goat wool. Clothing was not the only way Native Americans celebrated their culture. The way they wore their hair also symbolized things, such as strength.

I hope you like what you just read. One of the reasons this was hard is because there was not a lot of information on the northwest clothing of the Native Americans pre-European contact. When the Europeans came, they got stronger metals. They also made blankets out of mountain goat wool. They were called Chilkat blankets. It took at least six months to make one.