Kwakwakaʼwakw Mask depicting Dzunukʼwa, Attributed to Chief Willie Seaweed (circa 1873 – 1967)

Chief Willie Seaweed (Willie Siwid [Siwiti]/Chief Hilamas/The One Able To Set Things Right/Smoky Top/Kwaxitola) (c. 1873-1967), Ba’a’s (Blunden Harbour), British Columbia

Tlelawick (or Alice) Scow (née Whonnock) (1908-1994), Gwa’yasdams (Gilford Island), British Columbia, reportedly inherited from her grandfather

Harry A. Franklin, Beverly Hills, acquired by 1965

Acquired from the above by the present owner on April 12, 1977

Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California, on loan in 1965 and again in 1975

Rex W. Wignall Museum-Gallery, Chaffey College, Alta Loma, California, Tribal Arts of the Pacific Northwest, June 2 – July 2, 1976

Chaffey College, ed., Tribal Arts of the Pacific Northwest, Alta Loma, California, 1976, p. 17

Tłu’ma ke’inuxw, Kwaxitola!

A great carver, Smoky-Top¹

Bill Holm, the great scholar of Northwest Coast art, tells us that Willie Seaweed was no ordinary man. He was born circa 1873, the son of Hiłamas, head chief of the na’mim² Gixsam (meaning “All Dressed Chiefs”), the first in rank of the six na’mim that made up the ’Nakwaxda’xw nation. It appears that his father died before he was born, and “Willie Seaweed was known by the noble name Hiłamas when still a boy.”³ This was not the custom, but his father’s ‘Eagle’ name was given to Willie “to forestall any chance of losing it. The name Hiłamas means ‘Right Maker’, the one who sees to it that things are as they should be, and Willie Seaweed lived up to his inherited name.”⁴ Descended from na’mim chiefs in both lines, Willie inherited the highest position in the first na’mim of the ’Nakwaxda’xw. The hereditary name that belonged to that position was Siwid, which can be translated as ‘Paddling Owner’, and which metaphorically “refers to the greatness of a chief whose potlatches bring people from far tribes.”⁵ Seaweed is the anglicized spelling that was used by his family, but amongst the Kwakwakaʼwakw he was known as Kwaxitola, or “Smoky-Top”, except when another of his many names was appropriate.⁶

Willie Seaweed was a leader in the ceremonial life of the ’Nakwaxda’xw. The relative isolation of their territory on the inlets and fjords north of Queen Charlotte Strait made them amongst the most conservative of Kwakwakaʼwakw groups, and “along with their Gwa’sala neighbors to the north, [the ’Nakwaxda’xw] were recognized as the masters of tradition, and their leaders, like Willie Seaweed, were often consulted on matters of ceremony and protocol.”⁷ As Holm notes, “high positions and the names associated with them [such as Hiłamas and Siwid] were heavy responsibilities. Those who assumed them were respected only if they upheld them properly by following the way laid down for chiefs, by calling the people to feasts and demonstrations of privilege, and by distributing wealth in the amounts that were recognized as proper according to the importance of the rights displayed.”⁸

Willie Seaweed “held up his heavy names”⁹ in many ways. One was an artist who upheld and perpetuated the traditions and prerogatives of his people, a maker of masks and ceremonial objects through which the creatures of Kwakwakaʼwakw mythology were made visible during the drama of the Winter Dances. “All the creatures that inhabited the mythical world of the Kwakwakaʼwakw were familiar to Willie Seaweed – the furtive Bak’was, the giant Dzunuk’wa, or all the man-eating bird brothers of Baxwbakwalanuksiwe. He knew their power to awe men […] any mask he carved or screen he painted mirrored the recognizable image of such a being. Yet his approach to his art was an intellectual one. He was constantly and consciously aware of form in his work. No carved surface or painted line was ever random. Each was planned, with a draftsman’s accuracy, so that each form took its perfect shape and held a precise, balanced relationship to its brother shapes and to the spaces around and between them. In his passion for perfection he was like some of the box painters of the northern tribes, whose formline system of design epitomized formal space organization in Northwest Coast art.”¹⁰

We can see the balance and rigour of which Bill Holm speaks in the present mask, a gikamł, or chief’s mask. Gikamł depict the giant Dzunuk’wa, “an awesome figure of Kwakwakaʼwakw mythology […] a hungry giant, humanlike but not human, with bony face […]. The Dzunuk’wa is an object of terror, but also a source of wealth and supernatural power. Chiefs liken themselves to the Dzunuk’wa when speaking, evoking the fear and respect due the powerful monster.”¹¹ The gikamł is just large enough to cover its owner’s face. It is not danced, but rather brandished and worn at the end of a potlatch. “A chief stands to speak. He has shown his privileges to the people and he explains their history, to assure that no one questions his right to them. ‘Take care, take care, chiefs’, he warns […]. The speaking chief takes up his gikamł […]. Glistening, graphite black, with thick mane of shaggy hair, it is the face of the Dzunuk’wa. He holds the dark mask over his head, repeating his angry warning. Then he becomes Dzunuk’wa, shouting through the round, everted mouth – HA’ A’ A’ A’ A’ A’ A’, O’ O, O’ O – the paralyzing cry of the wealth-and-power giver, dark monster of the forest. Graphite and vermillion reflect the firelight, accenting the giant’s bony, hair-framed face. The speaker cradles the mask and finishes his speech. In the shadows of the house the chiefs and their na’mims listen.”¹²

We are grateful to Steven C. Brown for confirming the attribution to Willie Seaweed. For another Willie Seaweed chief’s mask depicting Dzunuk’wa, see Sotheby’s, New York, December 4, 2020, lot 80. See also a gikamł by Willie Seaweed in the collection of Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria (inv. no. 14867). Bill Holm notes that the earliest gikamł attributed to Willie Seaweed was purchased from him in 1914 by Dr Charles F. Newcombe, who had been hired by the Provincial Museum at Victoria in British Columbia to form “a major collection of artefacts”.¹³ That mask is also in the collection of Royal British Columbia Museum, Victoria (inv. no. 9974). By around 1920 Seaweed had begun to use commercial, oil-based enamel paint, “and almost all of his subsequent painting was done with it.”¹⁴ In the firelight, the glossy enamel paint of the present gikamł must have glistened and glowed, perhaps with an even greater depth than the graphite and vermillion pigments of old.

The present mask was acquired in 1977 from Harry A. Franklin, a dealer and collector in Beverly Hills. Franklin’s exacting eye was drawn to objects of profound, expressive power, whether the “Bangwa Queen” from Cameroon, famously photographed by Man Ray, a wraith-like tsubwan mask from Pentecost Island in Vanuatu, or this mask of Dzunuk’wa, whose hollowed cheeks and round mouth seem to cry out still in that ominous voice that whistled through the cedar forest.

Franklin’s invoice records that the gikamł “was given to the wife of Chief Scow of Gilford Island by her grandfather”. It seems Franklin had acquired the mask by 1965, and we assume that the “wife of Chief Scow” he refers to was Tlelawick, or Alice, Scow, née Whonnock¹⁵, who was the granddaughter of ʼNa̱mgis chiefs. Alice Scow lived with her husband, William Scow, also known as Dłaxwaya’galis, the chief of the Kwikwasut’inuxw people, between the village of Gwa’yasdams, “a place where the ceremonial customs were being practised”¹⁶ and the fishing village of Gwa’yi on the saltwater fjord of Kingcome Inlet.

^1. Bill Holm, Smoky-Top: The Art and Times of Willie Seaweed, Seattle and London, 1983, p. 37

^2. Holm notes that “The true character of the na’mim has been debated ever since Franz Boas first described it and, in recognition of its unique character, proposed the use of the native word ‘numaym’ rather than a term such as ‘clan’, normally used to designate descent groups […]. The na’mim (‘one kind’) is a property (house and resource site, crests, titles, and privileges) holding group, the nobility of which claims descent from a single ancestor.” ibid., p. 23

^3. ibid., p. 24

^4. ibid.

^5. ibid.

^6. At a potlatch, or on formal occasions, he would be addressed as Hiłamas; as the reckless fool dancer Nułmał “he was known as Xandzasamudayu, or Yakułala (‘All Bad’). Another of his names was Mukwitalasu (‘Four Men Come to Fight’).” ibid., p. 32

^7. ibid., p. 28

^8. ibid., p. 27

^9. ibid.

^10. ibid., p. 35

^11. ibid., p. 42

^12. ibid., p. 157

^13. Kevin Neary, “NEWCOMBE, CHARLES FREDERIC,” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vol. 15, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003–, accessed October 16, 2024, https://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/newcombe_charles_frederic_15E.html.

^14. Bill Holm, Smoky-Top: The Art and Times of Willie Seaweed, Seattle and London, 1983, p. 36

^15. Like Seaweed for Siwid, Whonnock is an anglicized spelling, in this case for the Kwakʼwala name Wanukw, which can be translated as “River Owner”.

^16. From the transcript of an interview with Chief William Scow, conducted in 1967 by Imbert Orchard, accessed October 16, 2024, https://shorturl.at/HyxRj