This handsome Kwakiutl Wild Man mask has sensual features and an aquiline profile. The mask features medium brown hair trim with dark red, green, and gray paint colors. Priced at $1150. Measures 10h, 8w x 6d.

The Wild Man, or Sasquatch is the most famous legendary “bigfoot” creature. According to Coast Salish traditions, Sasquatch was a powerful but generally benign supernatural creature in the shape of a very large, hairy wild man.

The artist is an esteemed member of the Tlowitsis (Lawit’sis) First Nations tribe of Turnour Island, British Columbia, Canada. He was born in Alert Bay.

The term Kwakiutl started in 1849, when the white people came to stay in native people’s territories. It was a term then applied to all the Kwakwaka’wakw—that is, all of the people who speak the language Kwakwala. Today, the name Kwakiutl only refers to those from our village of Fort Rupert. Other groups have their own names and villages.

Archaeological evidence shows that native people have occupied Vancouver Island, the adjacent mainland, and the islands between for about nine thousand years. Before the Canadian government contracted traditional boundaries to enclose small reserves, each tribal group owned its territory. During the winter, each occupied a more permanent site, where the people engaged in intensive ceremonial activities while enjoying the abundant supply of foods from the sea and land that they had gathered earlier in the year.

Before the middle of the 19th century, the present area of Fort Rupert village had very little permanent settlement, but was the site of an enormous bank of clamshells, two miles long, half a mile wide and fifty feet high. The shells were the last vestiges of enormous feasts held here for generations and they came to play a part in local history in World War II when they were used to level the nearby Port Hardy airport. Other visible aspects of Fort Rupert’s cultural fabric include a historical graveyard, the old chimney which marks the site of a former Hudson’s Bay Company fort and an impressive Big House.

Thank you to http://www.native-languages.org and www.tribalpedia.com