Argillite had only limited use in indigenous Haida culture, but came into prominence with the advent of extensive Euro-American trade in the early second quarter of the nineteenth century. Argillite object types changed through the following decades as different types of carvings gained in popularity. Smoking pipes, eventually including highly complex panel pipes with extensive piercing, were the majority of objects created in the early decades of the trade, after which plates, platters, standing figures, model totem poles and other kinds of objects had their day.

By the 1880s, figure groups began to proliferate as a subject among argillite carvers of the time. Figure groups differ from the earlier panel pipes in that they usually include a flat base on which the group of characters is poised. Many carvers of such groups worked against the stiff, static nature of their stone medium and produced active sculptures, the figures caught as if by a camera lens in the acts of carrying on their existence. Here the bear and human images are not statically posed, but captured in movement, grasping one another in tense interaction. Significant piercing exists between the man and bear, and small bear and human figures populate the lower portion of the sculpture.

Steven C. Brown

References: For Haida figural groups with similar bear and human imagery see Leslie Drew and Douglas Wilson, Argillite: Art of the Haida, (Vancouver: Hancock House, 1980), pp. 141, 195-198; Peter L. Macnair and Alan L. Hoover, The Magic Leaves: A History of Haida Argillite Carving, (Royal BC Museum, 1984/2002), figs. 158-164; and Carol Sheehan, Pipes that won’t Smoke; Coal that won’t Burn: Haida Sculpture in Argillite, (Calgary: Glenbow Museum, 1981), cats. 76-81. See also Steven C. Brown, Native Visions: Evolution in Northwest Coast Art from the Eighteenth through the Twentieth Century, (Seattle: Seattle Art Museum / Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1998), fig. 5.20. See also Marius Barbeau, Haida Myths Illustrated in Argillite Carvings, (Ottawa: National Museum of Canada, Bulletin No. 127, Anthropological Series No. 32, 1953), figs. 55-59