These two large model poles (twenty inches tall!) were made as a pair, one after the other, in February and March 1973, by Rufus Moody. By that time, he had worked through what might be called the “lean years,” those decades in which there were ever fewer artists and argillite carvers among the Haida, mainly due to colonial oppression. Moody became well known around the region for doing the work of carving argillite and maintaining the tradition. Moody was made famous outside his region about this time, in part due to inclusion of his name and work in several art/photo books that came out in the early 1970s. This was an interesting time in Northwest Coast art history; when the last of the old timers who came up through the end of the nineteenth century and the early- to mid-twentieth were still producing traditional work, and a new generation of Native artists was just beginning to thrive and expand the historical tradition, going back to the styles of the early- to mid-nineteenth century to work with and perpetuate what those earlier generations had attained artistically.

Moody was somewhere in between the generations outlined above. He was born after the nineteenth-century masters had already passed (e.g. Edenshaw in 1920), and became famous among a generation whose artistic skills were often below the standards of the traditional masters, yet who maintained a significant foothold on artistic production and maintenance, holding on to cultural arts despite outside pressures and passing on the torch, as it were, to the offspring of a new generation.

These two poles represent what have been called mortuary poles, which at one time held the remains of high-ranking community members in burial chests that rested behind the large horizontal panel(s) at the top of the poles. The ones here are carved to represent a bent-corner chest, with a three-dimensional crest figure at the centre and supporting formline work on each side. The crest appears to be thunderbird, judging by the recurved beak of the sculpture and the representations of wings and feet on the side panels.

The top figures on the vertical portions of these poles are mountain goats, indicated by the horns on their heads, in this case carved of antler. In a reversal of reality, we see white horns on black goats instead of black horns on white goats! The goats are sitting peacefully on top of the lower figures, with their legs and split-toed hooves drawn up in the classic hocker position often seen in this medium. The bottom figures could be bears with salmon, or at another level sea monsters holding whales. Tiny faces are carved in their ears, adding another level of detail to the work. On the backs of the poles, one is hollowed and one is not. This is often an indicator of the time period in which an argillite pole was carved, but in this case Moody refers back to an earlier period in which the backs of poles were commonly hollowed out. The second, flat-backed pole in this pair appears to have shallow marks outlining the area to be hollowed out like the other.

Steven C. Brown