DIFFERENT CULTURES

Ralston Guthrie

March 10, 2005

Thinking Arts

Mr. Kohler

My study on the Haida Indians has taught me that we have adopted a lot of the things that they did. But we have also left out a lot of things that I believe we should have adopted. The Haida also were a very interesting tribe different from the ones we know by far.

Some of the things that we have adopted are. They live in single-family homes made out of mainly wood. They also only worship one god even though they didn’t worship the right god. Also they only had one wife where as lots of other tribes had two or three. Last they hunted and gathered food. We do this just not as often. All of the things that I have listed in the paragraph above we do in our lives just like the Haidas did you just don’t realize it or you don’t do it enough to realize it.

Some of the things that I think we should have adopted I will start doing in my life. The way the Haida treated the land with such respect is the most important thing I think we should adopt, because if we don’t we will destroy the earth. Another thing I think we should adopt is their resourcefulness. If they killed a whale like they did some times, they would use the whole thing and not just take the meat and the hide like we do. They would use the bones for shelter, fat for lamps, and skin for clothes. Those are two things I think we should adopt if we still want to live on this earth for many more years.

One of the interesting facts about the Haida Indians was that they could build 35 feet long canoes and go out into the ocean and kill whales with spears and then bring them back to shore in the same canoe. Another interesting fact was that they held potlatches on the day a boy turned in to a man which was on his 14^th birthday. The most interesting fact I though was that if a boy from a different Haida tribes went to a different village they would capture him or her and make them a slave or a bargaining tool. Those are a few interesting facts about the Haida Indians.