[b]Maritime Economies Continued: Anthropological Insights from America's Pacific Northwest[/b]
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The Pacific Northwest of North America is a thin strip of land stretching from the Pacific Coast of Washington and Oregon, along Canada, and up to Alaska. This is my favorite region of North America to study: this tiny strip of land was so unique, so rich, that even though its inhabitants never developed agriculture (they never had a reason to), they created unique, complex societies with a class system and a group of noble families based on surplus from fish alone. Its population density was among the highest in all of North America. So if you really like the idea of creating a fishing-based nation in your world, this culture area has more interesting insights to help you on your way.

Why is this region so unique? Because it is located along the famously rich Pacific fisheries, some of the richest on earth. This stretch of coast is so productive that a number of anthropologists argue that the first American Indians to make their way into their future home would have made their way along the coast instead of an inland route. In the millennia after the first human beings crossed the Northwest Coast, the people who lived in this area developed a unique culture and economy based off the exploitation of marine resources, with no interest in or need for agriculture. The resources available in the region are truly staggering, and always give me a hankering for sea food whenever I think about them. Whales and sea mammals could be hunted outright or taken after they washed onto the shore as sick of dead individuals. Children, pregnant women, and elderly people could contribute to meals by collecting shellfish on the shore (kids, in particular, could probably be kept out of trouble this way). Birds would nest on offshore islands free of predators and migrate along the coast in the millions every year. All sorts of varieties of seaweed could be eaten. Fish? Please.

Unlike most hunter-gatherers, the societies along the Pacific Northwest had ranked classes, nobility, commoners, and slaves. Nobles would live in houses built in separate rows from commoners, nearer to the sea shore, and their status was inherited. They were wealthy people who built up huge surpluses of extra food that they turned into political capital and used in trade. Compare this to what I said of subarctic hunter-gatherers in the previous post. They are much more characteristic of most hunter-gatherer societies. These people groups are egalitarian, with no nobles but no slaves. Leadership is not inherited but earned. Wealth is not accumulated, but people share to keep the group alive. War is absent; people get into skirmishes, but they cannot fight pitched battles. You do not inherit anything, as no one is more wealthy than anyone else. If you want to be a leader, you earn it. 99% of hunter-gatherers follow this social pattern.

NW Coast people were more like settled agriculturalists, and they achieved this by exploiting the bounty of the sea. Where most hunter gatherers moved around regularly, NW coast people lived in semi-permanent villages. They would normally have a summer and winter village, and would move between them with the seasons. The skeleton of their houses would be left at the site, and when they were going to move, they would take the outer shell of their plank houses with them to put the wood on the waiting skeleton. Most hunter gatherers have no concept of property. People use resources, but no one owns them. NW coast people developed concepts of private ownership like those of agriculturalists. People owned their stocks of fish and even claimed the right to use certain resources - rivers, trees, and stretches of coast. To exploit the rich coastal resources that made their wealth possible, NW coast people developed nets and sinkers, dugout canoes, scaling knives, and unique technologies that I will detail. The first is the toggling harpoon. Unlike most harpoons, the blade of the toggling harpoon rotates underneath the skin of the animal as it enters, so the animal cannot pull it out. The other unique piece of tech is the fishing wier. These are wooden traps placed into streams, wooden weavings that allow water to pass through, but catch the fish. Your maritime fantasy nation would make use of these technologies in maintaining their sea based economy.

Unlike the Arctic, where wood would only be found drifting on the ocean, the Pacific Northwest was covered in forest, and the people who lived there made woodcarving into a high art form. The material culture of the NW was almost entirely reliant on wood, particularly cedar wood. The ubiquitous material was used to make baskets, blankets, houses, masks, dugout canoes, chests, masks, ropes, and bentwood boxes. PLEASE NOTE, if you like the idea of writing a complex, wealthy society based on fishing, PAY ATTENTION to the following. Bentwood boxes are an excellent way for your fantasy culture to store their catch. They were airtight and watertight containers with very few seams, and real world NW coast people had no need for pottery. A plank of wood was bent into the shape of square, with a bottom sewn on and all seams completely sealed. You could store fish for years in this manner, and they could be a common feature in the markets of your maritime kingdom. The skills needed to produce these containers would be in high demand, and skilled wood workers in your world could gain a great deal of prestige and wealth, perhaps forming guilds to safeguard their valuable methods.

As in the Arctic, whale hunters were powerful, well-respected figures in the societies of the Pacific Northwest. Not all Native Americans who lived in this area were whale hunters. Many of them simply waited for whale carcasses to wash up on shore. Whale hunting was dangerous, but certain tribes, like the Makah, were. In communities that practiced whale-hunting. In your maritime kingdom, whale-hunting could be the exclusive right of royalty and nobility, much like how the kings of medieval Europe monopolized hunting rights in large swaths of forest. Among real world NW coast societies, Whales would be struck with harpoons attached to heavy sealskin floats, which would drag on the animal to tire it out and keep it afloat after it was killed. The whalers would sing to the animal, promising to sing and dance for it if it allowed itself to be killed. The chief harpooner on the expedition was given the best cut of meat, a piece from the animal’s back.

Because of the incredible richness of the NW coast region, the communities who lived there enjoyed throwing great feasts called potlaches (the origin of our modern pot lucks). In these feasts, different families would show off their wealth to one another, and these could be very extreme, competitive events as everyone tried to out do one another. If no one could eat any more food or carry any more blankets, the host may start burning them, showing how wealthy he was through how much of his own property he could burn. Slaves may also be executed (which I cannot condone). In addition to rewarding friends, potlaches could also be used to humiliate rivalsand ruin enemies, showing the world that the limits of their wealth and power.