By the late nineteenth century, Haida argillite artists created fewer images of settlers and, with greater frequency, depicted traditional clan symbols, myths and stories in their work for outside sale. Here, an eagle sits on top of a miniaturized totem pole; a tattered inscription on the underside of the carving explains that the carving shows the “crest of the Chief for whose house the pole stood.” This shift away from “secular” themes was an effort by artists to use the souvenir markets to record elements of their culture that were under threat due to state-sanctioned assimilation, missionary influences, and devastating population reductions due to smallpox.

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