| The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07. |
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| Kwakiutl |
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(kwä´k  ´´t l) (KEY) , group of closely related Native North Americans who inhabit N Vancouver Island and the adjacent mainland of British Columbia, Canada. They, together with the Nootka, their southern neighbors, make up the Wakashan branch of the Algonquian-Wakashan linguistic stock (see Native American languages). Kwakiutl culture was typical of the Northwest Coast area (including the custom of potlatch). The ethnographer Franz Boas produced a significant number of ethnographic studies on the Kwakiutl. Numbering c.15,000 before European contact, they are now reduced to around 4,000 and are mainly engaged in fishing and farming. | 1 | | See F. Boas, Kwakiutl Ethnography, ed. by H. F. Codere (1966); R. P. Rohner and E. C. Rohner, The Kwakiutl (1970). | 2 |
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| | | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright © 2007 Columbia University Press. |
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