Part of a series of articles titled Home and Homelands Exhibition: Work.
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Siti·yak Splitter
Article written by Nicole Martin, PhD
The siti·yak (sih-tee-yuhk) splitter is a Makah tool used for splitting grasses, bark, and other materials into uniform strips for weaving. While seemingly a simple, functional tool, the siti·yak is an object that reveals if we sit with it. "Things become bearers of memory and information," explains historian Tiya Miles, "especially when enhanced by stories that expand their capacity to carry meaning."1
As a bearer of memory, the siti·yak can tell us about the practical – how women who used the tool in the past worked and lived in their environment. What they gathered, what they ate, what they made. As a bearer of meaning, the siti·yak can also tell us about the values and priorities shared by these women. If we listen closely, we can learn about artistry, about ways of being in the world, and about giving. Woven together, these aspects of the siti·yak speak to the profound connection Makah women, who have inhabited the lands of the northwestern Olympic Peninsula since time immemorial, have with their homeland.2
NPS Photo, Olympic National Park Collections
Function: Women and Land
The siti·yak pictured above is a small piece of cedar carved into the shape of a fur seal, with two small metal blades attached parallel to each other near the tail. Before the introduction of metal, mussel shells or bone would have served the same purpose. Weavers used the materials split by the siti·yak to create baskets that gathered, stored, and cooked food; clothing that warmed bodies; and other functional items that furnished homes. Traditionally, weaving was an activity performed exclusively by Makah women. Today, some men join women in the practice.3
Gathering the materials to be split and then woven has long connected Makah women with the rich forest environment of their homeland. In an ancient pattern, Makahs spent the spring through early fall among the trees, gathering boughs, roots, and grasses at the right stage of maturity. For some materials, such as beargrass, they traveled to Quinault to collect the grass with hired help. They then processed the gathered materials, which could include drying, soaking, storing, and dyeing. When ready, the weaver used a siti·yak to split the materials into whatever thickness and width she desired.4 Gathering, splitting, and weaving demanded ample patience and time – a way of being in the world that is difficult to find today.
Art: Capturing a Homeland
Makah weavers are renowned for their artistry, creating gorgeous, patterned baskets with the aid of the splitter tool. However, the siti·yak itself is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship. The tool is carved from cedar into the shape of a seal and includes a fur seal design that reflects how the subsistence economy and cultural identity of the Makah have long been intrinsically connected to the sea.
Courtesy Kimon Berlin
The siti·yak, then, links two important aspects of Makah identity: sea and land. While the tool is made from the land (cedar) and used on forest materials (grasses, bark, etc.), the representation is an homage to the sea. Mariner skills – whaling, sealing, and canoemaking – were traditionally men’s work. The splitter tool blends women’s and men’s labor, land and sea. It embodies a story about how the Makah people skillfully utilized the wealth of natural resources their diverse and bountiful homeland offered.
Library of Congress
Gift: Generational Knowledge
Finally, the siti·yak reveals a story about giving over generations. The exact origin and date of this particular splitter tool is unknown beyond the fact Olympic National Park acquired it from a donor in 1955. The inclusion of metal and the fact it was primarily used on beargrass, indicates that it dates to no earlier than the 1860s when Makah fancy trinket baskets became popular.5 Considering the beauty of the object, it is not hard to imagine that the splitter may have been carved and gifted to a Makah weaver by a male relative. Made to fit her unique hands, she would have treasured it during her lifetime. She would likely have passed it down to future generations as a cherished heirloom, along with the cultural knowledge and skill of her craft.
NPS Collections, Olympic National Park
Makah weaver products became valuable items for sale and trade after the arrival of Euro-American settlers in the nineteenth century. As settlers overharvested traditional Makah resources and as the U.S. government restricted the ability of Makah men to partake in traditional practices such as hunting and fishing, commercial basketry became a crucial source of income for Makah families.
In this context, weaving and basketry have represented a defiant persistence of cultural expression by Makah women in the face of colonialism and pressures to assimilate. The siti·yak is an object with the ability, when the stories it carries are unveiled, to connect weavers of the past and present through the abundant resources of their shared homeland.
1 Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, A Black Family Keepsake (New York: Random House, 2021), 13.
2 The majority of the information in this article, unless otherwise noted, is from Olympic National Park conversations with Makah Tribal members, Rebekah Monette, Janine Ledford, and Maria Pascua in April 2023.
3 See for example, From the Hands of a Weaver: Olympic Peninsula Basketry Through Time, ed. Jacilee Wray (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 2012).
4 “Basketry,” Makah Cultural and Resource Center Online Museum.
5 Museum Catalog Record Cultural Resources, Department of the Interior, National Park Service, accession number OLYM-00074. See also From the Hands of a Weaver, 121.
Last updated: June 11, 2024