Grand Hall tour

The peoples of the west coast consider the world to be like a huge box, which contains all the souls in the universe as either humans or animals. On the west coast, the sides of boxes are made from a single board of cedar that has been kerfed and bent to form a container with but one seam. Life for the individual begins in a steamed and bent cradle; those of high rank progress to a seat, which is a three-sided box turned inside out. Life is sustained by food (from fish and animals) that is kept in bent boxes stacked along the walls of the house. And at death the body is placed in a coffin box that is stacked in special houses or mortuaries for the dead.

The lineage or family group, a collectivity of souls, is contained in a house constructed like a box. Living people enter through the front and sides, while the deceased leave only through the back of the house (by removing special planks); the souls depart through the smoke hole above the hearth in the centre of the house.

Each box is also a living form in which the design is continuous from one side to the other, describing a single being (often a supernatural guardian of the box's contents). The house is also a living being as well as a container of souls. The house has both a skin (made of removable cedar planks) and bones (the house posts, beams and rafter, which are considered to be arms, legs, backbones and ribs). Similar guardian and crest figures ornament the façade and sometimes the sides of the house.

The ultimate house/box is the universe, through which the sun passes every day, entering the front entrance (symbolic of life) and exiting from the back (symbolic of death). During the night the sun passes over the world house but can be seen as starlight shinning through the holes in the roof.