The Makah Siti·yak Splitter: A Seal-Shaped Tool for Weaving Baskets

The siti·yak (sih-tee-yuhk) splitter is a Makah tool for splitting grasses, bark and other materials into even strips for weaving. It looks simple, but — like many everyday objects — it carries memory and meaning: how the women who used it lived and worked in their environment, and what they valued. The Makah have lived on the northwestern Olympic Peninsula since time immemorial, and the siti·yak speaks to Makah women's deep ties to that homeland.

A Makah siti·yak splitter with a seal design. NPS Photo, Olympic National Park Collections.

Women and the land

This siti·yak is a small piece of cedar carved as a fur seal, with two small metal blades set side by side near the tail. Before metal, mussel shell or bone did the job.

• Weavers turned the split material into baskets for gathering, storing and cooking food, into clothing, and into other things for the home.
• Weaving was traditionally done only by Makah women; today some men weave too.
• In an ancient pattern, Makah women spent spring to early fall in the forest, gathering boughs, roots and grasses at just the right stage of growth. For some materials, such as beargrass, they traveled to Quinault, with hired help.
• The material was dried, soaked, stored or dyed, then split with the siti·yak to whatever width and thickness the weaver wanted. Gathering, splitting and weaving took great patience and time.

Land and sea

Makah weavers are famous for beautiful patterned baskets — and the siti·yak is itself fine craftsmanship. Its seal reflects how the Makah economy and identity have long been bound up with the sea.

The tool joins two sides of Makah life. It is made from the land (cedar) and used on forest materials, yet it honors the sea — and the sea skills of whaling, sealing and canoe-making were traditionally men's work. In one object, women's and men's labor, land and sea, come together: a story of how the Makah used the wealth of a rich and varied homeland.

Two Makah weavers, about 1910, when their basketry was part of a busy seaside tourist trade. Library of Congress.

Handed down

This splitter's exact origin and date are unknown; Olympic National Park received it from a donor in 1955. Its metal blades, and its use mainly on beargrass, suggest it dates from no earlier than the 1860s, when Makah "fancy trinket" baskets became popular. Given its beauty, it may well have been carved as a gift for a weaver by a male relative, fitted to her hands, treasured, and passed down with the knowledge and skill of her craft.

A Makah beargrass basket. NPS Collections, Olympic National Park.

After Euro-American settlers arrived in the nineteenth century, Makah baskets became valuable for sale and trade. As settlers overharvested Makah resources and the U.S. government restricted Makah men's hunting and fishing, commercial basketry became a crucial income for Makah families. Weaving thus became a defiant persistence of Makah women's culture in the face of colonialism and pressure to assimilate — and the siti·yak still links weavers past and present through their shared homeland.

Sources

Based on "Siti·yak Splitter," by Nicole Martin, PhD, part of the National Park Service's Home and Homelands exhibition, Olympic National Park, National Park Service, made possible in part by a grant from the National Park Foundation; rewritten in hubnx's own words. It draws mainly on conversations between the park and Makah tribal members Rebekah Monette, Janine Ledford and Maria Pascua (April 2023), and on From the Hands of a Weaver: Olympic Peninsula Basketry Through Time (2012) and the Makah Cultural and Resource Center.