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Sculpture arts

On the Northern Pacific coast lived tribes for example the Haida, Tlingit and Kwakiutl. Fishing gave many of them a high standard of living. They employed professional artists, who excelled at carving; they decorated 12m tall cedar trunks with animals and scenes from legend. These totem poles stood outside the communal homes - like a coat-of-arms, they identified the resident families. In rituals, dancers wore brightly painted and intricately carved masks, inlaid with abalone shell. Some had hinged parts; by pulling various strings, the wearer could change from one creature into an additional.

Ancient stone carvings have been found all over the continent. The prehistoric mound-builders of the Ohio River Valley made stone pipes in the form of birds, animals and humans. They were buried with their owners in large burial mounds, along with realistically modelled clay figurines. Stone pipes were made by numerous other tribes - from the South-eastern Cherokee to the Ojibwa from the Northern Plains - until the 1800s. The Eskimos (Inuits) of Alaska, Greenland and Northern Canada are famed for their soapstone carvings.

Textile arts

The coiled baskets of some Western and South-western tribes, particularly those from the Washo of Nevada and black and white jacquard pattern fabric, have finely detailed patterns. These are formed by working numerous stitches, generally of coloured grasses, more than a coiled, horizontal foundation. By the late 1200s, the Pueblo peoples had been weaving spectacular, multi-coloured fabrics; they used a wide, vertical loom of their own invention. By the 1600s, their weaving had been surpassed by their Navajo neighbours, who still make superb rugs and blankets. Numerous tribes embroidered their clothes, moccasins and bags; quills from porcupines and birds were dyed and sewn into leather, as was fur from moose and caribou. The North-eastern Micmac tribe laced quills into birchbark, via holes pierced by awls.

Tribes made beads from shells. They made wampum, a type of currency, by threading beads on to strings and weaving them together. When the Europeans introduced beads of coloured glass, Native Americans traded goods for them - and across the continent, they produced a dazzling variety of woven and embroidered beadwork.