Frederick Alexcee
Frederick Alexcee was a Canadian carver and painter from the community of Lax Kw'alaams with Tsimshian ethnicity.
Alexcee was born in Lax Kw'alaams, then known as Fort Simpson, in 1853. His father was an Iroquois laborer from eastern Canada who was in the employee of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Simpson. His mother was Tsimshian from the Giluts'aaw tribe, one of the "Nine Tribes" from the lower Skeena River area based at Lax Kw'alaams. In the matrilineal system of the Tsimshian, Alexcee followed his mother as a Giluts'aaw and as a member of the Gispwudwada. His Tsimshian name was 'Wiiksmwan, meaning Great Deer Woman.
Alexcee was trained as a halaayt carver, with "halaayt" denoting shamanic practices traditionally reserved for chiefs. He crafted naxnox paraphernalia and items for use in "secret society" ceremonies. These practices were among those targeted for eradication by late-19th-century missionaries in Lax Kw'alaams. Alexcee also carved for the Indian curio trade and produced paintings and drawings depicting traditional life in Port Simpson. In 1927, two of his paintings were exhibited at the National Gallery of Canada.
He carved human figures to adorn a baptismal font in Port Simpson's Methodist church.
He died some time in the 1940s.
Works of his can be found at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC and the University of British Columbia Library's Rare Books and Special Collections in Vancouver, the Museum of Northern British Columbia in Prince Rupert, the New Westminster Museum and Archives, the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria, the Burke [Museum of Natural History and Culture] in Seattle, United States, and the Wellcome Collection in London, England.
Other publications featuring work by Alexcee
- MacDonald, George F., and John J. Cove Tsimshian Narratives. Collected by Marius Barbeau and William Beynon. 2 vols. Ottawa: Directorate, Canadian Museum of Civilization.
- MacDonald, George F. "Painted Houses and Woven Blankets: Symbols of Wealth in Tsimshian Art and Myth." In The Tsimshian and Their Neighbors of the North Pacific Coast, ed. by Jay Miller and Carol M. Eastman, pp. 109–136. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
- Marsden, Susan Suwilaay'msga Na Ga'niiyatgm, Teachings of Our Grandfathers. 7 vols. Prince Rupert, B.C.: First Nations Advisory Council of School District #52.
- Neylan, Susan The Heavens Are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Category:1940s deaths
Category:19th-century First Nations people
Category:20th-century First Nations sculptors
Category:20th-century [Canadian sculptors]
Category:Canadian male sculptors
Category:20th-century Canadian male artists
Category:Artists from British Columbia
Category:People from Lax Kw'alaams
Category:Tsimshian woodcarvers
Category:Canadian people of [Iroquois descent]