No account of Ozette would be complete without sustained attention to the relationship between the Makah people and the western red cedar that made their technology possible.

Western red cedar is, in the most direct sense, the tree that made Northwest Coast culture possible.

Its wood is light, straight-grained, rot-resistant, and easily split with wedges along its natural grain.

These characteristics made it uniquely suited for construction purposes: house planks, canoe hulls, totem poles, and boxes could all be made from cedar by splitting, not by sawing.

The technology of controlled splitting, using wooden or antler wedges to direct the split along the grain, allowed craftworkers to produce long, straight planks from a single large log without metal tools.