Whaling was an inherited privilege. Crews of eight men would venture eight or ten miles to sea in search of whales. The meat, blubber, oil, sinew, and bone of a whale were utilized, but even so more effort went into pursuing the animals at sea, attacking them, and towing them home than can be justified on economic grounds alone, because other resources were more easily at hand. Clams, octopus, mussels, smoked fish, salmonberries, red and blue huckleberries, blueberries, cranberries, wild strawberries, camas bulbs, deer and elk formed the mainstays of diet. The Makah love music.
Songs symbolize different rites of passage.