I'm a little bit of a hurry so this will be brief. Here is a very brief and mostly accurate article that portrays wood working in the pre-Colombian Northwest. Along the west coast of North America the majority of woodworking was either splitting or carving. Splitting was primarily done using elk antler wedges driven with stone mauls or hammers into straight grained softwoods like Western redcedar and redwood. Split material was made into houses (planks and posts) and used for a variety of other purposes.

Carving was used for canoe construction, house and totem poles, masks, helmets, boxes, bowls and decoration on these items. The majority of carving was done with adzes using a variety of materials for cutting bits. Bits were made out of stone (often jadeite), beaver teeth, mussel shell, bone and virtually anything found that was significantly harder than softwoods.

The Authority on woodcarving art in the NW is Bill Holm

A master carver was Bill Reid.

Edit: Added artists names