The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft Part 21

The different articles of food, skins and gra.s.ses for clothing and lodges and implements, sh.e.l.ls and trinkets for ornamentation and currency are also bartered between the nations, and the annual summer gatherings on the rivers serve as fairs for the display and exchange of commodities; some tribes even visit the coast for purposes of trade.

Smoking the pipe often precedes and follows a trade, and some peculiar commercial customs prevail, as for instance when a horse dies soon after purchase, the price may be reclaimed. The rights of property are jealously defended, but in the Salish nations, according to Hale, on the death of a father his relatives seize the most valuable property with very little attention to the rights of children too young to look out for their own interests.[401] Indeed, I have heard of deeds of similar import in white races. In decorative art the inland natives must be p.r.o.nounced inferior to those of the coast, perhaps only because they have less time to devote to such unproductive labor. Sculpture and painting are rare and exceedingly rude. On the coast the pa.s.sion for ornamentation finds vent in carving and otherwise decorating the canoe, house, and implements; in the interior it expends itself on the caparison of the horse, or in bead and fringe work on garments. Systems of numeration are simple, progressing by fours, fives, or tens, according to the different languages, and is sufficiently extensive to include large numbers; but the native rarely has occasion to count beyond a few hundreds, commonly using his fingers as an aid to his numeration. Years are reckoned by winters, divided by moons into months, and these months named from the ripening of some plant, the occurrence of a fishing or hunting season, or some other periodicity in their lives, or by the temperature. Among the Salish the day is divided according to the position of the sun into nine parts. De Smet states that maps are made on bark or skins by which to direct their course on distant excursions, and that they are guided at night by the polar star.[402]

[Sidenote: CHIEFS AND THEIR AUTHORITY.]

War chiefs are elected for their bravery and past success, having full authority in all expeditions, marching at the head of their forces, and, especially among the Flatheads, maintaining the strictest discipline, even to the extent of inflicting flagellation on insubordinates. With the war their power ceases, yet they make no effort by partiality during office to insure re-election, and submit without complaint to a successor. Except by the war chiefs no real authority is exercised. The regular chieftainship is hereditary so far as any system is observed, but chiefs who have raised themselves to their position by their merits are mentioned among nearly all the nations. The leaders are always men of commanding influence and often of great intelligence. They take the lead in haranguing at the councils of wise men, which meet to smoke and deliberate on matters of public moment. These councils decide the amount of fine necessary to atone for murder, theft, and the few crimes known to the native code; a fine, the chief's reprimand, and rarely flogging, probably not of native origin, are the only punishments; and the criminal seldom attempts to escape. As the more warlike nations have especial chiefs with real power in time of war, so the fishing tribes, some of them, grant great authority to a 'salmon chief' during the fishing-season. But the regular inland chiefs never collect taxes nor presume to interfere with the rights or actions of individuals or families.[403] Prisoners of war, not killed by torture, are made slaves, but they are few in number, and their children are adopted into the victorious tribe. Hereditary slavery and the slave-trade are unknown.

The Shushwaps are said to have no slaves.[404]

[Sidenote: FAMILY RELATIONS.]

In choosing a helpmate, or helpmates, for his bed and board, the inland native makes capacity for work the standard of female excellence, and having made a selection buys a wife from her parents by the payment of an amount of property, generally horses, which among the southern nations must be equaled by the girl's parents. Often a betrothal is made by parents while both parties are yet children, and such a contract, guaranteed by an interchange of presents, is rarely broken. To give away a wife without a price is in the highest degree disgraceful to her family. Besides payment of the price, generally made for the suitor by his friends, courtship in some nations includes certain visits to the bride before marriage; and the Spokane suitor must consult both the chief and the young lady, as well as her parents; indeed the latter may herself propose if she wishes. Runaway matches are not unknown, but by the Nez Perces the woman is in such cases considered a prost.i.tute, and the bride's parents may seize upon the man's property. Many tribes seem to require no marriage ceremony, but in others an a.s.semblage of friends for smoking and feasting is called for on such occasions; and among the Flatheads more complicated ceremonies are mentioned, of which long lectures to the couple, baths, change of clothing, torch-light processions, and dancing form a part. In the married state the wife must do all the heavy work and drudgery, but is not otherwise ill treated, and in most tribes her rights are equally respected with those of the husband.

[Sidenote: WOMEN AND CHILDREN.]

When there are several wives each occupies a separate lodge, or at least has a separate fire. Among the Spokanes a man marrying out of his own tribe joins that of his wife, because she can work better in a country to which she is accustomed; and in the same nation all household goods are considered as the wife's property. The man who marries the eldest daughter is ent.i.tled to all the rest, and parents make no objection to his turning off one in another's favor. Either party may dissolve the marriage at will, but property must be equitably divided, the children going with the mother. Discarded wives are often reinstated. If a Kliketat wife die soon after marriage, the husband may reclaim her price; the Nez Perce may not marry for a year after her death, but he is careful to avoid the inconvenience of this regulation by marrying just before that event. The Salish widow must remain a widow for about two years, and then must marry agreeably to her mother-in-law's taste or forfeit her husband's property.[405] The women make faithful, obedient wives and affectionate mothers. Incontinence in either girls or married women is extremely rare, and prost.i.tution almost unknown, being severely punished, especially among the Nez Perces. In this respect the inland tribes present a marked contrast to their coast neighbors.[406] At the first appearance of the menses the woman must retire from the sight of all, especially men, for a period varying from ten days to a month, and on each subsequent occasion for two or three days, and must be purified by repeated ablutions before she may resume her place in the household.

Also at the time of her confinement she is deemed unclean, and must remain for a few weeks in a separate lodge, attended generally by an old woman. The inland woman is not prolific, and abortions are not uncommon, which may probably be attributed in great measure to her life of labor and exposure. Children are not weaned till between one and two years of age; sometimes not until they abandon the breast of their own accord or are supplanted by a new arrival; yet though subsisting on the mother's milk alone, and exposed with slight clothing to all extremes of weather, they are healthy and robust, being carried about in a rude cradle on the mother's back, or mounted on colts and strapped to the saddle that they may not fall off when asleep. After being weaned the child is named after some animal, but the name is changed frequently later in life.[407] Although children and old people are as a rule kindly cared for, yet so great the straits to which the tribes are reduced by circ.u.mstances, that both are sometimes abandoned if not put to death.[408]

[Sidenote: GAMES IN THE INTERIOR.]

The annual summer gathering on the river banks for fishing and trade, and, among the mountain nations, the return from a successful raid in the enemy's country, are the favorite periods for native diversions.[409] To gambling they are no less pa.s.sionately addicted in the interior than on the coast,[410] but even in this universal Indian vice, their preference for horse-racing, the n.o.blest form of gaming, raises them above their stick-shuffling brethren of the Pacific. On the speed of his horse the native stakes all he owns, and is discouraged only when his animal is lost, and with it the opportunity to make up past losses in another race. Foot-racing and target-shooting, in which men, women and children partic.i.p.ate, also afford them indulgence in their gambling propensities and at the same time develop their bodies by exercise, and perfect their skill in the use of their native weapon.[411] The Colvilles have a game, _alkollock_, played with spears. A wooden ring some three inches in diameter is rolled over a level s.p.a.ce between two slight stick barriers about forty feet apart; when the ring strikes the barrier the spear is hurled so that the ring will fall over its head; and the number scored by the throw depends on which of six colored beads, attached to the hoop's inner circ.u.mference, falls over the spear's head.[412] The almost universal Columbian game of guessing which hand contains a small polished bit of bone or wood is also a favorite here, and indeed the only game of the kind mentioned; it is played, to the accompaniment of songs and drumming, by parties sitting in a circle on mats, the shuffler's hands being often wrapped in fur, the better to deceive the players.[413] All are excessively fond of dancing and singing; but their songs and dances, practiced on all possible occasions, have not been, if indeed they can be, described.

They seem merely a succession of sounds and motions without any fixed system. Pounding on rude drums of hide accompanies the songs, which are sung without words, and in which some listeners have detected a certain savage melody. Scalp-dances are performed by women hideously painted, who execute their diabolical antics in the centre of a circle formed by the rest of the tribe who furnish music to the dancers.[414] All are habitual smokers, always inhaling the smoke instead of puffing it out after the manner of more civilized devotees of the weed. To obtain tobacco the native will part with almost any other property, but no mention is made of any subst.i.tute used in this region before the white man came. Besides his constant use of the pipe as an amus.e.m.e.nt or habit, the inland native employs it regularly to clear his brain for the transaction of important business. Without the pipe no war is declared, no peace officially ratified; in all promises and contracts it serves as the native pledge of honor; with ceremonial whiffs to the cardinal points the wise men open and close the deliberations of their councils; a commercial smoke clinches a bargain, as it also opens negotiations of trade.[415]

[Sidenote: TREATMENT OF HORSES.]

The use of the horse has doubtless been a most powerful agent in molding inland customs; and yet the introduction of the horse must have been of comparatively recent date. What were the customs and character of these people, even when America was first discovered by the Spaniards, must ever be unknown. It is by no means certain that the possession of the horse has materially bettered their condition. Indeed, by facilitating the capture of buffalo, previously taken perhaps by stratagem, by introducing a medium with which at least the wealthy may always purchase supplies, as well as by rendering practicable long migrations for food and trade, the horse may have contributed somewhat to their present spirit of improvidence. The horses feed in large droves, each marked with some sign of ownership, generally by clipping the ears, and when required for use are taken by the lariat, in the use of which all the natives have some skill, though far inferior to the Mexican _vaqueros_.

The method of breaking and training horses is a quick and an effectual one. It consists of catching and tying the animal; then buffalo-skins and other objects are thrown at and upon the trembling beast, until all its fear is frightened out of it. When willing to be handled, horses are treated with great kindness, but when refractory, the harshest measures are adopted. They are well trained to the saddle, and accustomed to be mounted from either side. They are never shod and never taught to trot.

The natives are skillful riders, so far as the ability to keep their seat at great speed over a rough country is concerned, but they never ride gracefully, and rarely if ever perform the wonderful feats of horsemanship so often attributed to the western Indians. A loose girth is used under which to insert the knees when riding a wild horse. They are hard riders, and horses in use always have sore backs and mouths.

Women ride astride, and quite as well as the men; children also learn to ride about as early as to walk.[416] Each nation has its superst.i.tions; by each individual is recognized the influence of unseen powers, exercised usually through the medium of his medicine animal chosen early in life. The peculiar customs arising from this belief in the supernatural are not very numerous or complicated, and belong rather to the religion of these people treated elsewhere. The Pend d'Oreille, on approaching manhood, was sent by his father to a high mountain and obliged to remain until he dreamed of some animal, bird, or fish, thereafter to be his medicine, whose claw, tooth, or feather was worn as a charm. The howling of the medicine-wolf and some other beasts forebodes calamity, but by the Okanagans the white-wolf skin is held as an emblem of royalty, and its possession protects the horses of the tribe from evil-minded wolves. A ram's horns left in the trunk of a tree where they were fixed by the misdirected zeal of their owner in attacking a native, were much venerated by the Flatheads, and gave them power over all animals so long as they made frequent offerings at the foot of the tree. The Nez Perces had a peculiar custom of overcoming the _mawish_ or spirit of fatigue, and thereby acquiring remarkable powers of endurance. The ceremony is performed annually from the age of eighteen to forty, lasts each time from three to seven days, and consists of thrusting willow sticks down the throat into the stomach, a succession of hot and cold baths, and abstinence from food. Medicine-men acquire or renew their wonderful powers by retiring to the mountains to confer with the wolf. They are then invulnerable; a bullet fired at them flattens on their breast. To allowing their portraits to be taken, or to the operations of strange apparatus they have the same aversion that has been noted on the coast.[417] Steam baths are universally used, not for motives of cleanliness, but sometimes for medical purposes, and chiefly in their superst.i.tious ceremonies of purification. The bath-house is a hole dug in the ground from three to eight feet deep, and sometimes fifteen feet in diameter, in some locality where wood and water are at hand, often in the river bank. It is also built above ground of willow branches covered with gra.s.s and earth. Only a small hole is left for entrance, and this is closed up after the bather enters. Stones are heated by a fire in the bath itself, or are thrown in after being heated outside. In this oven, heated to a suffocating temperature, the naked native revels for a long time in the steam and mud, meanwhile singing, howling, praying, and finally rushes out dripping with perspiration, to plunge into the nearest stream.[418] Every lodge is surrounded by a pack of worthless coyote-looking curs. These are sometimes made to carry small burdens on their backs when the tribe is moving; otherwise no use is made of them, as they are never eaten, and, with perhaps the exception of a breed owned by the Okanagans, are never trained to hunt.

I give in a note a few miscellaneous customs noticed by travelers.[419]

[Sidenote: MEDICAL PRACTICE.]

These natives of the interior are a healthy but not a very long-lived race. Ophthalmia, of which the sand, smoke of the lodges, and reflection of the sun's rays on the lakes are suggested as the causes, is more or less prevalent throughout the territory; scrofulous complaints and skin-eruptions are of frequent occurrence, especially in the Sahaptin family. Other diseases are comparatively rare, excepting of course epidemic disorders like small-pox and measles contracted from the whites, which have caused great havoc in nearly all the tribes. Hot and cold baths are the favorite native remedy for all their ills, but other simple specifics, barks, herbs, and gums are employed as well. Indeed, so efficacious is their treatment, or rather, perhaps, so powerful with them is nature in resisting disease, that when the locality or cause of irregularity is manifest, as in the case of wounds, fractures, or snake-bites, remarkable cures are ascribed to these people. But here as elsewhere, the sickness becoming at all serious or mysterious, medical treatment proper is altogether abandoned, and the patient committed to the magic powers of the medicine-man. In his power either to cause or cure disease at will implicit confidence is felt, and failure to heal indicates no lack of skill; consequently the doctor is responsible for his patient's recovery, and in case of death is liable to, and often does, answer with his life, so that a natural death among the medical fraternity is extremely rare. His only chance of escape is to persuade relatives of the dead that his ill success is attributable to the evil influence of a rival physician, who is the one to die; or in some cases a heavy ransom soothes the grief of mourning friends and avengers. One motive of the Cayuses in the ma.s.sacre of the Whitman family is supposed to have been the missionary's failure to cure the measles in the tribe.

He had done his best to relieve the sick, and his power to effect in all cases a complete cure was unquestioned by the natives. The methods by which the medicine-man practices his art are very uniform in all the nations. The patient is stretched on his back in the centre of a large lodge, and his friends few or many sit about him in a circle, each provided with sticks wherewith to drum. The sorcerer, often grotesquely painted, enters the ring, chants a song, and proceeds to force the evil spirit from the sick man by pressing both clenched fists with all his might in the pit of his stomach, kneading and pounding also other parts of the body, blowing occasionally through his own fingers, and sucking blood from the part supposed to be affected. The spectators pound with their sticks, and all, including doctor, and often the patient in spite of himself, keep up a continual song or yell. There is, however, some method in this madness, and when the routine is completed it is again begun, and thus repeated for several hours each day until the case is decided. In many nations the doctor finally extracts the spirit, in the form of a small bone or other object, from the patient's body or mouth by some trick of legerdemain, and this once effected, he a.s.sures the surrounding friends that the tormentor having been thus removed, recovery must soon follow.[420]

Grief at the death of a relative is manifested by cutting the hair and smearing the face with black. The women also howl at intervals for a period of weeks or even months; but the men on ordinary occasions rarely make open demonstrations of sorrow, though they sometimes shed tears at the death of a son. Several instances of suicide in mourning are recorded; a Walla Walla chieftain caused himself to be buried alive in the grave with the last of his five sons. The death of a wife or daughter is deemed of comparatively little consequence. In case of a tribal disaster, as the death of a prominent chief, or the killing of a band of warriors by a hostile tribe, all indulge in the most frantic demonstrations, tearing the hair, lacerating the flesh with flints, often inflicting serious injury. The sacrifice of human life, generally that of a slave, was practiced, but apparently nowhere as a regular part of the funeral rites. Among the Flatheads the bravest of the men and women ceremonially bewail the loss of a warrior by cutting out pieces of their own flesh and casting them with roots and other articles into the fire. A long time pa.s.ses before a dead person's name is willingly spoken in the tribe. The corpse is commonly disposed of by wrapping in ordinary clothing and burying in the ground without a coffin. The northern tribes sometimes suspended the body in a canoe from a tree, while those in the south formerly piled their dead in wooden sheds or sepulchres above ground. The Okanagans often bound the body upright to the trunk of a tree. Property was in all cases sacrificed; horses usually, and slaves sometimes, killed on the grave. The more valuable articles of wealth were deposited with the body; the rest suspended on poles over and about the grave or left on the surface of the ground; always previously damaged in such manner as not to tempt the sacrilegious thief, for their places of burial are held most sacred. Mounds of stones surmounted with crosses indicate in later times the conversion of the natives to a foreign religion.[421]

[Sidenote: INLAND MORALITY.]

In character and in morals,[422] as well as in physique, the inland native is almost unanimously p.r.o.nounced superior to the dweller on the coast. The excitement of the chase, of war, and of athletic sports enn.o.bles the mind as it develops the body; and although probably not by nature less indolent than their western neighbors, yet are these natives of the interior driven by circ.u.mstances to habits of industry, and have much less leisure time for the cultivation of the lower forms of vice.

As a race, and compared with the average American aborigines, they are honest, intelligent, and pure in morals. Travelers are liable to form their estimate of national character from a view, perhaps unfair and prejudiced, of the actions of a few individuals encountered; consequently qualities the best and the worst have been given by some to each of the nations now under consideration. For the best reputation the Nez Perces, Flatheads and Kootenais have always been rivals; their good qualities have been praised by all, priest, trader and tourist. Honest, just, and often charitable; ordinarily cold and reserved, but on occasions social and almost gay; quick-tempered and revengeful under what they consider injustice, but readily appeased by kind treatment; cruel only to captive enemies, stoical in the endurance of torture; devotedly attached to home and family; these natives probably come as near as it is permitted to flesh-and-blood savages to the traditional n.o.ble red man of the forest, sometimes met in romance. It is the pride and boast of the Flathead that his tribe has never shed the blood of a white man. Yet none, whatever their tribe, could altogether resist the temptation to steal horses from their neighbors of a different tribe, or in former times, to pilfer small articles, wonderful to the savage eye, introduced by Europeans. Many have been nominally converted by the zealous labors of the Jesuit fathers, or Protestant missionaries; and several nations have greatly improved, in material condition as well as in character, under their change of faith. As Mr Alexander Ross remarks, "there is less crime in an Indian camp of five hundred souls than there is in a civilized village of but half that number. Let the lawyer or moralist point out the cause."

TRIBAL BOUNDARIES.

The Columbian Group comprises the tribes inhabiting the territory immediately south of that of the Hyperboreans, extending from the fifty-fifth to the forty-third parallel of north lat.i.tude.

[Sidenote: THE HAIDAH FAMILY.]

In the HAIDAH FAMILY, I include all the coast and island nations of British Columbia, from 55 to 52, and extending inland about one hundred miles to the borders of the Chilcoten Plain, the _Haidah nation_ proper having their home on the Queen Charlotte Islands. 'The Haidah tribes of the Northern Family inhabit Queen Charlotte's Island.' 'The Ma.s.settes, Skittegas, c.u.mshawas, and other (Haidah) tribes inhabiting the eastern sh.o.r.es of Queen Charlotte's Island.' _Scouler_, in _Lond.

Geog. Soc., Jour._, vol. xi., p. 219. 'The princ.i.p.al tribes upon it (Q.

Char. Isl.) are the Sketigets, Ma.s.sets, and Comshewars.' _Dunn's Oregon_, p. 292. 'Tribal names of the princ.i.p.al tribes inhabiting the islands:--Klue, Skiddan, Ninstence or Cape St. James, Skidagate, Skidagatees, Gold-Harbour, c.u.mshewas, and four others.... Hydah is the generic name for the whole.' _Poole's Q. Char. Isl._, p. 309. 'The c.u.mshewar, Ma.s.sit, Skittageets, Keesarn, and Kigarnee, are mentioned as living on the island.' _Ludewig_, _Ab. Lang._, p. 157. The following bands, viz.: Lulanna, (or Sulanna), Nightan, Ma.s.setta, (or Mosette), Nec.o.o.n, Aseguang, (or Asequang), Skittdegates, c.u.mshawas, Skeedans, Queeah, Cloo, Kishawin, Kowwelth, (or Kawwelth), and Too, compose the Queen Charlotte Island Indians, 'beginning at N. island, north end, and pa.s.sing round by the eastward.' _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. v., p. 489; and _Kane's Wand._, end of vol. 'The Hydah nation which is divided into numerous tribes inhabiting the island and the mainland opposite.'

_Reed's Nar._ 'Queen Charlotte's Island and Prince of Wales Archipelago are the country of the Haidahs; ... including the Kygany, Ma.s.sett, Skittegetts, Hanega, c.u.mshewas, and other septs.' _Anderson_, in _Hist.

Mag._, vol. vii., p. 74. 'Les Indiens Koumchaouas, Hadas, Ma.s.settes, et Skidegats, de l'ile de la Reine Charlotte.' _Mofras_, _Explor._, tom.

ii., p. 337. My Haidah Family is called by Warre and Vavasour _Quacott_, who with the Newette and twenty-seven other tribes live, 'from Lat. 54 to Lat. 50, including Queen Charlotte's Island; North end of Vancouver's Island, Millbank Sound and Island, and the Main sh.o.r.e.'

_Martin's Hudson's Bay_, p. 80.

The Ma.s.sets and thirteen other tribes besides the Quacott tribes occupy Queen Charlotte Islands. _Warre and Vavasour_, in _Martin's Hud. Bay_, p. 80.

The Ninstence tribe inhabits 'the southernmost portions of Moresby Island.' _Poole's Q. Char. Isl._, pp. 122, 314-15.

The Crosswer Indians live on Skiddegate Channel. _Downie_, in _B. Col.

Papers_, vol. iii., p. 72.

The _Kaiganies_ inhabit the southern part of the Prince of Wales Archipelago, and the northern part of Queen Charlotte Island. The Kygargeys or Kygarneys are divided by Schoolcraft and Kane into the Youahnoe, Clicta.s.s (or Clictars), Quiahanles, Houaguan, (or Wonagan), Shouagan, (or Showgan), Chatcheenie, (or Chalchuni). _Archives_, vol.

v., p. 489; _Wanderings_, end of vol. The Kygani 'have their head-quarters on Queen Charlotte's Archipelago, but there are a few villages on the extreme southern part of Prince of Wales Archipelago.'

_Dall's Alaska_, p. 411. A colony of the Hydahs 'have settled at the southern extremity of Prince of Wales's Archipelago, and in the Northern Island.' _Scouler_, in _Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour._, vol. xi., p. 219. 'Die Kaigani (Kigarnies, Kigarnee, Kyganies der Englander) bewohnen den sudlichen Theil der Inseln (Archipels) des Prinzen von Wales.'

_Radloff_, _Sprache der Kaiganen_, in _Melanges Russes_, tom. iii., livrais. v., p. 569. 'The Kegarnie tribe, also in the Russian territory, live on an immense island, called North Island.' _Dunn's Oregon_, p.

287. The Hydahs of the south-eastern Alexander Archipelago include 'the Ka.s.saaus, the Chatcheenees, and the Kaiganees.' _Bendel's Alex. Arch._, p. 28. 'Called Kaiganies and Kliavakans; the former being near Kaigan Harbor, and the latter near the Gulf of Kliavakan scattered along the sh.o.r.e from Cordova to Tonvel's Bay.' _Halleck and Scott_, in _Ind. Aff.

Rept._, 1869, p. 562-4. 'A branch of this tribe, the Kyganies (Kigarnies) live in the southern part of the Archipel of the Prince of Wales.' _Ludewig_, _Ab. Lang._, p. 80.

'To the west and south of Prince of Wales Island is an off-shoot of the Hydah,' Indians, called Anega or Hennegas. _Mahony_, in _Ind. Aff.

Rept._, 1869, p. 575.

The _Chimsyans_ inhabit the coast and islands about Fort Simpson. Ten tribes of Chymsyans at 'Chatham Sound, Portland Ca.n.a.l, Port Essington, and the neighbouring Islands.' _Warre and Vavasour_, in _Martin's Hudson's Bay_, p. 80. 'The Chimsians or Fort Simpson Indians.' _Tolmie_, in _Lord's Nat._, vol. ii., p. 231. 'Indians inhabiting the coast and river mouth known by the name of Chyniseyans.' _Ind. Life_, p. 93. The Tsimsheeans live 'in the Fort Simpson section on the main land.'

_Poole's Q. Char. Isl._, p. 257. Chimpsains, 'living on Chimpsain Peninsula.' _Scott_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1869, p. 553. The Chimmesyans inhabit 'the coast of the main land from 55 30' N., down to 53 30' N.'

_Scouler_, in _Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour._, vol. xi., p. 202; _Ludewig_, _Ab. Lang._, p. 40. The Chimseeans 'occupy the country from Douglas'

Ca.n.a.l to Na.s.s River.' _Simpson's Overland Journ._, vol. i., p. 206.

Divided into the following bands; Kis.p.a.chalaidy, Kitlan (or Ketlane), Keeches (or Keechis), Keenathtoix, Kitwillcoits, Kitchaclaith, Kelutsah (or Ketutsah), Kenchen Kieg, Ketandou, Ketwilkc.i.p.a, who inhabit 'Chatham's Sound, from Portland Ca.n.a.l to Port Essington (into which Skeena River discharges) both main land and the neighboring islands.'

_Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. v., p. 487; _Kane's Wand._, end of vol. The Chymsyan connection 'extending from Milbank Sound to Observatory Inlet, including the Seba.s.sas, Neecelowes, Na.s.s, and other offsets.'

_Anderson_, in _Hist. Mag._, vol. vii. p. 74. Mr. Duncan divides the natives speaking the Tsimshean language into four parts at Fort Simpson, Na.s.s River, Skeena River, and the islands of Milbank Sound. _Mayne's B.

C._, p. 250.

The Keethratlah live 'near Fort Simpson.' _Id._, p. 279.

The _Na.s.s_ nation lives on the banks of the Na.s.s River, but the name is often applied to all the mainland tribes of what I term the Haidah Family. The nation consists of the Kithateen, Kitahon, Ketoonokshelk, Kinawalax (or Kinaroalax), located in that order from the mouth upward.

_Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. v., p. 487; _Kane's Wand._, end of vol. Four tribes, 'Na.s.s River on the Main land.' _Warre and Vavasour_, in _Martin's Hudson's Bay_, p. 80. 'On Observatory Inlet, lat. 55.'

_Bryant_, in _Am. Antiq. Soc. Transact._, vol. ii., p. 302. Adjoin the Seba.s.sa tribe. _Cornwallis' N. El Dorado_, p. 107. About Fort Simpson.

_Dunn's Oregon_, p. 279. The Hailtsa, Haeeltzuk, Billechoola, and Chimmesyans are Na.s.s tribes. _Ludewig_, _Ab. Lang._, p. 130. See _Buschmann_, _Brit. Nordamer._, pp. 398-400.

'There is a tribe of about 200 souls now living on a westerly branch of the Naas near Stikeen River; they are called "Lackweips" and formerly lived on Portland Channel.' _Scott_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1869, p. 563.

The _Skeenas_ are on the river of the same name, 'at the mouth of the Skeena River.' _Warre and Vavasour_, in _Martin's Hudson's Bay_, p. 80.

They are the 'Kitsalas, Kitswingahs, Kitsiguchs, Kitspayuchs, Hagulgets, Kitsagas, and Kitswinscolds.' _Scott_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1869, p.

563.

Keechumakarlo (or Keechumakailo) situated 'on the lower part of the Skeena River.' _Schoolcraft's Arch._, vol. v., p. 487; _Kane's Wand._, end of vol.

The Kitswinscolds live 'between the Na.s.s and the Skeena.' _Scott_, in _Ind. Aff. Rept._, 1869, p. 563. The Kitatels live 'on the islands in Ogden's Channel, about sixty miles below Fort Simpson.' _Id._