FOOTNOTES:
[74] Yet they are by no means weak in the legs, a coast Indian being capable of long travel in the bush without tiring. The Hydahs of Queen Charlotte Island, and the Tlinkets and Kaloshes of the neighbouring mainland, are splendid specimens of men, tall, comparatively fair, large-headed, regularly-featured, and endowed with courage and intelligence, though their morals leave much to be desired. All the canoe Indians are very strong-handed, owing to the constant use of the paddle. In a scuffle with one of them, it does not do to let him get a grip; better prevent him from coming to close quarters, for in this case the white man has little chance. The Klahoquahts are the finest-looking of the Vancouver west coast tribes.
[75] I have rarely seen a corpulent Indian, and not one idiot, or a cripple so deformed that he was incapable of earning his livelihood. It is seldom that they are deformed from birth, and when they are, they generally disappear, so as not to be a burden on the tribe. As a facetious old savage remarked to me, when discussing that curious immunity from helplessness in his tribe, "The climate doesn't agree with them." The brother of Quisto, chief of the Pachenahts in 1865 (San Juan Harbour), was much deformed in the legs, but he was an excellent canoeman.
[76] Commonly the flattish nacreous portion of the Abelone, or Ear-shell (Haliotis Kamschatkiana), known as Apats-em, which is pawned or sold in times of scarcity. By constant removal and insertion, the septum of the nose, through which it is fastened, becomes in time so large that it will admit almost any kind of moderately-sized ornament. Feathers are frequently inserted, and more than once I have seen an Indian, clad in a blanket alone, denude himself of his single garment to hold biscuits or other goods, and dispose of his pipe by sticking it in the hole through his nasal septum, which, had times been better, would have been occupied with a piece of shell, either square, oblong, or of a horseshoe shape.
[77] This is the well-known Dentalium pretiosum, or Tooth-shell, generally known as the Hioqua. It is procured chiefly from Cape Flattery, on the southern side of Juan de Fuca Strait, and from Koskeemo Sound on the north. The "Aitizzarts" (Ayhuttisahts) probably obtained it by barter with the tribes on that part of the coast. It is not much used nowadays.—The Peoples of the World, vol. i. p. 60.
[78] This is powdered mica of the black variety. It is obtained in various places, from veins exposed, for the most part in the beds of streams.
[79] These seem to be the Nimpkish, from the Nimpkish River, south of Fort Rupert, on the eastern shore of Vancouver Island, who still frequently cross the island by a chain of rivers and lakes to Nootka Sound. This is confirmed by Jewitt writing in another place that they lived somewhat in the interior. It is doubtful whether he knew that the country in which he lived was an island. At all events, he never mentions it by that name. This route I have described in "Das Innere der Vancouver Insel" (Petermann, Geographische Mittheilungen, 1869).
[80] Enhydra lutris, or "Quiaotluck," now so rapidly decreasing in numbers that it can scarcely escape the fate of Steller's Rhytina.
[81] For an account of the habits and history of these valued animals, the reader is referred to The Countries of the World, vol. i. p. 304.
[82] The harpoon is at present a little different in construction. Pine resin, not "turpentine," is used for the purpose described, and the tips of deers' horns are utilised for the barbs. The most remarkable fact about the west coast of Vancouver Island whaling is its use of inflated sealskins to impede the motion of the animal through the water. This is an Eskimo contrivance in use by the Alaskans and other extreme northern tribes, from whom the West Vancouverians seem to have borrowed it. In Sproat's Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 226, there is an excellent description of whaling as practised in that part of Vancouver Island. The species pursued is usually finbacks, though a "black fish" with good whalebone is occasionally captured.
[83] The honour of using the harpoon is a hereditary privilege, enjoyed by only a few men in a tribe, and previous to the whaling season the crews have to practise all manner of ascetic practices in order to ensure good luck in the venture.
[84] This porpoise Dr. Gray considered, after examining a skull which I brought to the British Museum in 1866, to differ little, if at all, from the Phocæna communis of the Atlantic; but Dr. (afterwards Sir) W. H. Flower (List of the Specimens of Cetacea, etc., 1885, p. 16) seems to be of a different opinion.
[85] This "sea-cow," of which Meares also speaks as an animal hunted by the Nootka people, though rarely seen so far south, must, one might think, be another name for the seal or "sea-calf," were not the latter expressly referred to by name. The sea-cow, dugong, or manatee is not found in these seas, and the Rhytina Stelleri, once so abundant on Behring Island in Behring Strait, is generally considered to have been exterminated in the interval between 1741-1768. This, however, is hardly in accordance with fact, for, as evidence collected by Nordenskjöld proves, they were occasionally killed in 1780, while one was seen as late as 1854. It is therefore by no means improbable that in 1803 a few stragglers were still waiting their end on the shores of Vancouver Island. The sea-lion (Eumetopias Stelleri) is a seal also verging on extinction, the Otaria ursinus being now the fur seal of commerce (and politics) in that part of the North Pacific.
[86] A species of cedar (Thuja) is the wood used.