PLAN OF AYAN SUMMER HOUSE OF BRUSH.
There was a most decided Hebrew cast of countenance among many of the Ayans; more pronounced, in fact, than I have ever seen among savages, and so much so as to make it a subject of constant remark.
Their household implements were of the most primitive type,—such as spoons of the horn of the mountain goat, very similar to those of the Tlinkits, but by no means so well carved; and a few buckets, pans, and trays of birch-bark, ingeniously constructed of one piece so as not to leak, and neatly sewed with long withes of trailing roots. (The finer thread-like spruce roots, well-boiled, are, I believe, generally used by them in sewing their birch-bark canoes and utensils.)
Their present village was, as I have said, evidently only of a semi-permanent character, used in the summer during the time that salmon were ascending the river to spawn; the bright red sides of this fish, as they were hanging around, split open, forming a not inartistic contrast with the dark green spruce boughs of the houses and surrounding forests; the artistic effect, however, was best appreciated when holding one's nose. Scattered around in every direction was a horde of dogs that defied computation, and it must be an immense drain on their commissariat to keep these animals alive let alone in good condition. The amount of active exercise they took, however, would not suffice to reduce them in flesh, for their principal occupation seemed to be unlimited sleep.
KON-IT'L, CHIEF OF THE AYANS.
Although we were not successful in getting a photograph of the long group of dancers, we were more fortunate with a group of the chiefs and medicine-man "Hamlet," from which the portrait on this page, of Kon-it'l, their chief, is taken. It was impossible to get them to face the camera at such short range until one of the members of the exploring party took his position with them, while Mr. Homan secured the photograph.
The Ayan mothers, instead of carrying their babes on their backs with their faces to the front, as is usually done by savage women, unless when using a cradle, turn them around so as to have them back to back, and carry them so low as to fit as it were into the "small of the back."
