By James G. Swan.
H. H. Bancroft, in his “Native Races, Pacific States,” Vol. I, p. 155, includes in the Haida family the nations occupying the coast and islands from the southern extremity of Prince of Wales Archipelago to the Bentinck Arms in about 52° N.
Their territory is bounded on the north and east by the Thlinkeet and Carrier nations of the Hyperboreans, and on the south by the Nootka family of the Columbians.
Its chief nations, or, more correctly speaking, bands, whose boundaries, however, can rarely be fixed with precision, are the Massets, Skiddegates, Cumshawas, Laskeets, and the Skringwai, of Queen Charlotte Islands: the Kaigani, Howkan, Klemakoan, and Kazan, of Prince of Wales Archipelago; the Chimsyans, about Fort Simpson and on Chatham Sound; the Nass and the Skenas, on the rivers of the same name; the Sebasses, on Pitt Archipelago and the shores of Gardiner Channel, and the Millbank Sound Indians, including the Hailtzas, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, etc.
Among all the tribes or bands belonging to the Haida family, the practice of tattooing the person in some manner is common; but the most marked are the Haidas proper, or those living on Queen Charlotte Islands, and the Kaiganis, of Prince of Wales Archipelago, Alaska. Of the Haida tribe, H. H. Bancroft says (Works 1882, Vol. I, p. 159), “Besides the regular lip piece, ornaments various in shape and material, of shell, bone, wood, or metal, are worn, stuck in the lips, nose, and ears, apparently according to the caprice or taste of the wearer, the skin being sometimes, though more rarely, tattooed to correspond.” The authors quoted by Bancroft for this information are Mayne’s British Columbia, p. 282; Barrett-Lennard’s Travels, pp. 45, 46; Poole’s Queen Charlotte Islands, pp. 75-311; Dunn’s Oregon, pp. 279, 285, and Reed, who says, “The men habitually go naked, but when they go off on a journey they wear a blanket.”
How this latter writer, presuming he speaks from personal experience, could have seen naked Haida men without noticing tattoo marks, I cannot understand. On page 182 of the same volume of Bancroft, footnote, is the following: “‘The habit of tattooing the legs and arms is common to all the women of Vancouver’s Island; the men do not adopt it.’ Grant, in Lond. Geog. Soc. Jour., Vol. XXVII, p. 307. ‘No such practice as tattooing exists among these natives.’ Sproat’s Scenes, p. 27.”
What Grant says applies not to the women of Vancouver’s Island, but to those of Queen Charlotte Islands. Sproat seems to have given more of his attention to some fancied terminal in their language, upon which he builds his theory of the “Aht” nation, than to the observance of their personal peculiarities. I am of the opinion, judging from my own observation of over twenty years among the coast tribes, that but few females can be found among the Indians, not only on Vancouver’s Island, but all along the coast to the Columbia River, and perhaps even to California, that are not marked with some device tattooed on their hands, arms, or ankles, either dots or straight lines; but of all the tribes mentioned, the Haidas stand pre-eminent for tattooing, and seem to be excelled only by the natives of the Fiji Islands or the King’s Mills Group in the South Seas. The tattoo marks of the Haidas are heraldic designs or the family totem, or crests of the wearers, and are similar to the carvings depicted on the pillars and monuments around the homes of the chiefs, which casual observers have thought were idols.
In a memoir written by me on the Haida Indians, for the Smithsonian Institution, and published as No. 267 of Contributions to Knowledge, I have given illustrations of various tattoo designs and heraldic carvings in wood and stone, but did not attempt to delineate the position or appearance of those designs upon their bodies or limbs, although all the tattoo marks represented in that memoir were copied by me directly from the persons of the Haidas, as stated in the illustrations.
The publication of this memoir, with its illustrations, which I showed to the Haidas and Kaiganis in 1875, during my cruise to Alaska in the United States revenue steamer Wolcott, gave them confidence in me that I had not made the drawings from idle curiosity, and in February, 1879, I was fortunate enough to meet a party of Haida men and women in Port Townsend, Washington, who permitted me to copy their tattoo marks again.
These designs are invariably placed on the men between the shoulders, just below the back of the neck, on the breast, on the front part of both thighs, and on the legs below the knee. On the women they are marked on the breast, on both shoulders, on both fore-arms, from the elbow, down over the back of the hands, to the knuckles, and on both legs below the knee to the ankle.