The Haidahs use as temporary dwellings, in their frequent summer excursions for war and the hunt, simple lodges of poles, covered, among the poorer classes by cedar mats, and among the rich by skins. Their permanent villages are usually built in strong natural positions, guarded by precipices, sometimes on rocks detached from the main land, but connected with it by a narrow platform. Their town houses are built of light logs, or of thick split planks, usually of sufficient size to accommodate a large number of families. Poole mentions a house on Queen Charlotte Islands, which formed a cube of fifty feet, ten feet of its height being dug in the ground, and which accommodated seven hundred Indians. The buildings are often, however, raised above the ground on a platform supported by posts, sometimes carved into human or other figures. Some of these raised buildings seen by the earlier visitors were twenty-five or thirty feet from the ground, solidly and neatly constructed, an inclined log with notches serving as a ladder. These houses were found only in the southern part of the Haidah territory. The fronts were generally painted with figures of men and animals. There were no windows or chimney; the floors were spread with cedar mats, on which the occupants slept in a circle round a central fire, whose smoke in its exit took its choice between the hole which served as a door and the wall-cracks. On the south-eastern boundary of this territory, Mackenzie found in the villages large buildings of similar but more careful construction, and with more elaborately carved posts, but they were not dwellings, being used probably for religious purposes.[252]
FOOD OF THE HAIDAHS.
Although game is plentiful, the Haidahs are not a race of hunters, but derive their food chiefly from the innumerable multitude of fish and sea animals, which, each variety in its season, fill the coast waters. Most of the coast tribes, and all who live inland, kill the deer and other animals, particularly since the introduction of firearms, but it is generally the skin and not the flesh that is sought. Some tribes about the Bentinck channels, at the time of Mackenzie's visit, would not taste flesh except from the sea, from superstitious motives. Birds that burrow in the sand-banks are enticed out by the glare of torches, and knocked down in large numbers with clubs. They are roasted without plucking or cleaning, the entrails being left in to improve the flavor. Potatoes, and small quantities of carrots and other vegetables, are now cultivated throughout this territory, the crop being repeated until the soil is exhausted, when a new place is cleared. Wild parsnips are abundant on the banks of lakes and streams, and their tender tops, roasted, furnish a palatable food; berries and bulbs abound, and the inner tegument of some varieties of the pine and hemlock is dried in cakes and eaten with salmon-oil. The varieties of fish sent by nature to the deep inlets and streams for the Haidah's food, are very numerous; their standard reliance for regular supplies being the salmon, herring, eulachon or candle-fish, round-fish, and halibut. Salmon are speared; dipped up in scoop-nets; entangled in drag-nets managed between two canoes and forced by poles to the bottom; intercepted in their pursuit of smaller fish by gill-nets with coarse meshes, made of cords of native hemp, stretched across the entrance of the smaller inlets; and are caught in large wicker baskets, placed at openings in weirs and embankments which are built across the rivers. The salmon fishery differs little in different parts of the Northwest. The candle-fish, so fat that in frying they melt almost completely into oil, and need only the insertion of a pith or bark wick to furnish an excellent lamp, are impaled on the sharp teeth of a rake, or comb. The handle of the rake is from six to eight feet long, and it is swept through the water by the Haidahs in their canoes by moonlight. Herring in immense numbers are taken in April by similar rakes, as well as by dip-nets, a large part of the whole take being used for oil. Seals are speared in the water or shot while on the rocks, and their flesh is esteemed a great delicacy. Clams, cockles, and shell-fish are captured by squaws, such an employment being beneath manly dignity. Fish, when caught, are delivered to the women, whose duty it is to prepare them for winter use by drying. No salt is used, but the fish are dried in the sun, or smoke-dried by being hung from the top of dwellings, then wrapped in bark, or packed in rude baskets or chests, and stowed on high scaffolds out of the reach of dogs and children. Salmon are opened, and the entrails, head, and back-bone removed before drying. During the process of drying, sand is blown over the fish, and the teeth of the eater are often worn down by it nearly even with the gums. The spawn of salmon and herring is greatly esteemed, and besides that obtained from the fish caught, much is collected on pine boughs, which are stuck in the mud until loaded with the eggs. This native caviare is dried for preservation, and is eaten prepared in various ways; pounded between two stones, and beaten with water into a creamy consistency; or boiled with sorrel and different berries, and moulded into cakes about twelve inches square and one inch thick by means of wooden frames. After a sufficient supply of solid food for the winter is secured, oil, the great heat-producing element of all northern tribes, is extracted from the additional catch, by boiling the fish in wooden vessels, and skimming the grease from the water or squeezing it from the refuse. The arms and breast of the women are the natural press in which the mass, wrapped in mats, is hugged; the hollow stalks of an abundant sea-weed furnish natural bottles in which the oil is preserved for use as a sauce, and into which nearly everything is dipped before eating. When the stock of food is secured, it is rarely infringed upon until the winter sets in, but then such is the Indian appetite—ten pounds of flour in the pancake-form at a meal being nothing for the stomach of a Haidah, according to Poole—that whole tribes frequently suffer from hunger before spring.[253]
The Haidah weapons are spears from four to sixteen feet long, some with a movable head or barb, which comes off when the seal or whale is struck; bows and arrows; hatchets of bone, horn, or iron, with which their planks are made; and daggers. Both spears and arrows are frequently pointed with iron, which, whether it found its way across the continent from the Hudson-Bay settlements, down the coast from the Russians, or was obtained from wrecked vessels, was certainly used in British Columbia for various purposes before the coming of the whites. Bows are made of cedar, with sinew glued along one side. Poole states that before the introduction of fire-arms, the Queen Charlotte Islanders had no weapon but a club. Brave as the Haidah warrior is admitted to be, open fair fight is unknown to him, and in true Indian style he resorts to night attacks, superior numbers, and treachery, to defeat his foe. Cutting off the head as a trophy is practiced instead of scalping, but though unmercifully cruel to all sexes and ages in the heat of battle, prolonged torture of captives seems to be unknown. Treaties of peace are arranged by delegations from the hostile tribes, following set forms, and the ceremonies terminate with a many days' feast.[254] Nets are made of native wild hemp and of cedar-bark fibre; hooks, of two pieces of wood or bone fastened together at an obtuse angle; boxes, troughs, and household dishes, of wood; ladles and spoons, of wood, horn, and bone. Candle-fish, with a wick of bark or pith, serve as lamps; drinking vessels and pipes are carved with great skill from stone. The Haidahs are noted for their skill in the construction of their various implements, particularly for sculptures in stone and ivory, in which they excel all the other tribes of Northern America.[255]
HAIDAH MANUFACTURES.
The cedar-fibre and wild hemp were prepared for use by the women by beating on the rocks; they were then spun with a rude distaff and spindle, and woven on a frame into the material for blankets, robes, and mats, or twisted by the men into strong and even cord, between the hand and thigh. Strips of otter-skin, bird-feathers, and other materials, were also woven into the blankets. Dogs of a peculiar breed, now nearly extinct, were shorn each year, furnishing a long white hair, which, mixed with fine hemp and cedar, made the best cloth. By dyeing the materials, regular colored patterns were produced, each tribe having had, it is said, a peculiar pattern by which its matting could be distinguished. Since the coming of Europeans, blankets of native manufacture have almost entirely disappeared. The Bellacoolas made very neat baskets, called zeilusqua, as well as hats and water-tight vessels, all of fine cedar-roots. Each chief about Fort Simpson kept an artisan, whose business it was to repair canoes, make masks, etc.[256]
The Haidah canoes are dug out of cedar logs, and are sometimes sixty feet long, six and a half wide, and four and a half deep, accommodating one hundred men. The prow and stern are raised, and often gracefully curved like a swan's neck, with a monster's head at the extremity. Boats of the better class have their exteriors carved and painted, with the gunwale inlaid in some cases with otter-teeth. Each canoe is made of a single log, except the raised extremities of the larger boats. They are impelled rapidly and safely over the often rough waters of the coast inlets, by shovel-shaped paddles, and when on shore, are piled up and covered with mats for protection against the rays of the sun. Since the coming of Europeans, sails have been added to the native boats, and other foreign features imitated.[257]
TRADE AND GOVERNMENT.
Rank and power depend greatly upon wealth, which consists of implements, wives, and slaves. Admission to alliance with medicine-men, whose influence is greatest in the tribe, can only be gained by sacrifice of private property. Before the disappearance of sea-otters from the Haidah waters, the skins of that animal formed the chief element of their trade and wealth; now the potatoes cultivated in some parts, and the various manufactures of Queen Charlotte Islands, supply their slight necessities. There is great rivalry among the islanders in supplying the tribes on the main with potatoes, fleets of forty or fifty canoes engaging each year in the trade from Queen Charlotte Islands. Fort Simpson is the great commercial rendezvous of the surrounding nations, who assemble from all directions in September, to hold a fair, dispose of their goods, visit friends, fight enemies, feast, and dance. Thus continue trade and merry-making for several weeks. Large fleets of canoes from the north also visit Victoria each spring for trading purposes.[258]
Very little can be said of the government of the Haidahs in distinction from that of the other nations of the Northwest Coast. Among nearly all of them rank is nominally hereditary, for the most part by the female line, but really depends to a great extent on wealth and ability in war. Females often possess the right of chieftainship. In early intercourse with whites the chief traded for the whole tribe, subject, however, to the approval of the several families, each of which seemed to form a kind of subordinate government by itself. In some parts the power of the chief seems absolute, and is wantonly exercised in the commission of the most cruel acts according to his pleasure. The extensive embankments and weirs found by Mackenzie, although their construction must have required the association of all the labor of the tribe, were completely under the chief's control, and no one could fish without his permission. The people seemed all equal, but strangers must obey the natives or leave the village. Crimes have no punishment by law; murder is settled for with relatives of the victim, by death or by the payment of a large sum; and sometimes general or notorious offenders, especially medicine-men, are put to death by an agreement among leading men.[259] Slavery is universal, and as the life of the slave is of no value to the owner except as property, they are treated with extreme cruelty. Slaves the northern tribes purchase, kidnap, or capture in war from their southern neighbors, who obtain them by like means from each other, the course of the slave traffic being generally from south to north, and from the coast inland.[260]