The boxes, food, dishes, implements, in short, everything used by the Haida, are richly carved or painted with the totems of owners, and illustrations of incidents of their lives, or legends of their totems. On most Haida drawings the eye is placed on the breast, ear, foot, etc., of the figure, to give the idea of general utility of the power of each number to look out for itself.
The carved box of black slate shown in the illustration has a sea lion on each end. Each of them has a salmon in its mouth. The face on the side of the box is “Hoots,” the brown bear, chewing up the hunter, and represents the same bear and hunter story as has been explained in connection with the totem column in front of the house.
There are many different types of rattles found in that region, the one given in this book being the most common form of shamens or medicine man’s rattle. It is carved of the famous yellow cedar wood and painted in several brilliant colors. The carving on the breast represents the sparrow hawk; the tail of the bird is carved to represent another bird’s head with a frog in its mouth. The frog is supposed to possess a poison in his head that the medicine man sucks out to give him power to work bad spells.
The figure on the back is Ka-ka-hete, the whistling demon, who lived in the mountains. He was capsized while traveling in his canoe one day and nearly drowned. He swam ashore and made for the woods for shelter. Some times he came down into the villages and stole the children, which he took into the woods with him and ate. In later times he transformed himself into a land otter. The two figures on the top of the rattle tell a story of Haida love-making. The front figure represents the boy, while the other one, the “birdie,” if you please, is the girl. The frog passing from one mouth to the other indicates that a lie has been told by one of them, and from the direction that he is traveling it appears that there, as elsewhere, the boy had to bear the blame of it. The rattle, taken as a whole, represents the great raven, with a brand of fire in his mouth, which the Haida nations worship as the creator and benefactor of the human race.
Before the whites came among them the Haidas made knives and daggers of stone and copper, but steel is mostly used among them now-a-days for such purposes. The daggers shown in the illustration have yellow cedar handles, and each has carved on it the individual totems of owner. One of them seems to be a chief of the beaver tribe, and is quite eminent, since there are four disks on his hat.
The Haida tribes are rapidly undergoing a change. They are not slow to abandon their own customs and adopt the methods of the Europeans. If scholars wish to systematically acquaint themselves with the interesting traditions of these people as illustrated by their carving, etching and painting, they would better be about it. Their works are rapidly deteriorating in the face of the new civilization and in the indifference of the present generation. In fact the only young men who now engage in such pursuits are the curio makers.
CHAPTER XXXIII
TOTEMISM AND SUPERSTITIONS
Those who have read of the wonderful totemic carvings of the Haidas will no doubt take an interest in the peculiar laws and customs, and the strange moral and esthetical standards of those remarkable people of the North. If judged by the highest standard of nineteenth century civilization, these people would not hold a very high position. But if they were compared to surrounding tribes when they first came in contact with whites, the thing that would be noticed most is the great progress they had themselves made in morals. When first visited by the early explorers these Indians, like all the other Indians on the coast, were bold shameless thieves. With them it was not dishonorable to steal, and, if caught, restitution settled the matter. On the other hand they discriminated between a friend and an enemy and seldom or never, stole from a guest and never robbed one of their own totem or clan. And to this day an unwatched camp or an unlocked house is, with them, sacredly respected, and the most valuable property that is hid in the woods is just as safe from other Indians as if guarded night and day. Unfortunately the white men have set some very bad examples in this respect and the Indians have not so often sinned as they have been sinned against.