INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS DURING THE YEAR 1874. cxxix 



No. 267 of the Smithsonian Publications contains a pa- 

 per by Mr. James G. Swan on the Haidah Indians of Queen 

 Charlotte's Island. The memoir is exceedingly interesting, 

 both for the facts contained and for the relations which it 

 traces between these tribes and those living all along the 

 coast farther north. Accompanying the article are seven 

 well-executed lithographic plates, some of them colored, rep- 

 resenting: the carvings and designs of the Haidah Indians. 

 These designs stand for the family totems, and are tattooed 

 on their bodies. They erect, in front of the nouses of their 

 chiefs or principal men, carved posts or pillars fifty or sixty 

 feet high, so elaborately executed as to cost often several 

 thousand dollars, and looking like great obelisks. The en- 

 trance to the lodge is through a hole in the post near the 

 ground. The chief, or head man, owns the house, and the 

 occupants are his family and relatives, each of whom will 

 have on some part of the body a representation in tattoo 

 of the particular figure on the post which constitutes his or 

 her family name or connection. The chief will have all the 

 figures of the post tattooed on his body, to show his connec- 

 tion with the whole. 



Among the additions to our knowledge of the western 

 Indians made by the United States surveying parties are 

 reports by Lieutenant Colonel Wheeler, on the culture and 

 languages of the Apaches, Navajos, Tehuans, Tontos, Wal- 

 toans, Isolettes, and Moquis, and by Major J. W. Powell, on 

 further researches among the Utah Indians in the neighbor- 

 hood of the Uintah River. The major on a former trip gath- 

 ered, among a vast amount of precious material, thirty-six 

 chipped stone knives, set in handles. The blades are of chert, 

 chalcedony, jasper, obsidian, etc., oblong triangular, or ob- 

 long tongue-shaped, acute, and they so much resemble many 

 of the so-called lance and arrow heads in our collections that 

 we shall have to modify our views as to the use of many of 

 the latter. The handles are about three inches long, some 

 being merely round sticks three quarters of an inch in di- 

 ameter, and others flat. A notch half an inch deep receives 

 the blade, which is held in place by plenty of pitch melted 

 into the slit and around the joint. The Northern Boundary 

 Survey and Professor Hayden's party have also sent in some 

 valuable objects. 



