LIBRARY 





The Canadian Field-Naturalis? 



VOL. XXXVI 



OTTAWA, ONT., SEPTEMBER, 1922. 



No. 6 



A BIOLOGICAL RECONNAISANCE ON GRAHAM ISLAND OF THE QUEEN 



CHARLOTTE GROUP 



By Clyde A. Patch. 



AT 6 30 am. on June 21, 1919, in company 

 with Mr. Harlan I. Smith, Archaeologist, 

 Victoria Memorial Museum, the writer 

 left Prince Rupert, British Columbia, on the tug 

 Point Gray, an oil burner engaged by the Munitions 

 Board to tow spruce rafts from Massett Inlet to the 

 mills at Ocean Falls. We arrived at Massett Re- 

 serve, Graham Island, about 3.30 p.m., where we 

 were kindly received by Mr. Thomas Deasy, 

 Indian Agent, and by Harry Wiah and Henry 

 Edenshaw, Indians. 



About 360 Haida Indians make their homes on 

 the Massett Reserve and gain a livelihood by fishing 

 salmon or by working in the salmon canneries. A 

 few Indians plant small patches of potatoes but 

 aside from this they are not successful agriculturists 

 nor could they be expected to evolve in one genera- 

 tion from sea-faring people into tillers of the soil. 

 We camped near the reserve wharf. 



It was with true regret that we viewed the main 

 street of Massett Reserve, which forty years ago 

 was bordered with hewn-plank houses and liberally 

 planted with wonderfully carved totem poles on 

 which the eagle, raven, bear, human being, mythical 

 "sea-dog," and the beaver a design introduced 

 from the mainland ^were used as motives. The 

 aboriginal-type houses have been replaced by 

 smaller clapboard dwellings, and only two totem 

 poles remain standing. At the long-deserted village 

 of Yan across the Inlet from Massett Reserve 

 several poles are still standing, and also several 

 burial posts. These burial arrangements consist of 

 two sections of log perhaps four feet in diameter and 

 ten feet in height, set in the ground a few feet apart. 

 Between the posts a carved and painted wooden 

 box was constructed in which, from time to time as 

 deaths occurred, bodies enclosed in smaller boxes 

 were placed. 



At intervals along the brow of the beach in front 

 of the Massett village lie cracked and disinte- 

 grating the once cleverly hewn and painted canoes, 

 which have been discarded for motor and row boats. 

 These canoes, hewn from a single log, were some- 



times made over sixty feet in length, and would 

 carry forty persons. With the exception of Charlie 

 Edenshaw, who is now blind, the expert carvers of 

 gold and silver ornaments hammered from coins 

 and miniature slate totem poles have passed away, 

 and the rich-hued and durable colors made of stone 

 dust and oil for use in basketry and other ornamen- 

 tation have been replaced by dye and paint. A 

 few of the handsome old cedar boxes, some of them 

 as large as a trunk, with three corners bent and the 

 fourth joined with wooden pegs and made from a 

 single plank still remain, but the grotesque cere- 

 monial masks and rattles and the picturesque hats 

 woven of spruce bark have disappeared. F believe 

 that within the next decade the true "oldtimers" 

 will have passed on to the Happy Hunting-ground, 

 and the Haida Indian and his works on Graham 

 Island will be archaic._ 



New Massett with an all-white population of 

 about seventy-five is three miles up the Inlet from 

 the reserve. Excepting the grassy flats several 

 square miles in area which border Delcatla Inlet, a 

 branch of Massett Inlet, and are partly inundated 

 at high tide, the vicinity of Massett is heavily 

 forested. A wagon road connects Massett Reserve 

 and New Massett, and from the latter place a road 

 about a mile in length runs through to the north 

 beach which, at low tide, is two and three hundred 

 yards in width. Excepting at high tide the sea- 

 packed sand of this beach makes a splendid roadbed 

 for traffic between Massett, Tow Hill and Rose Spit. 



On July 27, we moved camp to the bank of the 

 Hiellen River at Tow Hill twenty miles from 

 Massett. The three heavily wooded sides of Tow 

 Hill, which rises to an elevation of about four 

 hundred feet, are steep-sloping, while the seaward 

 side is an almost perpendicular rock face protected 

 at the base from sea erosion by a spray-washed 

 point of solid rock. From Tow Hill several wagon 

 roads with an aggregate length of about eight 

 miles have been built, but some parts of them, 

 owing to disuse, have become obstructed with alder 

 growth and fallen timber. Human, cattle, and 



