496 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1939 



paintings. Two or three drawings were made by the visitors at the 

 time, in particular the sketch by Webber, in Captain Cook's Voyages, 

 showing the carved posts inside a Nootka house on Vancouver Island. 

 Haswell,^ in 1787-1789, wrote: "* * * For ornaments they (the 

 sides of the houses) have pillars supporting the poles carved into the 

 shape of human faces with distorted features, beasts and imaginary 

 animals * * *." Hoskins,* in 1790-1793, noted that: "their head 

 villages are neatly and regularly built ; the houses end on with pitched 

 roofs ; in front is a large post reaching above the roof, neatly carved 

 but with the most distorted figures ; at the bottom is an oval or round 

 hole which is either the mouth or the belley of some deformed object. 

 This serves for a doorway * * *." W. A. Newcombe ° states that 

 in "a Quimper Manuscript" (re house poles on Clayoquot Sound, 

 1790), Wicananish house is said to have had "carved house supports 

 as well as the doorway pole * * *." 



Capt. Joseph Ingraham's'^ description may imply that two totem 

 poles, in 1790-1792, already were of the detached type, standing away 

 from the house front. "I went to view two pillars which were situated 

 in front of a village * * * on the north shore ; they were about 40 

 feet in height, carved in a very curious manner, indeed representing 

 Men, Toads, etc., the whole of which I tho't did great credit to the 

 natural genius of these people. In one of the houses of this village, 

 the door was through the mouth of one of the before-mentioned images 

 * * *"(p. 107). "* * * Before one of the Houses were 4 Images 

 resembling the Human form and otherwise curiously carved." 



From a few of those records,'' it is clear that the typical stylization 

 of west coast art already existed in the neighborhood of the present 

 Alaskan frontier. But it must have been fairly restricted in scope, 

 at the time, and also in the area of its diffusion. Was this stylization 

 aboriginal or derivative? It had every chance of being derivative. 

 Yet it is difficult to say whence it would have been derived, for the 

 lack of sufficient comparative data. Advanced stylization can be the 

 result only of intense cultural development, such as never had hap- 

 pened on the North Pacific coast in prehistoric times. 



From distant resemblances, it seems that some of the designs, like 

 the culture itself, are of an Asiatic type. The use of masks is fairly 

 modern among the northernmost nations of the coast, but it seems to 

 have been common on Vancouver Island at the time of the discovery. 



* Voyages round the World in Oolumlia Rediviva and sloop, 1787-1789. Transcript In 

 the Provincial Archives, Victoria, B. C, observed by Dr. Diamond Jenness. 



* Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America and China, 1790-1793. (He was, according 

 to Dr. Jenness, officer on the same vessel, Columbia RecLiviva, under Captain Gray.) 



» Victoria, B. C. 



•Journal of the brigantlne Eope of Boston, 1790-1792. Stated to be in the Library 

 of Congress, Washington, D. C. (Transcript in the Provincial Archives. Victoria, B. C.) 



' See Voyage round the World, performed in 17S5, 1786, 1787, and 1788, By Capt. Geo. 

 Dixon ; ill. facing p. 188 ; lA, a cai-ved dish, from Queen Charlotte Isles ; 2A, front view. 



