498 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 9 



Where the detached totem poUs first appeared. — It is possible that 

 the custom of erecting detached poles as memorial columns to the 

 dead originated among the Tsimsyan of the lower Nass River, close 

 to the present Alaskan frontier on the coast. Or perhaps among 

 the Haida. But if it were more ancient there than elsewhere, it does 

 not date back very far. The old people have heard of the time when 

 two out of three of the Tsimsyan nations had no totem poles. One 

 of those nations along the coast in fact never quite adopted that 

 custom, as it passed under the banner of Christianity about 1850, a 

 decade or so before totem poles became the fashion in the north. 



It is more likely that the Tlingit in this respect imitated the Nass 

 Eiver people or the Haida than the reverse. Candlefish or ulaken 

 fishing made of the estuary of the Nass the most important thorough- 

 fare of native life in the north. Ulaken was a universal and 

 indispensable staple. Tribes of several nations gathered every spring 

 for the ulaken run in the neighborhood of the present Fishery Bay. 

 During several weeks, exchanges of all kinds, barter, social contacts, 

 and quarrels were normal. Cultural features of the Nass as a result 

 were observed by the strangers and imitated, the technique of weav- 

 ing ceremonial blankets later known as Chilkat blankets,® and wood 

 carving, in particular. The Nass Eiver carvers are known to this 

 day to have been about the best in that whole country, and their 

 totem poles were the finest seen anywhere. The 20 that stood there 

 until recently were on the whole the tallest and the best on the sea- 

 coast. They were also among the oldest. 



* The Nass River people claim to have been the earliest to weave this type of blanket ; 

 and it is stated, in Alaska, that the Chilkat (Tlingit) tribe merely "cashed in on it" at 

 a later date. The author, several years ago, collected one of the old Niskse blankets 

 at Gitlarhdamks ; and this specimen, with designs at variance with those of the later 

 Chilkats, is now at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto. 



