6 Gro. 5 : ProvinciAL Museum REPORT. N 11 



Stories accompanying Slate Totem-poles from Queen Charlotte Islands. 
No, 2866. Nahnasimgh was a mighty warrior ; one day when his wife was on the beach, 
the King of the Whales saw her and carried her off. _Nahnasimgh followed them to the whale 
country, where he succeeded in rescuing her, but was hotly pursued by the whales. The 
fugitives ran until they met the Giant Mud Crane, who hid them in his breast feathers. 
When the whales came to the crane they asked him if he had seen any one, and he said that 
he had not. So the whales went another way and Nahnasimgh and his wife went home and 
lived Baypaly ever after. Moral: It is quite right to tell lies when your friends are in trouble. 
(Pole No. 2866 shows the Crane, Nahnasimgh, his wife, with the lip-jewel and bracelets of a 
lady of quality, and the Whale.) 
No. 2867. Shows the wife of Nahnasimgh being carried off, holding the whale’s back 
fin. 
No. 2868. The Beaver’s Lake. Once upon a time all the fish belonged to the Beaver, 
who kept them in a lake behind his house. The Raven (who made the world out of what he 
could steal and became the ancestor of the Haida Indians) wanted the fish, so one day he 
dressed up as a poor man, met the beaver one evening, and asked for a night’s lodging. “The 
Beaver had just come home from a gambling-feast, and was feeling pretty good, so he took 
him in. After supper the Beaver went to sleep and the Raven stole out of the back door, 
picked up the lake in his beak and flew off with it. He gave it to the Indians. Moral: It is 
quite right to steal for your friends. (No. 2868 shows the Raven dressed as a poor man, then 
the Raven carrying the lake with the fishes in it, and the Beaver.) 
No. 2869. The Bear saw the above, and told it. The Beaver had to take to chewing a 
stick for a living, and has done so ever since. The face on the tail seems to indicate that the 
Beaver had human intelligence at that time. 
No. 2870. The Raven and the Fisherman. The Raven when he was hungry used to 
dive down under the water and steal the bait off the Fisherman’s hook. Once he got the hook 
caught in his beak, and the Fisherman, thinking he had caught a fish, pulled in the line so 
hard that the Raven’s beak broke off. The Fisherman was much astonished to find the 
Raven’s beak on his hook. As for the Raven, he had to go with his face hidden until his 
beak grew again. Moral: The best of us get into trouble sometimes. 
No. 2871. Tllustrates the story of the Raven’s Midnight Feast. The Raven was visiting 
some Indians. In the night when all were asleep, except a half-human-half-whale creature 
who saw and told the story, he stole out and soon came back with something under his wing. 
He scraped the fire aside and dropped his burden in the hot ashes. When it went off with a 
“pop” he ate it. Then he went out again and did the same thing. This happened many 
times. In the morning it was found that all the other inhabitants of the village had lost one 
eye each. Moral: Feed your guests well so that they won't get hungry in the night. 
No. 2872. The Raven in Disguise. One time the Raven disguised himself as a woman, 
and came to live with the Indians. After living with them for some time they saw him eating 
fish on the beach, so they recognized him and he flew away. (No. 2872 identifies the Raven 
as the great one, by showing his partner, the Eagle, who could eat a whale.) 
No. 2873. Kholqu’ haludi. Kholqu’haludi was a little boy who was always late for his 
meals. One day he came in too late for dinner and his mother would give him nothing but a 
piece of dried salmon. He went down to the beach to eat it, and dipped it into the water to 
soften it. The King of the Salmon saw him and carried him off and turned him into a salmon. 
The next year when the salmon began to run, Kholqu’haludi’s father caught a fine big fish in 
the stream and took it home to eat. When he started to cut its head off, just inside the skin 
his knife struck copper. He remembered that the boy had worn a copper ring around his neck, 
so he took the salmon outside and laid it on the ground under the drip of the roof. As the 
water fell on it the salmon skin sloughed off, rev ealing Kholquwhaludi inside. The boy grew 
up to be a great medicine man, but he always had a sore neck where his father had started to 
cut the salmon’s head off. (This plate shows Kholqu’haludi emerging from the salmon skin, 
holding in his hand the short wand used by Haida medicine men.) 
MamMALs. 
The collection of mammals on the first floor is now so crowded that it is impossible to 
adequately display them. It has been the intention to carry on the work started several years 
ago, in grouping the different species and displaying them with painted backgrounds illustr ating 
