﻿NO. 7 SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I926 1 79 



to sea off the coast of British Columbia. The Haida Indians, like all 

 the tribes along this island-studded coast, were great travellers, making 

 journeys of hundreds of miles in their huge dugout war canoes, often 

 for the mere love of adventure, but usually in search of new fishing 

 grounds or to carry on trade with neighboring tribes. The Indian 

 had to follow the salmon to its new spawning places whenever for 

 unknown reasons it migrated to different spawning beds from those 

 near the Indian's ancestral village. In his quest for food, the Alaska 

 Indian was often forced to abandon his well established village with 

 its large framed houses of split cedar slabs and decorative crested 

 totem poles. 



The reason for the coming of the Haida to Old Kasaan was of 

 an entirely different order. Family life among them was communal 

 and consequently rather complicated. It often led its members into 

 difificulties. Each house was lutilt large enough to accommodate two 

 or three generations, together with their slaves and retainers. The 

 house floor was arranged in platforms, each succeeding platform 

 being built on a level two or three feet higher, beginning at the 

 deeply excavated centrally located fireplace, until the outer platform 

 or the one next to the walls of the house was reached. This platform 

 was flush with the ground level on the outside. Each section of the 

 house was assigned to different divisions of the large family. The head 

 of the house, who was often the chief of the clan as well, together with 

 his wife occupied the place of honor on the platform back of the 

 carved house posts at the rear of the house. The slaves, strange to 

 say, gathered and slept at the! front of the house nearest the only exit. 



The fire burned at the center on the lowest part of the excavated 

 floor sections. In one house at old Fort Tongass there are nine 

 different levels excavated so that the fireplace at the center appears 

 from the front entrance to be at the bottom of a pit. The fireplace 

 is a squared section of bare earth or stone ; coals and ashes raise it 

 a few inches above the floor level immediately surrounding, and it is 

 enclosed with a frame of hewn logs or slabs. On this level, about 

 the fire on the bare floor or on mats of woven cedar bark, with their 

 feet toward the fire, slept the members of the family during cold and 

 inclement weather. 



The narrative of the coming of the Haida to Kasaan is an involved 

 one and includes a story of family dissension culminating in the mur- 

 der of one chief by his own brother, who was also his rival. The 

 murder caused the villagers to take sides and led to the removal of the 

 slayer and his adherents far to the north and to the ultimate settlement 

 of Old Kasaan. 



