14 THEHAIDAH INDIANS OP 



and the white people having called the place and people Nootka, the Indians took 

 no pains to undeceive them. This is very common for Indians to do, even with 

 their own names, or the names of their friends. If a stranger, and particularly a 

 white man, makes a mistake in pronouncing or applying an Indian name, they 

 think it a good joke, and wish to perpetuate it. For instance, a white man asked 

 an Indian, &quot;what is your name V He replied, Halo&quot; which means, I have none. 

 The man thought that was the Indian s name, and always called him Halo. The 

 tribe liked the joke, and to this day this Indian is known among the whites as 

 Halo, and is so called by his tribe. 



Numberless instances could be adduced to show this very common custom of the 

 coast Indians, to take no pains to correct mistakes in language, but to consider 

 such errors as good jokes which arc to be kept in perpetuity. 



This illustration will serve to show how easy and natural it was for the white 

 man to make the mistake ; and how very natural it was for the Indians to keep up 

 the error with every succeeding party of white men who visited them. They 

 thought if Captain Cook called the place Nootka, it must be so, whether the 

 Indians called it so or not. The correct name of the place is Mowatchat, or Bowat- 

 chat, which means, the place of the deer, from Bo kwitch, a deer, which word has 

 been changed in the Jargon to Mowitch, a deer. Since the white men have called 

 the place for so many years Nootka, the Indians speak of it to a white man under 

 that name, just as they speak of the towns which have been settled by the whites, 

 as Victoria, or Port Townsend, or Dungeness, but among themselves they invari 

 ably call the place and people by their Indian names, and the Nootkans always 

 laugh at the mistake the white man made in naming them and their country after 

 a dance. 



I will not, at this time, press further this discussion upon a subject which to 

 perfectly understand will need extended observations to be made upon the spot, and 

 would require an explanation that would carry me beyond the limits to which I 

 purpose to confine myself in this present paper. I trust that it will be sufficient 

 for me to have shown that the subject of the carvings in wood and stone and 

 precious metals, the paintings and tattoo marks of the Haidahs, is one of very 

 great interest, and one which not only never has been properly explained, but 

 never properly understood. 



When we reflect on the great number of centuries during which all knowledge 

 of the interior of the Pyramids of Egypt was hidden from the world, until the 

 researches of Belzoni discovered their secret treasures, and until Champollion, by 

 aid of the llosetta stone, was enabled to decipher their hieroglyphical writings, 

 may we not hope that the knowledge of the ancient history of the natives of the 

 northwest coast, which has so long been an enigma, may be traced out by means 

 of the explanation of the meaning of the symbols such as I have been enabled to 

 discover in part, and have in this paper described? 



This very brief memoir, made during the visit of a party of Haidah Indians for 

 a few weeks in Port Townsend, will serve to show what could be effected if the 

 Government would empower some person here, and appropriate sufficient funds to 

 be expended in these ethnological and archa;ological researches. 



