mallert.j TATTOOING IN NORTH AMERICA. 67 



.such practice as tattooing exists among these natives.' Sproat's 

 Scenes, p. 27." 



What Grant says applies not to the women of Vancouver's Island, but 

 to those of Queen Charlotte Islands. Sproat seems to have given more 

 of his attention to some fancied terminal in their language, upon which 

 he builds his theory of the "Aht" nation, than to the observance of their 

 personal peculiarities. I am of the opinion, judging from my own ob- 

 servation of over twenty years among the coast tribes, that but few 

 females can be found among the Indians, not only on Vancouver's 

 Island, but all along the coast to the Columbia Eiver, and perhaps even 

 to California, that are not marked with some device tattooed on their 

 hands, arms, or ankles, either dots or straight lines ; but of all the 

 tribes mentioned, the Haidas stand pre eminent for tattooing, and 

 seem to be excelled only by the natives of the Fiji Islands or the King's 

 .Mills Group in the South Seas. The tattoo marks of the Haidas are 

 heraldic designs or the family totem, or crests of the wearers, and are 

 similar to the carvings depicted on the pillars and monuments around 

 the homes of the chiefs, which casual observers have thought were idols. 



In a memoir written by me on the Haida Indians, for the Smith- 

 sonian Institution, and published as No. 267 of Contributions to Kuowl 

 edge, I have given illustrations of various tattoo designs and heraldic 

 carvings in wood and stone, but did not attempt to delineate the posi- 

 tion or appearance of those designs upon their bodies or limbs, although 

 all the tattoo marks represented in that memoir were copied by me di- 

 rectly from the persons of the Haidas, as stated in the illustrations. 



The publication of this memoir, with its illustrations, which I showed 

 to the Haidas and Kaiganis in 1875, during my cruise to Alaska in 

 the United States revenue steamer Wolcott, gave them confidence in 

 me that I had not made the drawings from idle curiosity, and in Febru- 

 ary, 1879, I was fortunate enough to meet a party of Haida men and 

 women in Port Townsend, Washington, who permitted me to copy their 

 tattoo marks again. 



These designs are invariably placed on the men between the shoul- 

 ders, just below the back of the neck on the breast, on the front part 

 of both thighs, and on the legs below the knee. On the women they 

 are marked on the breast, on both shoulders, on both fore-arms, from 

 the elbow, down oyer the back of the hands, to the knuckles, and on 

 both legs below the knee to the ankle. 



When the Haidas visit Victoria or the towns on Puget Sound they 

 are dressed in the garb of white people and present a respectable ap- 

 pearance, in marked contrast with the Indians from the west coast of 

 Vancouver's Island, or the vicinity of Cape Flattery, who dress in a 

 more primitive manner, and attract notice by their more picturesque 

 costumes than do the Haidas, about whom there is nothing outwardly 

 of unusual appearance, except the tattoo marks on the hands of the 

 women, which shosv their nationality at a glance of the most careless 

 observer. 



