392 BDREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 29 



each other. At that time all the sharpshooters among the Inlet-rear- 

 tow ii people were destroyed. 



Some time afterward a chief of the Inlet-rear-town people destroyed 

 a whole canoe load of the Eg-gs-of-Ski'tg.ao. The war ])egan again at 

 once. While they were still trying to kill one another, when I was 

 yet a hoy, there came a great pestilence,*' and, when the people on the 

 Haida islands were being destroyed, they stopped lighting. Then 

 there was peace. 



The first of these families was spoken of in "Story of the House-point famihes" 

 notes; the second was one of several divisions of the Rear-town people referred to in 

 note 6 to "Story of the Food-giving-town people." My informant's father belonged 

 to the Eggs-of-Ski^tg.ao or to a related family, hence his sympathies were rather on 

 their side. 



^ A stream, still so named in the charts, which flows into the upper expansion of 

 Masset inlet from the west. 



'^The companion of the man who had been shot, or possibly the man himself had 

 merely been injured. 



"Descent being counted through the mother, sons were bound to their nn)thers by 

 closer social ties than were husbands to wives. 



■* Wives being of the opposite clan, other families would have been dragged into the 

 struggle had any of the women been struck. To avoid this their canoes followed at 

 some distance. 



^ The native name for most of what now constitutes tiie town of Masset. 



•^This was on the opposite side of Masset inlet, farther down. Many of the house 

 frames are still standing. 



' He is said, however, although covered with wounds, to have been preserved from 

 death by a medicine which he had gone on purpose to test. 



''The smallpox. 



