472 



REPORT — 1900. 

 A(jes in Relation to Conjugal Condition. 



The number of arpents under cultivation was 1 1 ,448, with cattle 3,107, 

 and sheep 85. No horses yet in the colony. All the sheep were run on 

 at River St. Charles, near Quebec. 



The land under cultivation shows an average of seventeen arpents per 

 family. The census of 1G81 has the same small proportion. 



APPENDIX II. 



Notesi on the Sk'qo'niic of Britif(h Columbia, ft, Brancli of the grfdt 

 Salish Stock of Rorth America. By C. Hill-Tout. 



The following notes on the Sk'qo'mic, a division of the Salish stock of 

 British Columbia, are a summary of the writer's studies of this tribe. While 

 he has sought to make them as comprehensive and complete as possible, he 

 is fully conscious that they are far fi'om being exhaustive. There are, 

 indeed, insuperable difficulties in the way of making really exhaustive 

 reports on any of our tribes at the present time. There are, in the first 

 place, many invincible prejudices to be overcome. Then there is the 

 difficulty of communicrr.tion, and when these have been partially overcome 

 there yet remains the difficulty of finding natives who possess the know- 

 ledge you are seeking. Not every Indian is an lagoo, a story-teller ; and 

 only the older men or women remember the old practices, customs, 

 manners, and beliefs of the tribe, and even these have forgotten much that 

 is important to know. These and other difficulties stand in the way of 

 complete and exhaustive investigation ; and I cannot better illustrate the 

 Jieed of pushing on our work among these interesting peoples without 

 further delay than by stating that since my last report was sent in my 

 principal informant among the N'tlaka'pamuQ, Chief Mischelle, from whom 

 I secured so much valuable information a year or so ago, has passed 

 away, and can render us no further aid. In a few years, all those who 

 lived under the old conditions in prse- missionary days, and who now alone 

 possess the knowledge we desire to gather, will have passed away, and our 

 chances of obtaininj: any further reliable information of the past will have 

 gone with them. 



In my work among the Sk'qo'mic I have been more than usually for- 

 tunate, and have been able to bring together much interesting matter not 

 previously known or recorded. 



Ethnofjraphy. 



The Sk'qo'mic constitute a distinct division of the Salish of British 

 Columbia and both in language and customs differ considerably from the 

 coast tribes on the one hand, and the interior tribes on the othei\ The 

 structural differences oi their speech are so great as to shut them off from 

 free intercourse with the contiguous Salish tribes. The tribe to-day numbers 

 less than two hundred souls, I believe, Formerly tliey were a 



