234 REPORT— 1888. 



These differences are ia part due to artificial deformation. It seems, 

 however, that this explanation is not sufficient. These tribes belong to 

 the Salish stock. 



' As soon as an opportunity offered to start northward, I left Victoria 

 and stayed the greater part of June in Port Essington, where I studied 

 the customs and language of the Tsimshian, and obtained notes on the 

 Haida. When returning to Victoria a few Heiltsuk from Bella Bella 

 were on board the vessel, and I obtained notes on this tribe, which sup- 

 plement to some extent my former observations. After my return ta 

 Victoria I took up the Tlingit and Haida languages, and when several 

 canoes from the west coast of Vancouver Island arrived, that of the 

 Nutka. In the beginning of July, Father .1. Nicolai, who is thoroughly con- 

 versant with the Nutka language, arrived there from Kayokwaht, and in 

 a number of conversations gave me valuable information regarding the 

 grammar of that language. I obtained information respecting their 

 legends and customs from a few natives, and on July 11 went to the main- 

 land. After staying two days in Lytton I proceeded to Golden and up 

 the Columbia river, in order to devote the rest of the available time to- 

 the Kootenay. On July 26 I returned east. 



' The results of my reconnoissance are necessarily fragmentary, as I was 

 not able to devote more than a few days to each tribe. I obtained, how- 

 ever, sufficient material to determine the number of linguistic stocks, and 

 the number of important dialects of those stocks which I visited. The 

 vocabularies which I collected during my former and on the present trip 

 contain from 500 to 1,000 words, and embrace the following languages : 

 Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Kwakiutl (Heiltsuk and Lekwiltok dialects),. 

 Nutka, Salish (Bilqula, Pentlatsh, Comox, Nanaimo, Lkungen, Sishiatl, 

 Skqomish, Ntlakapamuq dialects), and Kootenay. I obtained, also, gram- 

 matical notes on all these languages, and texts in some of them. 



' I may be allowed to add a few remarks on future researches on the 

 ethnology of British Columbia. Only among the tribes from Bentinck 

 Arm to Johnson Strait the customs of the natives may be studied 

 uninfluenced by the whites. But here, also, their extinction is only a 

 question of a few years. Catholic missionaries are working successfully 

 among the N^utka ; the fishing and lumbering industries bring the 

 natives of the whole coast into closer contact with the whites. In all 

 other parts of the country, except on the upper Skeena, the student is, 

 to a great extent, compelled to collect reports from old people who have 

 witnessed the customs of their fathers, who heard the old myths told over 

 and over again. In the interior of the province even these are few, and it is 

 only with great difiBculty that individuals well versed in the history of olden 

 times can be met with. After ten years it will be impossible in this i-egion 

 to obtain any reliable information regarding the customs of the natives in 

 pre-Christian times. Even the languages are decaying since the advent 

 of the whites and on account of the extensive use of Chinook. Young 

 people neither understand the elaborate speeches of old chiefs nor the old 

 songs and legends when properlj^ told. Even the elaborate grammatical 

 rules of these languages are being forgotten. For instance, old Nutka 

 will never form the plural of the verb without reduplication, while young 

 men almost always omit it. Instead of the numerous modi, phrases are 

 used — in short, the languages are decaying rapidly. The study of the 

 anthropological features of these races is also becoming more and more 

 diSicult on account of their frequent intermarriages with whites ; and the 



