236 EEPOKT— 1888. 



could be easily induced to listen to sound advice. I do not believe that 

 it is too late to save the Indian frora utter destruction ; and we may still 

 hope that the spectacle of an intelligent race becoming more and more 

 degraded and vanishing from the earth's surface will cease to exert its 

 saddening influence upon the traveller who visits the shores of British 

 ■Columbia.' 



To this letter Dr. Boas adds the following : — 



Preliminary Notes ox the Indians op British Columbia. 



Although the Indians of the north-west coast of America belong to a 

 great number of linguistic stocks, and although their physical peculiarities 

 suggest that they belong to various races, their customs are so much 

 alike that it is impossible to describe one tribe without having reference 

 to all the others. For this reason it is necessary in a general survey to 

 treat their languages and their physical and ethnographical character 

 separately, although from the standpoint of the psychologist it would 

 seem more desirable to describe each tribe by itself. 



The following are the principal races inhabiting the province, including 

 the coast strip of Alaska: 1. the Tinne (or Tinneh), who occupy the 

 interior from the extreme north to Quesnelle and Chilcot in the south. 



2. The Tlingit, on the coast of Alaska ; and the Haida, on Queen Char- 

 lotte Islands and the southern part of Prince of Wales Archipelago. 



3. The Tsimshian, on Nass and Skeena Rivers and the adjoining islands. 



4. The Kwakiutl, from Douglas Channel to the central part of Vancouver 

 Island, excepting the west coast of that island and Dean Inlet and Ben- 

 tinck Ai'm. 5. The Nutka, of the west coast of Vancouver Island and 

 Cape Flattery. 6. The Salisb, on the south-eastern part of Vancouver 

 Island, on the mainland as far as Quesnelle Lake and Selkirk Range, and 

 on Bentinck Arm. 7. The Kutonaqa, on Kootenay Lake and River, and 

 ■ on the Upper Columbia. 



[Dr. Boas here gives brief notes on the grammatical structure peculiar 

 to each of the six linguistic stocks which he has studied — the Tlingit 

 (and Haida), Tsimpshian, Kwakiutl, Nutka, Salish, and Kutonaqa. It 

 has seemed advisable, however, to defer the publication of these notes 

 until they can appear in fuller form in the final report, where they will 

 be accompanied by the comparative vocabularies and the ethnographical 

 map, and can have the benefit of the author's revision of the proofs. 



In the Indian words compinsed in this report the vowels are to be 

 pronounced as in Italian, and the consonants, for the most part, as in 

 English. The letters k' and g' represent deep gutturals corresponding to 

 the ordinary h g. The // represents the German c/t in icli. The q denotes 

 the sound of the Scotch ch in locli. By tl an exploded I is indicated, and 

 by Z;' an exploded h^i, the u pronounced very indistinctly.] 



Social Organisation. 



I confine myself, in these preliminary notes, to a brief description of 

 the totemism of these tribes, leaving a more detailed discussion of the pre- 

 rogatives of the chiefs and of certain families to the final report. Among 

 the Tlingit and Haida we find a great number of crests, which, however. 



