178 EEPOET — 1887. 



different dates for different portions of the map. The middle of the last 

 century might be taken for Ontario, Quebec, and the Eastern Provinces, 

 and the middle of the present century for the rest of the Dominion. If 

 each observer is careful to give the tribal and linguistic boundaries in 

 his own district, as he can learn them from the best informed natives and 

 from other sources, the separate contributions can be combined into a 

 general map by the editor of the report. 



Arts and Knowledge. — The published information as to the weapons 

 and implements, clothing, houses, and boats, and the rest of the numerous 

 appliances of native life on both sides of the Rocky Mountains is not so 

 deficient as the knowledge respecting other matters already mentioned ; 

 and their intellectual state, as shown in such arts as the reckoning of 

 time, the treatment of wounds, &c., is also to some extent known from 

 books of travel. Still every observant traveller finds something in savage 

 arts which has escaped former visitors, and there are a number of points 

 on which further inquiry is particularly invited. Though the practical use 

 of stone implements has almost or altogether ceased, there are still old 

 people who can show their ways of making them, and inquiry may prob- 

 ably show that stone arrow-heads, hatchets, &c., are still treasured as 

 sacred objects, as is the case among tribes in California, who carry in 

 their ceremonial dances knives chipped out of flint and mounted in handles 

 — relics of the Stone Age among their fathers. Notwithstanding the 

 o-eneral introduction of iron and steel tools by the whites, it is possible that 

 something may still be learnt as to the former use of native copper and of 

 meteoric iron (or iron supposed to be meteoric). With regard to native 

 weapons, the spliced Tatar bow being usual in this part of America (having 

 probably come over from Asia), it is desirable to examine further the 

 modes of making and using it, the forms of arrows, &c. Any game-traps 

 on the bow principle, if apparently of native origin, are worth describing, 

 as possibly bearing on the early history of the bow. The art of cooking 

 by water heated by dropping in red-hot stones having been characteristic 

 of the western region, any traces of this should be noticed, while the 

 native vessels carved out of wood or closely woven of fir root &c. are 

 still interesting. The native mode of twisting or spinning thread or yarn, 

 and the manufacture of a kind of cloth, not woven but tied across like 

 that of New Zealand, require fuller description. Especial attention is 

 required to the ornamental patterns of the region, which are of notable 

 peculiarity and cleverness. To a considerable extent a study of them on 

 hats and blankets, coats and pipes, &c., shows, in the first place, actual 

 representation of such natural objects as men or birds, or parts of them, 

 which have gradually lost their strictness and passed into mere ornamental 

 desio-ns ; but the whole of this subject, so interesting to students of art, 

 requires far closer examination than it has yet received, and especially 

 needs the comparison of large series of native ornamented work. 



Miisic and Armisements. — The ceremonial dances, especially those in 

 which the performers wear masks and represent particular animals or 

 characters, deserve careful description, from the information to be gained 

 from them as to the mythology and religion embodied in them. The 

 chants accompanying the dances should be written down with musical 

 accuracy — a task requiring considerable skill, though the accompaniments 

 of rattle and hollowed wooden drum are of the simplest. Several of the 

 games played among the ludians before the coming of the Europeans are 

 of interest from their apparent connection with those of the Old World. 



