ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 355 



Ethnological Studies of the Mainland HalkoniE'lEm, a division of the 

 Salish of British Columbia. By Chas. Hill-Tout. 



The following notes are a summary of the writer's studies of the 

 Lower Fraser Indians. They deal chiefly with the Tcil'Qe'uk and 

 Kwa'ntlEn tribes. The Indians inhabiting the Lower Fraser district 

 comprise in all some fourteen or fifteen separate tribes, an enumeration 

 of which was given by Dr. F. Boas in his Heport on the Physical 

 Characteristics of the North- West Tribes. ^ They occupy the shores of 

 the estuary, extending up the river as far as Spuzzum, which forms the 

 dividing-line between them and the N'tlaka'pamuQ beyond. Collectively 

 they are known to themselves as the Halkome'lEn or Henkome'uEin people. 

 By this convenient term I shall speak of them hereafter. The name, 

 according to my informants, signifies * those who speak the same 

 language.' This division of the Salish is not confined to the Mainland. 

 An important branch of it is found on Vancouver Island, over against 

 the estuary. The speech of both branches, although exhibiting interest- 

 ing dialectical differences, is mutually intelligible. The Halkome'lEm 

 tribes occupy a larger and more scattered territory than any other of 

 the Salish divisions of British Columbia, the distance between the most 

 eastern and the most western tribes being upwards of 200 miles. When 

 it is remembered that the speech of the Salish tribes which border upon 

 them on every side is so strange and different as to be quite unintelligible 

 to the Halkome'lEm people, the practical homogeneity of their own speech, 

 despite the fact of their widely scattered territories, has a significance we 

 cannot afford to overlook. It assuredly reveals to us, as plainly as the 

 unwritten past can be revealed, that they cannot have occupied their 

 present territories for any considerable time. The intercourse between 

 the different tribes, as far as can be gathered from themselves, was never 

 very free or extended, the nature of the country forbidding this. Con- 

 sequently we should find vastly greater divergence in the speech of the 

 upper and lower, the Mainland and Island, tribes than is the case if they 

 had been settled for any great length of time in theii' present quarters. 

 While the Salish language as a whole, with its dozens of dialects and 

 scores of sub-dialects, displays such capacity for dialectical variation as 

 it does, we can hardly believe that the same tendency to change is absent 

 from the Halkome'lEm speech. We may safely conclude, therefore, that 

 the Halkome'lEm tribes are comparative late-comers in the territories 

 they now occupy. All lines of available evidence tend to confirm this 

 view.2 Whether the Island or the Mainland tribes constitute the parent 

 branch, or whether the Island or the Mainland was the earlier home of 

 the division, cannot now be determined. This, and the kindred question 

 of the original home of the whole undivided Salish stock, will be dealt 

 with later, when our investigations have covered the whole field of inquiry. 



The Tcil'ae'uk. 



Ethnography, 



The Tcil'Qe'uk have greatly decreased in number during the past two 

 generations, though they do not appear to have ever been a populous tribe, 

 even in the old days. As at present constituted the tribe is subdivided 



• Ninth Report Brit. Assoc, 1894. 



* See the evidence on this head under ' Archjeology ' below. 



A A2 



