42 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



furnish evidence of the common origin of the Niskwalli^ of the south-west corner of 

 British Columbia, and of the natives of Mysol, in the Malay Archipelago. 



The Salish are regarded by Latham and other writers as an inland people, 

 although some of them, such as the Niskwalli, dwell on the sea coast and on islands. 

 They are, however, to a certain extent, cultivators of the ground, as are the inhabit- 

 ants of the Malay Archipelago. The latter use the word jagung to denote maize, 

 but the absence of that English term in all my vocabularies of the Salishan, save the 

 Niskwalli, forbids the tracing oi jagung to this continent. The Niskwalli word for 

 maize is stulels, and this is undoubtedly the Saparua halal, the Liang allar, the 

 Wahai allan, the Cajeli halai, and the Batumerah allai, which mean rice. In 

 Polynesia the term is applied to the chief article of vegetable food, the Colocasia 

 esculenta, called taro in Maori, talo in Tonga, and telaa in Rotuma. The Niskwalli 

 stulels is an indication of a bread-making people, who are of necessity husbandmen. 

 The principal Salishan deity seems to have been Dokwibutl. The first part of this 

 word resembles dugwe, thou, and may thus represent invocation. Among the Dyaks- ' 

 of Borneo the chief god is Battara ; the Tagalas worshipped Bathala Meycapal ; and 

 the people of Tobi called their divine progenitor, Pitakat. According to the Samoans, 

 the first man was the product of the male principle Fatu and the female, Ele-ele, 

 whence his name, Fatu-ele-ele. It is likely that these forms conceal the name of 

 some eponym of the Malay-Polynesian people, or, at least, of a portion of them. In 

 Sanchoniatho's Phoenician History, the second son of the ancestral Ouranus is called 

 Betylus, and many things favour the derivation of the Malays from Canaanites of 

 Semitic speech. Crawford says that Batara Guru, whom the people of Celebes call 

 the first of their kings, is a local name of Siva. This statement is worthy of more 

 than doubt. 



Indian invasions of the Malay Archipelago, both Buddhist and Brahman, took 

 place in or before the twelfth century, and, towards the close of the fifteenth, the 

 Mahometans followed. These invasions caused great displacements of population 

 for it is the warlike code of the Pacific Islanders to offer the conquered party the 

 alternative of expatriation or extermination. Doubtless such alternatives were 

 offered prior to the Asiatic invasions. It is clear, however, that the Salishans have 

 not been displaced since they reached the American coast, while the Algonquins, of 

 similar origin, have been driven into the far East, even to the shores of the Atlantic 

 The immigrants from Northern Asia reached British Columbia and Oregon as early 

 as the beginning of the eighth century, and, finding the Algonquins there before 

 them, drove them inland and eastward. The tideof northern Asiatics, called Toltecs- 

 and Aztecs, Otomis and Chichimecs, Sonora and Piieblo Indians, Muskhogeans,. 

 Iroquois-Cherokees and Dakotans, continued to flow by Behring's Straits and the 

 Aleutian chain for fully a century, so that the Salishans cannot have settled in 

 America before the ninth century, and may not have settled before the fifteenth.. 

 No trace of either Sanscrit or Arabic appears in their language to shew that their 

 period of emigration from the Malay Archipelago was posterior to the dominance of 

 Hindoos and Mahometans. The divergence of their forms of speech from those of 

 the present occupants of their ancient homes suggests a time when Malay forms^ 

 were not so firmly rivetted in speech as has been the case since Europeans first 

 knew the Pacific Islanders. It is likely that all our Indian tribes of oceanic deriva- 

 tion found their way to the shores of America before its coasts were known to- 

 Columbus and his followers. It is, of course, a guess in the form of a compromise, 

 but it may be suggested, that the Salishans have been on this continent since the 

 thirteenth century. The Maya-Quiches, of Yucatan and Guatemala, and the Algon- 

 quins must have preceded them some six hundred years. 



The Rev. S. J. Whitmee, an authority on matters Polynesian, leaving the Malay 

 Archipelago proper out of sight, has proposed a three-fold division of the insulajr 



