242 EEPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



goming the proposed victims. A narration of the exactions of the 

 Indians for damages on anoount of the accidental deaths of relatives in 

 the employ of whites would fill a chapter. 



ESTHETIC CHARACTERS. 



These Indians are exceedingly fond of singiug and dancing; have 

 considerable artistic taste in the use of colors ; are advanced in the arts 

 of carving; and have fair abilities in drawing and designing — all of 

 which will appear in subsequent chapters. Their carvings in slate 

 show the height to which their art rises, and would seem to easily place 

 them at the head of the savage tribes of the world, especially when 

 taken in conjunction with their industrial development. They bathe 

 frequently in the sea, but on the other hand continually daub their 

 faces, bodies, and heads with grease and paint, although this latter 

 fashion is now dying out and has almost disappeared, except as an 

 occasional custom. They were formerly- indifferent to the stench of de- 

 cayed animal and vegetable matter about their houses and villages, 

 but the influence of the whites has wonderfully improved them in this 

 respect. They are still, however, indifferent to all sanitary laws of 

 ventilation, and their fondness for putrid salmon noses and herring 

 roe is very trying, while the smell of rancid grease destroys the aes- 

 thetic value of many otherwise interesting curios from the region. A 

 visit to an Indian house is to the uninitiated still somewhat of an ordeal, 

 although nothing to what it formerly was. Through living in such in- 

 timate relations in the houses, there is an absence of a becoming sense 

 of modesty in family life, although the offenses are chiefly to be laid at 

 the door of the men, who in the summer months go almost naked, 

 whereas the women dress very much the same in all seasons. 



GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 



Contact with the whites has staggered and arrested these Indians in 

 their development. They are now adjusting themselves to a new mode 

 of life. Although much reduced in numbers, they are far from being 

 near extermination. Much is to be hoped for in the recent establish- 

 ment of industrial and other schools and in the general interest now 

 taken in the Indians. In the prohibition and prevention of the sale of 

 liquor to them a great step has been taken. Much more needs to be 

 done in the suppression of prostitution, in the recognition of Indian 

 rights to hunting and fishing grounds, and in medical assistance to a 

 people childishly ignorant of the simplest laws of health. Their Indian 

 doctors are fast disappearing, and with them much of the degrading 

 superstition of an ethnical group capable of almost any rise in the scale 

 of civilization. 



