278 REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



and au iucb thick, dried aud preserved lijr winter's use. It is eaten, 

 like dried lish, with oil as a sauce. 



Birds. — The Indians are remarkably fond of wild fowl, but the diflQ- 

 culties of shooting and entrapping them with their ordinary imple- 

 ments and means have made them a very inconsiderable source of their 

 food supply. At certain seasons, however, they capture them by strat- 

 egy. Wild geese they catch after they have shed their large wing 

 feathers and are unable to fly.* At other times they hunt wild fowl 

 by night with torches and fell them with clubs. Poole (1864) thus de- 

 scribes bird slaughtering amongst the Kwakiutl : 



The birds, whicli are small but plump, burrow their holes in the sand-banks on the 

 shores. When the slaughtering season arrives the Indians prepare torches composed 

 of long sticks having the tips smeared with gum taken from the pine trees. Armed 

 with handy clubs, thej' then place these lighted torches at the mouths of the holes, 

 and as soon as the birds, attracted by the glare, flutter forth, they fell them to the 

 ground. t 



Birds' Eggs. — Birds' eggs are collected, wherever possible, in early 

 summer. The Haida derive their supply from the outlying rocks of 

 the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Kaigani make trips out to Forrester 

 and other islands. Bach location is pre-empted by particular families, 

 and considered hereditary property, which is handed down from gen- 

 eration to generation. 



Cooking and Preparation of Food. — Dried fish, bark, roe, etc., are 

 eaten with grease or oil, as before stated. Salmon roe is buried in 

 boxes on the beach, washed by the tide, and eaten in a decomposed 

 state. The heads of salmon and halibut are esteemed a great luxury 

 when putrefied in the tide or salt water. Meat is either broiled on a 

 stick, roasted on hot stones, or boiled in a kettle. Before the intro- 

 duction of kettles, meat was boiled in a wooden dish or water-tight 

 basket by means of red hot stones added to the water. Fresh, fish and 

 cuttle fish are always cooked. Oil is extracted from the livers of dog- 

 fish and stranded sharks and whales, to sell to the whites. Oil is ob- 

 tained in different localities from salmon, herring, eulachon, and pollock. 

 The fish is usually allowed to partially putrefy and then boiled in wooden 

 boxes by means of hot stones dropped in the water. The grease or oil 

 is skimmed from the surface. The refuse is squeezed in mats, and the 

 grease obtained is stored in boxes. Sometimes this grease or oil is run 

 into the hollow stalks of giant kelp, which have been tanned or pre- 

 pared beforehand as follows: The stalks are soaked in fresh water to 

 extract the salt, dried in the sun or in the smoke of the dwelling, and 

 then toughened and made pliable with oil, rubbed thoroughly in. In 

 this form of storage the oil is as portable as in bottles, or in jars, with 

 less danger of breakage. Birds or wild fowls are toasted on a stick 

 before a slow fire without any previous plucking or cleaning, and the 

 feathers and skin removed afterward. The entrails are supposed to 

 add a decidedly better flavor to the bird. 



* Portlock, Voyage, p. 265. t Poole, Queen Charlotte Islands, p. 284. 



