THiE Indians of tHE NORtiiwEgT dOASt. B2t 



proboscis to tbe good lands, and said : " Where the bear is there are 

 salmon, herbs, and good living;" so that accounts for how the Haida 

 came to the Queen Charlotte Islands, and why bears are so abundant. 

 This is similar to the story told Jndge Swan by Edniso of Massetj 

 British Columbia. The next figure is the giant spider sucking the 

 blood and killing a man. One of the numerous adventures of T^sTcan- 

 ahl was to kill the giant spider, which was such a mortal enemy to 

 man. T^skanahl overcome the spider and threw him into the fire, but 

 instead of burning he shriveled up and escaped as a mosquito, carry- 

 ing away with him a small coal of fire in his proboscis. Now instead 

 of killing men he can only suck a little blood, but in revenge he leaves 

 a coal of fire in the bite. My informant, a Kaigani, stated that it would 

 take three days to relate all the adventures of T^slcan-ahl. The lowest 

 figure is Koone, the whole representing the totem of the owner of the 

 column. 



The key to all the carvings is found in the legends of the Indians. 

 Often their significance is lost; often individual eccentricity leads an 

 Indian to make a carving of which he alone knows the meaning; often 

 only the older Indians are well informed enough to tell off-hand what a 

 carving means. These causes, combined with the indifference of the 

 younger generation and the sensitiveness and reticence of the older 

 makes it extremely difficult to arrive at the significance of the figures. 

 Often they concoct stories to mislead an inquirer, and laugh in their 

 sleeve at the credulity shown. Until a general collection of the legends 

 of the coast is made we must remain content with selecting a few types, 

 as in the foregoing, to illustrate the motive and significance of these 

 remarkable carvings. 



Commemorative columns. — There are two classes of these (1), com- 

 memorative proper and (2) mortuary. It has been explained, in the 

 description of Fig. 292, that the upper group of figures commemorates 

 a real or supposed incident in the kidnapping of two Indian children 

 by the white traders. It is the generally accepted opinion that these 

 columns are in no sense historical, but purely ancestral or totemic. 

 This claim is entirely too sweeping. Fig. 293 shows the details of a 

 column erected in front of the feast house of the famous Kaigani 

 Chief Skowl at Kasa-an. This is in the rear of the living house, 

 on the back street, so to speak. In front of the latter is his totemic 

 column, a tall, slender, finely carved one, surmounted by his totem, the 

 eagle, resting on seven disks or skil, as shown in Plate iii. The feast 

 house column (Fig. 293) is surmounted by Skowl's crest, the eagle. 

 Just below it is a carved figure of a man with right hand uplifted and 

 index finger pointing to the sky. It signifies that in the heavens God 

 dwells — the God of the white man. Below this is the representation 

 of an angel as conceived by the Indians from the description of the 

 whites, and then comes a large figure intended to picture a Kussiau 

 missionary with hands piously folded across the breast. This group 



