328 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



of the figare with uplifted hand, the angel, and the missionary, commem^ 

 orates the failure of the Russian priests to convert Skowl's people to their 

 faith, and was erected in ridicule and derision of the religion of the white 

 man. Below this group is a magnificent carving of a spread eagle, and 

 at the bottom of the column a figure intended to represent one of the 

 early traders on the coast. Skowl was always an enemy to the mis- 

 sionary and resisted their encroachments to the last, being remarkable 

 for his wealth, obesity, and intemperate habits. He weighed at the 

 time of his death, in the winter of 1882-'83, considerably over 300 

 pounds. As a young man, his physical prowess, wealth, and family 

 influence, made his tyrannical rule at Kasa-an one long to be re- 

 membered, as he did much to keep his people to the old faith and to 

 preserve amongst them the manners and customs of his forefathers. 

 Plate Lxvii is a sketch of this chief lying in state in his lodge at Kasa-an 

 village, from a photograph taken by the writer in 1885. To illustrate 

 further the nature of some of these commemorative columns, it may be 

 well to mention here the case of Chief " Bear Skin," of Skidegate, Queen 

 Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, as cited by Judge Swan. " Bear 

 Skin," on his return from a visit to Victoria, British Columbia, had 

 erected in front of his house two wooden effigies of Judge Pemberton 

 of that city to show his contempt for him as a magistrate for putting 

 him in the lockup at Victoria. In the Berlin Museum is a small slate 

 carving, illustrated in Fig. 275, Plate li, which commemorates the 

 prowess of a certain medicine man who came up to Skidegate from 

 Klue village to work his charms on two dead men. He was observed 

 by numerous witnesses to squat upon their graves, and by invoking 

 the power of his yalces with rattles, masks, and songs, to raise them 

 from the dead. Coming to life, they clung to him as in the image. 

 This incident is of course vouched for by reliable witnesses, but no 

 further testimony is needed to insure its acceptance as gospel by the 

 Indians than that it should be thus carved in slate. It lifts the story 

 to the first rank as a tradition to be handed down as long as the image 

 shall recall it or the Indian mind cherish the recollection of it. It can 

 not be claimed that a good case has been made out in the illustrations 

 here cited to show that these columns and carvings are ever historical 

 in the strict sense of the word, but they are, nevertheless, at times com- 

 memorative of certain real or supposedly real incidents, and the state- 

 ment that they are never historical at least needs qualification. 



Mortuary columns.— K broad distinction isdrawn here between columns 

 that in themselves form a mode of sepulture and those which are com- 

 memorative and erected at some distance from the site of the grave in 

 which the body is interred. The former are described in detail in Chapter 

 XII, on Mortuary Customs ; the latter are in imitation of the former, and 

 preserve the shadow of the primitive mode of sepulture just as to-day 

 the funeral urn on a modern grave is symbolical of the old custom of 

 cremation. These are illustrated in Fig. 1, Plate ii, Fig. 179e, Plate 



