288 



SCIEJSrCE. 



[Vol. IX., No. 216 



rate of about $215 a million, or about 46 fry for one 

 cent. Another interesting fact to note is, that, for 

 the entire tijue up to and including 1882, there 

 were produced 300,000,000 young shad ; while, for 

 1883 alone, the total was over 90,000,000, This 

 indicates that we are certainly approaching a po- 

 sition where the work may be regarded as profit- 

 able from a commercial stand-point. 



THE COAST TRIBES OF BRITISH 

 COLUMBIA. 



Dr. Franz Boas, who visited the tribes of Brit- 

 ish Columbia in the fall of 1886, gives the follow- 

 ing preliminary report (with map) on some results 

 of his journey : — 



Vancouver Island and the mainland opposite 

 are inhabited by numerous tribes, which belong 

 to three linguistic stocks, — the West Vancouver 

 tribes, of the outside coast of Vancouver Island ; 

 the Selish tribes, which occupy the south-east part 

 of the island as far as the narrows separating it 

 from the mainland, and inhabit the banks of the 

 lower part of Fraser River and the neighboring 

 fiords ; and the Kwakiutl tribes, which occupy 

 the northern part of the island, and the mainland 

 as far north as Gardner Channel. The latter 

 tribes surround the territory of the Bilhula of 

 Bentinck Arm and Dean Inlet, a tribe belonging 

 to the Selish stock. Farther north we find the 

 Tsimpshian and Tlingit on the mainland, and the 

 Haida on Queen Charlotte Islands. 



The Selish language is divided into a great num- 

 ber of dialects, differing widely from one another. 

 Under the name ' Coast Selish ' we include the dia- 

 lects of Puget Sound and of the Gulf of Georgia, 

 as those dialects are more closely connected with 

 one another than with the Selish dialects of the 

 interior. 



Through the descriptions of Swan, Sproat, 

 Krause, and others, the mode of life of these 

 tribes is tolerably well known. Their large wooden 

 houses, their canoes, their fishing-gear and hunt- 

 ing-methods, have been frequently described ; but 

 their traditions, religious ideas, and social organi- 

 zation are not known equally well. According to 

 all observers, the principal figure in the mythology 

 of the Tlingit is the raven Yetl, who created the 

 sun, moon, and stars, who gave man the fresh 

 water and the fish, and whose exploits are said 

 to be so numerous that a lifetime is not sufficient 

 to relate them all. Dawson found the same tra- 

 ditions among the Haida ; and, according to the 

 Rev. Mr. Duncan, the Tsimpshian tell the same 

 stories of Tghemshen, the man who was able to 

 transform himself into a raven. It is a charac- 



teristic feature of the ' raven ' legend that the 

 bird did not create all things for the benefit of 

 mankind, but in order to revenge himself. While 

 studying the tribes of Vancouver Island, numer- 

 ous traces of this legend were found, though only 

 very fragmentary and disconnected. Among 

 these people the raven is not considered the creator 

 of the sun, the water, the trees, etc.; but his ad- 

 ventures, which generally refer to his voracious 

 appetite, and his cheating people and animals in 

 order to satisfy it, are frequently related by the 

 natives. 



The most important legends of the Kwakiutl are 

 those referring to Kanikilak. They lelieve in a 

 supreme being living in heaven, whom they call 

 Kantsoump (' our father,' or, in some instances, 

 ' our elder brother'). He sent down to the earth 

 his two sons Kanikilak and Nomokois, who were 

 born there again of a woman, the wife of the 

 woodpecker. Their mother's blanket contained 

 the salmon, which they liberated by dipping the 

 corner of the blanket into the water. Then Kani- 

 kilak travelled over all the world, becoming the 

 friend of all the mighty chiefs whom he met on 

 his way, and transforming all the malignant men 

 into animals. The name, in the Kwakiutl lan- 

 guage, of those ancient beings who were neither 

 men nor animals, is Nughnemis. We find the same 

 or a similar tradition belonging to all the tribes 

 from Puget Sound to the district of the Tsimp- 

 shian. Among the Selish tribes the name of the 

 son of God is Hals ; among those of the west 

 coast the name is Alls. The northern tribes — the 

 Tsimpshian, Haida, and Tlingit — tell of those 

 human-like beings which were transformed into 

 animals during a great flood. 



The supreme being spoken of above seems to 

 have originally been the sun, though the identity 

 of both does not appear very distinctly in the 

 traditions of the natives. However, their ancient 

 identity may have been lost in course of time, as 

 among all the tribes legends of different origins 

 are evidently intermixed. In the same way as the 

 raven story has spread south, losing on the way its 

 important place in the mythology of the tribes, 

 the Kanikilak story seems to have spread north ; 

 and the traditions, in their present state, seem to 

 consist of elements of at least two different 

 origins. The Skoamish call the sun ' the great 

 wandering chief.' The Nanaimo (Snanaimugh), 

 in speaking of the sun as the supreme being, call 

 it Shimthayith. The Bilhula call their supreme 

 being, besides Taata ( ' our father '), by the name 

 Sngh, which is evidently connected with songh 

 ('sun'). In the Kwakiutl legends the sun is 

 the father of the mink, and this tradition is so 

 closely connected with others relating to the 



