56 THE INDIANS OF CAPE FLATTERY. 



could build the house, were driven away by the Indians. More recent events, 

 such as the murder of the crews of the ship Boston, in 1803, and of the Tonquin, 

 in 1811, and the captivity of Jewett among the Nootkans, they remember hearing 

 about, and relate with tolerable accuracy. As events recede in years, however, they 

 become obscured with legends and fables, so that the truth is exceedingly difficult 

 to discover. 



The legend respecting their own origin is, that they were created on the Cape. 

 First, animals were produced, and from the union of some of these with a star which 

 fell from heaven, came the first men, and from them sprang all the race of Nittinats, 

 Clyoquots, and Makahs. Indians were also created on Vancouver Island at the 

 same time. They claim for themselves and the Nittinats a greater antiquity than 

 the Clyoquots or Nootkans, so-caUed, which were originally a mere band of the Nitti- 

 nat tribe. The name Nootka, which was given by the first discoverers to the band 

 of Indians called Mowitchat, or, as the Makahs pronounce it, Bo-wat-chat, has been 

 most singularly accepted by all the authors ; and not only is the tribe or band, and 

 the Sound they live near, called Nootka, and the treaty of 1790, between Great 

 Britain and Spain, relative to its possession, called the Nootka convention, but recent 

 ethnologists class all these tribes as belonging to the Nootkan family. Had Captains 

 Cook and Vancouver, and the early Spanish explorers made Neeah Bay their head 

 quarters, there is no reason to doubt that the Makahs, or Classets, as they were called, 

 would have been considered the parent stock, and the other coast tribes classed as of the 

 Makah family. My own impression is that the Nittinats were originally the principal 

 and most powerful tribe ; and that the Clyoquot, Nootka, Ahosett, and other bands 

 on the southwest portion of Vancouver Island, as well as the Makahs at Cape Flat- 

 tery, were bands or ofi'shoots froni that tribe. We have seen that the name 

 " Nootka" is not the name of any tribe on the northwest coast, but one given in 

 mistake by the whites, and since adhered to. Still, it may perhaps be as weU 

 to class all these tribes as the Nootkan family, since that name has come into such 

 general use ; though there is no evidence that the tribe called Nootkas were the 

 parent stock, nor can any proof of ancestry be obtained from any of the tribes, of 

 which each claims an antiquity as great as the others. 



There is, however, a marked similarity among all the coast tribes from the Co- 

 lumbia River to Nootka. But, farther north, the Haida, Stikine, Chimsyan, and 

 other tribes are very diff"erent in appearance. This great dissimilarity can be 

 noticed by the most casual observer in the streets of Victoria at any time. All 

 these different tribes resort there for purposes of trade ; and the northern Indians 

 — for so those three are termed — can at a glance be distinguished from the Nootka 

 family, or from the Flatheads. The northern Indians, so-called, are much taUer, 

 more robust, and with features more like the Tartar hordes of the Siberian coast. 

 The women are much larger, better shaped, and with lighter complexions than the 

 Flatheads, among wliic-h may be classed — of those who frequent Victoria, and 

 with whom a comparison may be formed — the Cowitchins, Songish, Clallams, 

 and the various tribes on Puget Sound, who all resemble the coast tribes in 

 general appearance, manners, and customs. A northern Indian can as readily be 



