116 B 



GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OP CANADA. 



sino Inlet (Vancouver Island) and elsewhere, where the natives are 

 still numerous and have scarcely been reached by missionaries, though 

 similar posts are found, they are small, shabby, and show little of the. 

 peculiar grotesque art found so fully developed among the Haidas. 



Villages. As before mentioned, the permanent villages are generally situated 



with regard to easy access to the halibut banks and coast fisheries, 

 which occupy a greater proportion of the time of the natives than any 

 other single employment. The villages are thus not infrequently on 

 bleak, exposed, rocky coasts or islands, though generally placed with 

 care, so as to allow of landing in canoes even in stormy weather. The 

 houses may stand on a flat, elevated a few feet above the high-tide 

 mark, and facing seaward on a sandy or gravelly beach, on which 



of r vmPe^ eut canoes cai1 De drawn up. The houses are arranged side by side, either 

 in contact, or with spaces of greater or less width between them. A 

 space is left between the fronts of the houses and edge of the bank, 

 which serves for a street, and also for the erection of the various 

 carved posts, and for temporary fish-drying stages, &c. Here also, any 

 canoes are placed which it is not desired to use for some time, and are 

 carefully covered with matting and boughs to protect them from the 

 sun, by which they might be warped or cracked. As a rough average, 

 it may be stated that there are at least two carved -posts for each house, 

 and these, when the village is first seen from a distance, give it the 

 aspect of a patch of burnt forest with bare, bristling tree-stems. The 

 houses themselves are not painted, and soon assume a uniform incon- 

 spicuous grey colour, or become green or overgrown with moss and 

 weeds, owing to the dampness of the climate. The cloud of smoke 

 generally hovering over the village in calm weather, may serve to 

 identify it. Two rows of houses are occasionally formed, where the 

 area selected is contracted. ]STo special arrangement of houses accord- 

 ing to rank or precedence appears to obtain, and the house ©f the chief 

 may be either in the centre of the row or at the end. Each house 

 generally accommodates several families, in our sense of the term ; 

 which are related together, and under the acknowledged guidance of 

 the elder to whom the house is reputed to belong, and who is really a 

 minor chief, of greater or less importance in the tribe — or village — 

 according to the amount of his property and number of his people. 



Carved posts ^ n front of one or more of the principal houses platforms are often 

 found, on which a group of people may be seen squatting in conversa- 

 tion or engaged in their interminable gambling game. The forest of 

 carved posts in front of the village, each of them representing a great 

 expenditure of property and exertion, doubtless presents to the native 

 eye a grand and awe-inspiring appearance and brings to the mind a 

 sense of probably mysterious import, which possibly does not in reality 



