QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 1!7 B 



exist. Behind the dwelling houses, or toward one end of the vil!.; 

 and not far removed from it, are the small houses or sheds in which 

 the dead are placed, or pairs of posts supporting a hollowed beam 

 which contains the body. 



These permanent villages of the Ilaidas are now much reduced in Abandonment 

 number, in correspondence with the very rapid decrease of the people villages? 5 

 themselves. Those villages least favourably situated as fishing stations, 

 or most remote from communication, have been abandoned, and their 

 people absorbed in others. This has happened especially on the tem- 

 pestuous west coast of the islands, where there is now but a single 

 inhabited village. Even those still occupied are rapidly falling to 

 decay ; the older people gradually dying off, the younger resorting 

 more and more to Victoria and beginning to despise the old ways. 

 Many houses have been completely deserted, while others are shut up 

 and mouldering away under the weather, and yet others, large and 

 fitted to accommodate several families, are occupied by two or three 

 people only. The carved posts, though one may still occasional^ be 

 erected, are as a rule more or less advanced toward decay. A rank 

 growth of weeds in some cases presses close up among the inhabited 

 houses, the traffic not being sufficient to keep them down. In a few 

 years little of the original aspect of these villages will remain, though 

 at the present moment all their peculiarities can be easily distinguished, 

 and a very little imagination suffices to picture them to the mind as the}'' 

 must have been when swarming with inhabitants dressed in sea-otter 

 robes and seal skins. 



The Haidas reside in these permanent villages during the winter Resi(ienee> 

 season, returning to them after the close of the salmon fishery, about 

 Christmas-time. A portion of the tribe is, however, almost always to 

 be found at the permanent village, and from time to time during other 

 seasons of the year almost the whole tribe may be concentrated there. 

 The villages differ somewhat in this respect. When the territory owned 

 by its people is not very extensive, or does not lie far off, they live 

 almost continually in the village. When it is otherwise, they become 

 widely scattered at several seasons. 



The Haidas trouble themselves little about the interior country, but Property in 

 the coast line, and especially the various rivers and streams, are divided 

 among the different families. These tracts are considered as strictly 

 personal property, and are hereditary rights or possessions, descending 

 from one generation to another according to the rule of succession 

 elsewhere stated. They may be bartered or given away, and should 

 one family desire to fish or gather berries in the domain of another, 

 the privilege must be paid for. So strict are those ideas of proprietary 

 right in the soil, that on some parts of the coast sticks ma}' be seen set 



