17 
Nootka houses were also visited and described by Vancouver, as 
follows; 
“In the evening we passed close to the rock on which the village last mentioned is 
situated; it appeared to be about half a mile in circuit, and was entirely occupied by the 
habitations of the natives. These appeared to be well constructed; the boards forming 
the sides of the houses were well fitted, and the roofs rose from each side with sufficient 
inclination to throw off the rain. The gable ends were decorated with curious painting, 
and near one or two of the most conspicuous mansions were carved figures in large logs 
of timber, representing a gigantic human form, with strange and uncommonly distorted 
features. 
The construction of the Nootka houses, especially with respect to their inside, has 
been so fully treated by Captain Cook as to preclude any material addition from my pen; 
yet it is singularly rem.arkable (although particularly represented in Mr. Webber’s drawing 
of the village in Friendly cove) that Captain Cook should not have taken any notice what- 
ever in his journal, of the immense pieces of timber which are raised, and horizontally 
placed on wooden pillars, about eighteen inches above the roof of the largest houses in 
that village; one of which pieces of timber w'as of size sufficient to have made a lower mast 
for a third-rate man of war. These, together with the large images, w’ere at that time 
supposed to denote the habitation of the chief, or principal person, of the tribe; and the 
opinion then formed has been repeatedly confirmed by observations made during this 
voyage. One or more houses in many of the de.serted villages, as w'ell as in most of the 
inhabited ones we had visited, were thus distinguished. On the house of Maquinna 
w'ere three of these immense spars; the middle piece was the largest, and measured at 
the butt-end nearly five feet in diameter; this extended the wffiole length of the habi- 
tation, w’hich was about an hundred feet long. It wms placed on pillars of wa:)od; that 
wffiieh supported it within the upper end of the house was about fifteen feet in circumfer- 
ence, and on it w-as carved one of their distorted representations of a gigantic human 
figure.” 
Vlarchand^ gives a full description of the house of a chief in the country 
of the Kwakiutl or the Tsimsyan, on the main coast: 
“What particularly attracted the attention of the French, and w^ell deserved to fix 
it, were two pictures, each of which eight or nine feet long, by five high, wms composed 
only of two planks put together. On one of the.se pictures is seen represented, in colours 
rather lively, red, black, and green, the different parts of the human body, painted separ- 
ately; and the whole surface is covered with them. The latter picture appears to be a 
copy of the former, or perhaps it is the original; it is difficult to decide to w'hich of the 
two belongs the priority, so much are the features of both effaced by age. The natives 
gave Captain Chanal to understand that tliese pictures are called Caniak in their language; 
and this is all that he could get from them.” 
Another description of a similar house elsewhere is also from his pen: 
“This door, the threshold of wffiich is raised about a foot and a half above the ground, 
is of an elliptical figure; the great diameter, which is given by the height of the opening, 
is not more than three feet, and the small diameter or the breadth is not more than twm; 
it may be conceived that it is not very convenient to enter the house by this oval. This 
opening is made in the thickness of a large trunk of a tree which rises perpendicularly 
in the middle of one of the fronts of the habitation, and occupies the w’hole of its height: 
it imitates the form of a gaping human mouth, or rather that of a beast and it is sur- 
mounted by a hooked nose, about two feet in length, proportioned, in point of size, to the 
monstrous face to which it belongs. It might, therefore, be imagined that, in the language 
of the inhabitants of North island of Queen Charlotte’s Isles, the door of the house is called 
the mouth. 
Over the door is seen the figure of a man carved, in the attitude of a child in the womb, 
and remarkable for the extreme smallness of the parts which characterize his sex; and above 
this figure, rises a gigantic statue of a man erect, which terminates the sculpture and the 
decoration of the portal; the head of this statute is dressed with a cap in the form of a 
sugar-loaf, the height of which is almost equal to that of the figure itself. On the parts 
of the surface w'hich are not occupied by the capital subjects, are interspersed carved 
figures of frogs or toads, lizards, and other animals, and arms, legs, thighs, and other parts 
of the human body: a stranger might imagine that he saw the ex voto suspended to the 
door-case of the niche of a Madonna. 
No. 6. His " A Voyage . . pp. 396-397. 
