21 
Iron, in all its forms, they judiciously preferred to any other article we had to offer. 
In most of the houses were two or three muskets, which, by their locks and mounting, 
appeared to be Spanish. Cheslakees had no less than eight in his house, all kept in excellent 
order: these, together with a great variety of other European commodities, I presumed, 
were procured immediately from Nootka. 
So far as any conclusion could be drawn from this short interview, the Russians 
seemed to live upon the most intimate terms of friendship with the Indians of all descrip- 
tions, who appeared to be perfectly satisfied in being subjected to the Russian authority.” 
The Russians, according to Vancouver,^ had effectively introduced 
foreign education on the Alaskan coast many years before 1790: 
“The interest that the Indians seem to take in the success and welfare of the Russians, 
originates in principles of attachment and regard which do not appear likely to be easily 
removed by the influence of strangers to the prejudice of the Russian commercial interest, 
and which from the practice of the present day may probably be strengthened in the suc- 
ceeding generations; for although the Russians did not appear to us either studious or 
learned, yet it was understood that in all their establishments the children of the natives 
are taken at an early age to apartments provided on purpose, where they are maintained 
and educated in the Russian language, and no doul)t instructed in such principles as are 
most likely hereafter to be advantageously directed to the interests of that nation.” 
Marcliand, the French circumnavigator (1790-1792), gives much 
interesting information on the early introduction of iron and the inroads 
of foreign culture among the North West Coast natives.^ 
“The first navigators who visited the North West coast of America, in ascending 
from the forty-second degree of latitude to the sixtieth parallel, found that the knowledge 
and the use of iron had long since arrived there; and they saw, in the hands of the natives, 
various instruments and tools of that metal: it is probalde that the latter received it from 
the interior, by communicating, from tribe to tribe, with the nations which received it 
immediately through the medium of the Europeans, either from the English settlements 
of Hudson’s bay or from the Spanish presidios. The trade of the Americans of the North 
West Coast with the Russians must, for upwards of half a century past, have made them 
acquainted with iron and copper. 
The Tchinkitanayans are all armed with a metal dagger, fifteen or sixteen inches 
long, from two and a half to three broad, terminated in a point, and sharp on both sides. 
Although the natives of Tchinkitanay have long been in possossiem of European 
hatchets, they do not yet make use of this instrument for felling the tree which they intend 
for the construction of a canoe. 
It could not be doubted, from the sight of all the European utensils which this people 
possess, and the clothes of different sorts some of which were already worn out, that they 
had a communication for years past with English navigators, and had received from them 
frequent visits: the facility with which every individual pronounced the word Englishman, 
which they often repeated, was sufficient to prove this.” 
The natives may already have begun, at that date, to imitate foreign 
architecture in the construction of some of their houses, as we may see 
from the following note by Marchand:^ The ground was excavated in 
some of the North West Coast houses — this type of house is called da^aq 
among the Tsimsyan — and it receded downwards towards the centre 
in the form of two or three steps. But there was nowhere an upper story 
or anything like a cellar in any of them. So that Marchand could hardly 
have referred to these. 
“But, on the North West Coast of America, we have found hou.ses with two stories, 
fifty feet in length, thirty-five feet in breadth, and twelve or fifteen feet in height, in which 
the assemblage of the framing and the -strength of the wood ingeniously make up for the 
>.4ppen<ffr, No. 4. 
^Appendix, No. 6. 
‘.■1 jipendii, No. 6. 
