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made the Haida (“People”) almost wholly dependent on the sea 
for their livelihood. Their villages lay on the coast near halibut banks, 
and the forested hills behind them were little valued except so far as 
thev orovided timber for houses and canoes. Of land animals the 
X 
251 ) 
Skedaiis, a Haida Indian village on the Queen Charlotte Islands. 
(Photo hy G. M, Daiisoii.) 
Haida killed only a few black bears that came out to the coast to 
feed on berries and on the dead salmon along the edges of the streams. 
Yet they were mighty hunters on the sea, and captured more fur 
seals and sea-otters than any other tribe along the Pacific coast. 
Every nobleman kept a stock of the skins of these sea mammals to 
distribute at potlatches and to trade with the Tsimshian, so that 
when the fur traders of the late eighteenth century began to frequent 
the northwest coast it was from the Haida that they gathered their 
richest harvest. 
The isolation of their home and their dependence on the sea 
made the Haida great voyagers, and, as is commonly the case with 
