339 
wool for blankets, and goat- and sheep-horn for the manufacture of 
the highly prized carved spoons- Geographically, too, they held a stra- 
tegic commercial position between the Tlinkit to the north, the source 
of all the native copper, and the Kwakiutl to the south, who supplied 
both slaves and dentalium shells, while right at their door dwelt 
the otter-hunting klaida. It was only natural, therefore, that they 
should become the great traders and middlemen of the region, import- 
ing with one hand and exporting with the other. They even carried 
their oolakan oil overland to exchange for furs with Gitksan and 
Athapaskan-speaking Indians wdio did not visit the sea.^ All this 
interchange of material things was accompanied by an equal inter- 
change of customs, ceremonies, and folk-tales that converted the 
entire coast, viewed from a larger standpoint, into a single cultural 
unit. 
The Tsimshian population at the end of the eighteenth century 
is not known. Duncan, an early missionary, estimated their number 
at 10,000 during the second quarter of the nineteenth century,- but 
his figure seems much too high. Probably 0,000 would be nearer 
the mark. A census in 1024 gave a total population of 3,448. 
BELLA COOLA 
Immediately south of the Tsimshian, beginning at Douglas 
channel, were the Kwakiutl, the nearest of the southern tribes that 
did not favour exogamous phratries or the recognition of descent 
through the female line alone; and jutting into the Kwakiutl terri- 
tory, almost dividing that people into two lialves, were the Bella 
Coola,'"^ a people that formcidy occupied some two score villages on 
the Dean and Bella Coola rivers, and on the fiords into which these 
rivers flow. Each Bella Coola village containetl from two to twenty 
or even thirty plank houses built in a row facing the water front; 
and each house sheltered from two to ten families. Although all the 
villages may not have been inhabited at the same time, 3mt the 
population when Alexander ^Mackenzie visited the region in 1793 
must surely have numbered at least two or three thousand, of whom 
30 per cent perhaps were slaves. To-day, owing to diseases intro- 
1 E.fr., from Hie Xass lo tlie Tillage of Kulclo on the ut>pei' Skeena rL’er, along what is still known 
as the “ Grease ” trail. 
2 Mavne; Op. cit., p. 249 f. 
•'< Iv wakinti word of unknown nieaninsi. 
