The Salish People: Volume III - Charles Hill-Tout

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a site like Marpole, which 2,000 years ago faced saltwater, now is more than 3.5 miles from the river’s mouth” (p. 97). Since the dates of the “Marpole Phase” are around 400 B.C. to 450 A.D., Hill-Tout’s dating is not out of line. (He was, of course, writing sixty years before the first carbon-14 dating was done in this area.) Donald H. Mitchell “Archaeology of the Gulf of Georgia Area” (1971) pp. 61–67 discusses chronology, with a section on sea fluctuation.

      5 I have not found a discussion of these matters in Sir John Lubbock’s Origin of Civilization (1870). The fact that Hill-Tout errs in the title of the book probably indicates that he was writing from memory. Lubbock discusses Worsaae, Steenstrup, and the Danish middens in chapter 6 of his Pre-historic Times (1865) – but the closest he comes to Hill-Tout’s quotation is the phrase “immense antiquity” on p. 196.

      6 The Port Hammond stone bowl is pictured in Smith Shell-Heaps of the Lower Fraser (1903) p. 184, and in Duff “Prehistoric Stone Sculpture” (1956) p. 145, with discussion on p. 69.

      7 Dr. G. E. Kidd, Professor of Anatomy at Queen’s University, who retired to Vancouver and was part of the Marpole dig of 1930, discusses such a skull in “A Case of Primitive Trephining” in The Great Fraser Midden (1948) pp. 19–21. Smith writes about this headache treatment in “Trephined Aboriginal Skulls” American Journal of Physical Anthropology (1924).

      8“Vide Seventh Report on the Northwestern Tribes of Canada of the British Association, 1891” — Hill-Tout. In his summary of types on p. 447 of that report, Boas proposes an “homogeneous population on the coast of British Columbia, with the exception of the region of Dean Inlet. It is characterized by a cephalic index ranging between 77 and 81.” In a recent survey, “The Cephalic Index: the History of an Idea in Physical Anthropology” (1976), B. Raymond Druian states that it is “impossible to determine the ultimate cause for head shapes to differ in the ways they do and the cephalic index will continue to be primarily of historic interest” (p. 182). See discussion of the two skull “types” in the Introduction, above.

      9 For Hill-Tout’s discussion of Thompson jade and methods of cutting, see volume I of the present edition under the Archaeological section of the 1899 report.

      10 A letter from G. M. Dawson to Hill-Tout, in the Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia, mentions that Deans assisted Richardson in the geological survey of Vancouver Island. An account of their opening a mound in 1871 is given by Deans in “The Antiquities of British Columbia” (1892) pp. 41–43.

      11 “Since the above was written the writer has learned of the existence of another group farther south near the boundary line” – Hill-Tout. See also the “Archaeology” section to the 1902 report, below. Frederick T. Lazenby has a short account of the 1894 Hatzic dig in Smith and Fowke Cairns of British Columbia (1901) pp. 60–61. On p. 61 of that volume Smith reports on several cairns and skeletons found at Point Roberts. See Hill-Tout’s Monuments of the Past (1933) for mention of the Hatzic and the later Harrison River digs.

      12“Vide Dr. G. M. Dawson’s ‘Notes on the Shuswap,’ 1891” – Hill-Tout. On p. 11 Dawson states what is also true of the Hatzic mounds: “The Indians now residing [in the area] have no knowledge of the people who were buried at this place.”

      13 “Longfellow’s Legend of Hiawatha. Prof. Cyrus Thomas in his paper on the mounds in the States in the report previously referred to speaks of a custom which prevailed very extensively among the mound-builders of the northern districts of removing the flesh of the dead bodies before final burial and burning it over the grave when this took place. It is possible these fires were lighted for a similar purpose” – Hill-Tout. On the burying of slaves, Hill-Tout refers us to Morice “on the Dene” in the Proceedings of the Canadian Institute, 1892–93. This would be his “Notes Archaeological, Industrial and Sociological on the Western Denes”; but I have failed to find the specific reference.

      14“Vide Sixth Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science on the Northwestern tribes of Canada [1890, pp. 647–655] “ – Hill-Tout. In the letters to Boas (in volume IV of the present edition) Hill-Tout requests a judgement from Boas, but Boas determined that the skull was not unique: ”The skull had been deformed in the same manner as is practised by the present Indians. . . . What little remains of the face indicates that its shape resembled the face of the present Indians of this region” – quoted from “Remarks on a Skull from British Columbia,” a note by Boas appended immediately after Hill-Tout’s paper, on p. 122 of the original printing. Hill-Tout’s reaction to this may be found in the “Archaeology” section of the 1902 report, below.

      15“Vide Archaeologist for April 1895” – Hill-Tout; i.e., a report by C. B. Moore on “Archaeology of the St. John’s, Florida.” The magazine Archaeologist was shortlived (1893–1895). I am indebted to the Interlibrary Loan department of Simon Fraser University for help in locating this particular article, and for other services.

      16 It would be useful to correct this early attitude by a paragraph from Hill-Tout’s address to the Anthropological Association meeting in San Francisco in 1905, printed in American Anthropologist (1905): “In the study of primitive man the greatest difficulty the sophisticated student has to contend with, I have found-, is the essential difference of his own from his subject’s plane of thought -in other words, the difficulty to see things from the native point of view. He can make no satisfactory advance till he has emptied his mind of all its preconceptions regarding primitive man, which more often than not are founded on early misconceptions and limited knowledge of his life and thought. We have been studying the savage more or less systematically for a quarter of a century now, yet I am convinced we are but just beginning to know and to understand him as he really is. Speaking for myself, I would like to say that I have found nothing so helpful to me in getting behind his eyes and beholding the universe from his viewpoint as the study of his names and name systems” (p. 684).

      The following notes are a summary of the writer’s studies of the Lower Fraser Indians. They deal chiefly with the Tcilqeuk [Chilli-wack] 2 and Kwantlen tribes. The Indians inhabiting the Lower Fraser district comprise in all some fourteen or fifteen separate tribes, an enumeration of which was given by Dr. F. Boas in his Report to the British Association, 1894. They occupy the shores of the estuary, extending up the river as far as Spuzzum, which forms the dividing-line between them and the Thompson beyond. Collectively they are known to themselves as the Halkomelem or Henkomenem people. The name, according to my informants, signifies “those who speak the same language.” This division of the Salish is not confined to the Mainland. An important branch of it is found on Vancouver Island, over against the estuary. The speech of both branches, although exhibiting interesting dialectical differences, is mutually intelligible. The Halkomelem tribes occupy a larger and more scattered territory than any other of the Salish divisions of British Columbia, the distance between the most eastern and the most western tribes being upwards of 200 miles. When it is remembered that the speech of the Salish tribes which border upon them on every side is so strange and different as to be quite unintelligible to the Halkomelem people, the practical homogeneity of their own speech, despite the fact of their widely scattered territories, has a significance we cannot afford to overlook. It assuredly reveals to us, as plainly as the unwritten past can be revealed, that they cannot have occupied their present territories for any considerable time. The intercourse between the different tribes, as far as can be gathered from themselves, was never very free or extended, the nature of the country forbidding this. Consequently we should find vastly greater divergence in the speech of the upper and lower, the Mainland and Island, tribes than is the case if they had been settled for any great length of time in their present quarters. While the Salish language as a whole, with its dozens of dialects and scores of sub-dialects, displays such capacity for dialectical variation as it does, we can hardly believe that the same tendency to change is absent from the Halkomelem speech. We may safely conclude, therefore, that the Halkomelem tribes are comparative late-comers in the territories they

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