The Salish People: Volume III - Charles Hill-Tout

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boat to Mission to take measurements of Indian schoolchildren. Wayne Suttles remarks in Katzie Ethnographic Notes (1955) that the Stalo region “has been rather neglected” (p. 6): “Boas’ brief paper of 1894 and Hill-Tout’s of 1902 and 1904 are all that we have until very recently on the native tribes of the Lower Fraser Valley. Barnett’s paper of 1938 and unpublished material touch the Musqueam of the mouth of the Fraser but ascend it no farther.” Wilson Duff’s statement in The Upper Stalo Indians (1952) that Hill-Tout “has done the only published work of any significance on the language” (p. 11) has stood unchallenged almost to the present. The work of the modern linguists, as summarized by Laurence C. Thompson in Native Languages of the Americas (1976) pp. 391392, has yet to reach general circulation in print. Oliver Wells’ contribution, though not mentioned by Thompson, is not negligible, and will be discussed below.

      22 Rohner The Ethnology of Franz Boas (1969) p. 127: after a week with George Chehalis, Boas wrote to his wife, “At times I feel like giving up the whole trip and letting all the Indians run off.” His portrait of his informant is not flattering. Of the Chehalis stories in Indianische Sagen (1977, pp. 19–14) several are also told by Hill-Tout’s informants, and provide a basis for comparison.

      23 Oliver Wells’ tapes amount to over twenty hours of conversation with the older Indians of the Chilliwack area, mainly between 1962 and 1965. Although Wells was not a linguist, he was extremely interested in Halkomelem vocabulary and place-names, and the tapes include much discussion of native words, and a few fine performances of Halkomelem story-telling. One gets a sense of the richness of this material in Wells’ publications, A Vocabulary of Native Words (1965; second edition 1969), Squamish Legends (1966), and Myths and Legends of the Staw-loh Indians (1970).

      24 Norman Lerman’s thesis, An Analysis of Folktales of Lower Fraser Indians (University of Washington 1952) should be consulted, not only for the additional stories to be found there, but also for the different versions offered of the same story, and pertinent commentary. At the same time, Legends of the River People edited by Betty Keller from Lerman’s field notes, contains stories, albeit rewritten by the editor, not included in the thesis. Additional stories, not included in either of the above, may be found in Once Upon an Indian Tale, which Lerman published in 1968 in collaboration with Helen S. Carkin.

      25 See Rev. Thomas Crosby Among the An-ko-me-hums (Toronto 1907) pp.187–188. The ms. “The Conversion of Capt. John” as narrated by himself and translated by Rev. W. H. Barraclough may be consulted at the Chilliwack Museum.

      26 Dr. Jilek in his Salish Indian Mental Health and Culture Change: Psychohygienic and Therapeutic Aspects of the Guardian Spirit Ceremonial (1974) p. 1 gives the figures for new initiations per season as: 1967–68 one; 1968–69 three; 1969–70 four; 1970–71 sixteen; 1971–72 ten. “The drop in initiations during the 1971–72 season was not due to a lack of candidates, as we could verify, but rather to a deliberate effort on the part of the new initiator to limit the number of novices” (pp. 11–12). See also Pamela Amoss Coast Salish Spirit Dancing (1978).

      27 See Oliver N. Wells “Return of the Salish Loom” The Beaver Vol. 296, No. 4 (Spring 1966) pp. 40–45, reprinted with additional materials in his Salish Weaving Primitive and Modern (1969). See also Elizabeth Hawkins Indian Weaving Knitting Basketry of the Northwest (1978) p. 8: “In 1961 the late Oliver Wells became vitally interested in the revival of Salish weaving techniques. His research led to the discovery of Mary Peters who was engaged in twine weaving with rags in her home. Through Mr. Wells’ help and encouragement Adeline Lorenzetto and many others learned to twill stitch. Today the Salish Weavers of Coqualeetza near Chilliwack, B.C. have achieved a high degree of excellence and their works of art are again coveted not only by handicraft enthusiasts but by professional designers, architects and collectors.”

      28 A profusely illustrated guide to the practising carvers and artists of the Halkomelem area is Reg Ash well’s Coast Salish Their Art, Culture and Legends (1978).

      29 I attended as an observer a planning meeting of the Chehalis Reserve School where it was decided that Halkomelem words would be used as often as was reasonably possible, not only in formal language tuition, but in nature study, geography, history and other classes. I am indebted to Dr. Brent Galloway, linguist at the Coqualeetza Indian Education Centre, for sharing with me some of his insights in the area of his expertise.

      The following notes and observations on some ancient British Columbian middens and tumuli in the vicinity of the Lower Fraser are offered in the hope that they may be found to possess some ethnological value, and also with the desire to call forth a wider and more active interest in these vanishing and, for the most part, unrecorded vestiges of a distant past. The writer’s explorations among these melancholy monuments have led him to believe that we possess in them valuable records of the prehistoric conditions of the aborigines of this section of the Pacific slope and of their antiquity in that region. The middens of Europe and of the Atlantic seaboard, and the mounds of the great central and eastern valleys, have long been classic ground to the archaeologist, and much labour and attention have been profitably bestowed upon them; but the middens and tumuli of British Columbia are as yet but little known to him, and have not up to this time, I think, received any serious or systematic attention at his hands. Yet the tumuli herein described constitute a distinct type of their own, with many interesting and unique features about them; and the midden from which the relics figured in the accompanying plates I-III were taken exceeds in mass area the largest middens of Denmark, and abounds in interesting ethnological data.

      This particular midden, for which the name “Great Fraser Midden” has been suggested by the writer, is upwards of 1,400 feet in length and 300 feet in breadth; and covers to an average depth of about 5, and to a maximum depth of over 15, feet an area exceeding 4% acres in extent. It is composed of the remains of shells, mostly of the clam (Tridacna, sp.) and mussel (Mytilus edulis?) intermingled with ashes and other human refuse matter. It is situated on the right bank of the north arm of the Fraser a few miles up from its present mouth and opposite the alluvial islands called Sea and Lulu Islands.

      The existence of so extensive a midden, composed so largely of the remains of shell-fish that belong to salt water, at such an unusual distance from the nearest clam and mussel-bearing beds of today, was for a time a puzzle to me. I could perceive no satisfactory reason why these midden-makers should have chosen this particular site for their camping-ground instead of one five or six miles farther down the bank and nearer to the present source of supply of these much-coveted dainties of their larder. And upon discovery, a little later, of other middens still higher up the river by fifteen or sixteen miles, the puzzle became proportionately greater. I found it difficult to believe that the enormous mass of shell-fish whose remains enter so largely into the composition of these great piles had been laboriously brought up against the stream in canoes or “packed” on the backs of the patient “klutchmans.” It was too contrary to the genius of the people to suppose this. Making a brief survey of the district, a little later, the fact was disclosed that the mouth of the river was formerly some twenty miles higher up than it is at present, and that the salt waters of the Gulf of Georgia had in bygone days laved the base of the declivity on which the city of New Westminster now stands, and had passed on from thence and met the fresh water of the Fraser in the neighbourhood of the little wayside village of Port Hammond. And, further, that the large islands, now inhabited by ranchers, which bar in mid-stream the onrush of the annual freshets, must once have had no existence at all, and even after their formation had begun must have existed for a very considerable period as tidal flats, such as are seen today stretching beyond the whole delta for a distance of five or six miles. That these islands were once tidal flats is certain from the fact that the water from the wells dug on them by the ranchers is so brackish that the water of the Fraser is preferred to it. And, further, that when in this condition they afforded shelter to shell-fish similar to those whose remains are found in the middens near by, is clearly evidenced by the fact that beds of similar shells are frequently met with, in situ, as I have been credibly informed, when digging for water in the interior parts of the islands.

      But

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