The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-01-10
BRITISH COLUMBIA INDIANS.
Arc They OF japanese Origin-Skiilful
Navisators and Hunters.

Navl&1tOrs ana hunters.
Julian Ralph in Harper's Magazine
You will find that seven in ten among
the more intelligent British Columbians
conclude these Indians to be of Japanese
origin. The Japanese current is neigh
borly to the province, and it has drifted
Japanese junks to these shores. When
the first traders visited the neighbor-
hood Of the mouth Of the Columbia
they found beeswax in the sand near the
vestiges of . wreck, and it is said that one
wreck of junk was met with and Il, 900
pounds of this wax was found on her.
Whalers are said to have frequently en-
countered wrecked and drifting junks in
the eastern Pacific. and local legend has
it that in 1884 remnants of junk with
three Japanese and cargo of pottery
were found on the coast south of Cape
Flattery. Nothing less than all this
should excuse even q rudderless ethnolo-
gist for so cruel reflection upon the jap
anese, for these Indians are so far from
pretty that all who see them agree with
Captain Butler, the traveller, who wrote
that 'if they are of the Monaghan type,
the sooner the Mongolians change their
type the better"
The Coast Indians are splendid sailors,
and their dugouts do not always come off
second best in racing with the boats of
white men. With primitive yet ingeni-
ously made tool, like an adze, in the con-
struction of which blade is tied fast to
bent handle of bone, these natives labori-
ously pick cut the heart of q great cedar
log and shape its outer sides into the
form of boat. When the log is properly
hnIIaUoH fhav Gu -,i&
then drop in stones which they have
heated in q fire. Thus they steam the
boat SO that they may spread the sides and
fit IN the crossbars which keep it strong
and preserve its shape. These dugouts are
sometimes sixty feet long, and are used
for whaling and long voyages in rough
seas. They are capable of carrying tons Of
the salmon or oolachan or her.
ring, of which these people,
catch sufficient in a few days for
their maintenance throughout a whole
year. One gets an idea of the swarms of
fish that infest those waters by the knowl-
edge that before nets were used the her
ring and the oolachan, or candie-fish,
were swept into these boats by an imple-
ment formed by studding ten-foot pole
with spikes or nails. This wa. swept
among the fish in the water, and the
boats were speedily filled with the
creatures that were impaled upon the
spikes. Salmon, sea-otter, otter, beaver,
marten, bear and deer Tor caribou or
moose) were and still are the chief re-
sources of most of the Indians. Once they
sold the tsh and the peltry to the Hud-
son Bay Company, and ate what parts or
surplus they did not sell Now they work
in the canneries or fish for them in sum-
mer, and hunt, trap or loaf the rest of the
time. However, while they still fish and
sell furs, and while some are vet as their
fathers were, nearly all the Coast Indians
are semi-civilized. They have at least
the white mans clothes and hymns
and vices. They have churches; they
live in houses; athey work in can
neries. What little there was that
was picturesque about them has vanished
only few degrees faster than their own
extinction as pure race, and they are now
lot of 'longshoremen. What Mr.. Duncan
did for them in Metlakahtla-especial in
housing the families separately-has not
been arrived at even In the reservation at
Victoria, where one NAV still see one of the
huge low shed-iike houses they prefer. orna-
mented with totem poles, and arranged for
eight families, and consequently for a
laxity of morals for which no one can hold
the white man responsible
They are a tractable people, and take as
kindly to the rudiments of civilization. TO
WIN anu 10 co-opcratioh with the whites
as the plains Indian does to tea tobacco
and whisky. They are physically but
not mentally inferior TO the plainsman.
They carve bowls and spoons of stone
and bone, and their keraldic totem
poles are cleverly shapen, however gro
tesque they may be. They still make
them, but they oftener carve little ones for
white people, inst as they make more silver
bracelets for sale than for wear. They are
clever waayrrp rushes oalar
into mats. baskets. door cloths and cargo
covers. In word. they were more prone
TO work at the outset than most Indians.
so that the present 'longshore career of
most of them is not greatly 10 be wondered
at