The daily morning journal and courier., 1894-12-19

while others are purely legendary. but
 refer to the totem of the owner. None
 but the wealthy can afford to erect
 these carved columns. SO that one who
 is rich enough to own one has a pres-
 tige that Is so desirable among them.
 As the head of q household he becomes
 a petty chief in the village. With the
 Haida to accumulate sufficient wealth
 to own a totem pole and arise to the
 dignity of a petty chief Is the leading
 passion of his soul.
 Ensign Nibiack of the United States
 navy. in speaking of these totem col
 umns. says: "A great deal of mystery
 has been thrown around these picto-
 graphic carvings. due to the ignorance
 and misconception of some writers and
 the reticence or deliberate deception practised by the Indians themselves" One Of those Indians will not tell his
 stories or explain his carving to any
 but the initiated. and that only when
 they are in perfect sympathy with him.
 Mir. Mcleod, the trader at Howkan.
 was very successful in gaining infor-
 nation from them that would have
 been impossible for Mir. Gould. the mis- slonary. or his wife. the government school teacher. to have obtained. Then
 they have their moods. and will rarely tell their stories either in daytime or during the summer season. But dur Ing those long winter nights which characterize that region the old.Indian will build a fire and settle himself down in a business-like manner, and talk as long as the fire lasts. When the fire has burned down to a bed of coals and the dying embers begin to fade away, his story stops. Nor will he build another fire. Nothing more will be heard of the story that night. Thus 1t often requires week or more for an old Haida to complete the mar rative of the story that Is written on a single totemic carving.
 Ensign Niblack was quite right when he wrote of those totemic carvings: "They are in no sense idols, but in gen. eral may be said to be ancestral col umns. The legends which they illus trate are but the traditions. folk lore and nursery tales of a primitive peo- pie; and while they are in some sense childish or frivolous and at times even coarse, they represent the current hu- man thought as truly as do the ancient in Egypt and Babylonia, or the Maya inscriptions of Yucatan."
 The totemic and commemorative car wings are for the most part symbolical of the objects they represent rather than limitations of them. There Is usu- ally some arbitrary mark by which one of the initiated distinguishes one symbol from another. Thus the brown bear is usually known by the peculiar shape of the ears, the beaver by the shape of his teeth, the raven by the sharpness of his bill, the eagle by the shape of his beak. the owl by the ears, the campus by his great fin, &c.
 The explanation of the column in front of g Haida house may be of inter- est. The figure at the top of the col umn represents "Hoots," or the brown bear, which is the totem of the propri- etor of the house. The disks" below the bear indicate the high rank or great wealth of the man who erected 1t. Each one of them usually commence rates some meritorious act of its owner, such as giving a great "potlach" or winning a great victory. Next pro- ceeding down the column Is ''yalth," the great raven with the moon in his mouth. Beneath him is the bear and hunter, and at the bottom is "tsing," the beaver and totem of the wife and children.
 The Haida tribes are rapidly under going a change. They are not slow to abandon their own customs and adopt the methods of the Europeans. If scholars wish to systematically ac- quaint themselves with the interest ing traditions of these people as illus trated by their carving, etching and painting, they had better be quick about it. Their works are rapidly de- teriorating in the face of the new civil ization, and in the indifference of the present generation. In fact, the only young men who now engage in such pursuits are the curio makers.