large canoes together, lay the boards across them, and on this platform place all sorts of household goods, boxes, dogs, &c., and so slowly paddle on to their new locality. Here they disembark, and in a day or two the deserted framework is clothed with walls and roof, and what looked as if long deserted is soon stirring with life. This habit of a tribe to migrate from place to place has given origin to some nominal tribes, the so-called tribes being only villages of the same people, occupied at different times of the year. In the summer, or while moving from place to place they will use mat wigwams, and the plain tribes use lodges of a conical form made of skins, the form and variety of which vary with every tribe. Some of the tribes on the east coast of Vancouver and the northern coast of British Columbia have houses in imitation of the whites with separate apartments within the main building. Few of them have tried to imitate the European style of furniture, though one or two of the more civilised ones about the Metlakatlah Mission on the northern coast of British Columbia have made a faint attempt at this. A Clalam* Indian of my acquaintance, in a fit of enthusiastic civilisation, built and furnished a cottage like the settlers about him, and for a while was very proud of his establishment. By-and-by he and his squaw got into a quarrel, when to spite the lady, who was very proud of her home, he set to work with an axe, chopped up the furniture, and then burnt the whole to ashes.

Barter is the general mode of purchase amongst Indians, though the tribes nearest the white settlements are now learning the use of money, and prefer it to goods. Among some of the tribes near Fort Rupert certain pieces of wood studded with sea-otter teeth are used as a medium of exchange, and in Southern Oregon and Northern California the Indians employ the scarlet scalps of the carpenter woodpecker for money. There are numerous articles held in high esteem by them, though they are not regular articles of barter-such as the skin of an albino deer, but the universal substitute for money which once prevailed among all the Northwestern Indian tribes, and does so to a considerable extent even at the present day, was the hioqua shell, and which held the same place as the cowry among some African tribes in its purchasing power. This Indian money, or hioqua, is the Dentalium pretiosum. It is a shell from half an inch to two and a half inches in length, pearly white, and, as its name infers, in shape like a slender specimen of the canine tooth or tusk of a bear, dog, or such-like animal. The Indians value a shell according to its length. Those representing the greatest value are called, when strung together, hioqua; but the standard by which the dentalium is calculated to be fit for a hioqua is that twenty-five shells placed end to end must make a fathom (or six feet) in length. At one time a hioqua would purchase a small slave, equal in value to fifty blankets, or about £50 sterling. The shorter and defective shells are strung together in various lengths, and are called kop-kops. About forty kop-kops equal a hioqua in value. These strings of dentalia are usually the stakes gambled for. These shells are procured off Cape Flattery and from the north-west end of Vancouver Island, chiefly Koskeemo Sound, a locality abounding in marine life. The Indian fairy tales tell of youths who went away to such faroff lands that they came to a people who were so rich that they lived in houses with copper doors, and fed on the flesh of the hioqua shell! The dentalia live in the soft mud, in water from three to five fathoms in depth. The habit of the creature is to bury itself in the

* On the Washington Territory shores of De Fucas Strait; the tribe is so designated by the whites, but the real pronunciation of the name is S'calam.

sand, the small end of the shell being invariably downwards, and the larger end close to the surface, thus allowing the mollusk to protrude its feeding and breathing organs. The Indian turns this to account in the instrument he uses to capture them with. He arms himself with a long spear, the shaft made of light fir, to the end of which is fastened a strip of wood,

resembling exactly a long comb with the teeth very wide apart. A squaw sits in the stern of the canoe, and paddles it slowly along, whilst the Indian with the spear stands in the bow. He now stabs this comb-like affair into the sand at the bottom of the water, and after giving it two or three stabs draws it up to look at it; if he has been successful, perhaps four or five dentalia have been impaled on the teeth of the spear. Mr. Lord-from whom I quote this

seems to think that it was only in remote times that the interior tribes traded these from the coast tribes. This is not so; to this day the interior tribes, even as far south as California, use and value them highly. The Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Rupert purchase large quantities from the Koskeemo Indians, for the purpose of sending to San Francisco, from whence they are scattered by the American traders all through the interior.

With all their suspiciousness, it was often a surprise to me how nearly all the Indians I have ever fallen in with had such implicit belief in "papers." Indians have often taken my notes of hand for sums due to them, and at other times—and this was most extraordinary-they would demand before starting a "paper" to the effect that they were to get so-and-so for the work to be done, quite unconscious, as they could not read, and had no one to read it for them, that the document might, to say the least of it, be very informal! Traders are in the habit of granting these promissory notes, and I fancy they cannot be often dishonoured-the trader's credit, not to say the safety of his head, being dependent on his meeting them faithfully—as their belief is still strong in a "papaw." They are always anxious to get from you another kind of "paper"-namely, a certificate of character. Now these certificates are very useful to those who come after him, if the traveller knows his man well and states his character fairly. The contrary is, however, more often the case. Every trader or vagabond who "knocks about " the country immediately airs his penmanship in such documents, which are of no value except as specimens of peculiar orthography, or often of profanity. Sometimes the writers attempt doggrel -the result of which is sufficiently amusing. Generally the first thing an Indian does, if he wishes to establish diplomatic relations with you, is to march off to his lodge and produce a packet of greasy documents, which he hands out from beneath his blanket, with a look upon his countenance, as of "Read this, my friend, and then tell me what you think of me!" You open them-"This is to certtifie that the Bayrer is one of the allfiredest scoundrels in all the counttry, and would steal the ears off your head-not to say the hed itself-if they was not fastened. Kick him behind with the kind regards of The Lord High Dook of Newcastle the riter of this;" or, "This is a good honest Injun, very obliging and truthfull, and greatfull for kindness. J. Smith, schooner Indian Maid." The entire value of this certificate is proved by the fact that the bearer so highly recommended, after filling himself at your expense, is caught making off, not only without once thanking you (which is not expected), but with your coat under his blanket!

They attribute, I am of belief, some supernatural influence to these papers, for they will buy them from others, and even store up scraps of paper of no value whatever in the light of testimonials. When I visited the Koskeemo Indians on the north-west coast of Vancouver Island, in 1866, the old chief Negatse was from home, but his wife and handsome daughter, as usual, favoured me with a sight of his family papers. Some were the usual testimonials from traders, &c. Indeed, some of them were never intended for him, but apparently bought, as things of great value, from their owners. Some of them were scrawls from one trader to another: a proclamation of Governor Blanchard, which calls us back thirteen years, offering a reward for the Nawitta Indian who had murdered three runaway British seamen; but most of them were notes of hand for articles bought by traders and others, and not paid for—such as, “I promise to pay fifteen potatoes on the schooner coming." "I promise to pay twenty pints molasses and a looking-glass 6 x 4 when the schooner comes," &c. These Koskeemo Indians, living on

the shores of Quatsceno and Koskeemo Sound, were at once the most primitive and best Indians I ever met with in all my travels. The only dress of the women was a bark blanket, such as I have already described, and a fringe apron composed of cords of cedar bark suspended from a girdle. The men had the same, some occasionally omitting the latter portion and others the former. Indeed, if the day was warm when we passed the little camps of beaver-hunters along the wooded shores of the Sound, we saw them stalking about quite naked, with the exception of a twist of cedar bark around their heads. Their hair was not fastened up in a topknot tied round with cedar bark, as among the western coast Indians, or divided down the middle as among the great Cowichan Connection (south-eastern end of Vancouver and Lower Fraser River), but divided at the side, with the greater portion twisted up with a piece of cedar bark, apparently to keep the forelock out of the eyes. Those of the women who could afford it had a streak of vermilion down the division of their hair, but only few of them had any on their faces, visitors not being expected. It was amusing, however, to see them scuttling off to ornament themselves as they saw strangers approaching. Everywhere they crowded round to look at me, and ask questions, and everybody was friendly in the extreme. Contrary to Indian custom, they never begged from me, and thanked me for the smallest present, They hailed me afar off as my canoe approached their village, and lighted me with torches to the lodge of a sort of chieftainess both by birth and wealth, the widow of a trader-the only white man who had ever lived for any length of time among them. As we came near, the Indians in my canoe hailed the others ashore-"Oh! a great chief," a boy shouted, " is coming from the Quakwolth country. He is coming to stay here. He has a musket that never stops shooting. Oh! he is a kingatai (great) chief!" Walking up through the village, with a bon jour to all men (and it is wonderful how exceedingly courteous one becomes in the enemy's country), I entered the block house once occupied by my friend the trader, and sat down on a mat until some one addressed me. chieftainess was not long in hurrying from some gossiping visit, with the air of a disconsolate widow, and entertained me with a long narrative of the goodness and greatness of "that dead man," and at the same time begged to know had I any intentions of staying with them altogether. She was anxious to get up a flirtation with me in a small way, and just as she was in the midst of uproarious mirth at some mild witticism which I had perpetrated, and at which the surrounding toadies, composed of the whole village, as in duty bound, had, in the expectation of future largess, laughed most loudly, she would again relapse into the disconsolate widow, and inflict upon me a long series of statistics regarding the numbers of beavers the late lamented had traded, the geese he had shot, and the tobacco and blankets he had given

away.

The

I bought a deer, which a hunter had brought in, for ten leaves of tobacco, and with some salmon which my hostess added I made a hearty supper. The lady, probably under the emollifying influence of my tea-kettle, confessed that she might marry again, but could never think of an Indian after "that dead man," and she again broke into a pæan of praises. She was again most anxious to know if I was going to stay, and from the context I inferred that, in familiar parlance, she was "setting her cap" at me, an attention at which I was in no way flattered, though, for reasons of policy, I took good care not to show it. Visitors walked in and out, almost all of them entirely in a state of nature, and quite unconscious of any offence against the laws of "society." More leaves of tobacco were distributed to the

attendant levee, until the praises of the "bearded chief who had come from the Quakwolth country filled the house and made the rafters ring. My henchmen occupied seats of honour, and, to add to their own dignity, had, you may be sure, in no way lessened the glory and high dignity of their master. A clean cedar-bark mat was spread for me, my blanket unrolled, and with my rifle under it, I lay down, not before I had been informed that my "little musket " (revolver) was unnecessary, as they were all friends to me. The Indian

cook at Fort Rupert had told the Indians with whom I had travelled over, that I would shoot them all on the smallest provocation-a piece of mischief-making quite in keeping with the character of that youthful savage. My visitors soon left me, finding that nothing more was likely to be got, and my hostess, who ordered them about in a most peremptory manner, told me if a woman and child, who slept on the other side of the house, alarmed me in the least, "just to kick them out." The woman in question, however, laid before me in the morning a long tale of domestic wrongs, which led me to entertain no high opinion of my chieftainly friend's character, and to think that an aboriginal divorce court would find employment enough even in the quiet village of Natsenuchtum. Arcadia looks very pretty, until "the guide shows the closet in which the skeleton is kept."