Haida people

“ With both sexes the hair grows low over the forehead. Twice while in Masset we encountered faces which in their features seemed unusual and out of place. On inquiry we learned that they were both slaves who had been taken in war from the coast Indians long ago.
Owing to their almost constant seafaring life, the Haidas have long and powerfully developed arms, while their legs are proportionately short. A single glance at a Haida walking is sufficient to convince one that he is more at home in a canoe than on the land. ”

“ The man of magic must have his choice.'
"But at this the mother's heart grew as wax in the summer sunshine—it is a strange quality that mothers' hearts are made of! 'Give her to the best man—the man her heart holds highest,' said this Haida mother.
"Then Yaada spoke: 'I am the daughter of my tribe; I would judge of men by their excellence. He who proves most worthy I shall marry; it is not riches that make a good husband; it is not beauty that makes a good father for one's children. ”

“ Sometimes it illustrates some legend closely connected or referring to the owner’s totem. Some of them deal with the history of the tribe, 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 prestige that is so desirable among them. As the head of a household he becomes a petty chief in the village. With the Haida, to accumulate sufficient wealth to own a totem pole and rise to the dignity of a petty chief is the leading passion of his soul. ”

“ When the Haidas visit Victoria or the towns on Puget Sound they are dressed in the garb of white people and present a respectable appearance, in marked contrast with the Indians from the west coast of Vancouver’s Island, or the vicinity of Cape Flattery, who dress in a more primitive manner, and attract notice by their more picturesque costumes than do the Haidas, about whom there is nothing outwardly of unusual appearance, except the tattoo marks on the hands of the women, which show their nationality at a glance of the most careless observer. ”

“ The dullness attributed to the Indians of the interior here gives place to a more alert expression of countenance. They acquire knowledge readily, and since schools have been established among them their children have made fair progress. They learn all trades with readiness, and before the missionaries and traders came among them they exhibited much ingenuity, not only in the erection of comfortable dwelling houses, but in their numerous carvings on wood and slate, their working and engraving on copper and the erection of those great totem columns which make every Haida village famous. ”

“ Hilda sprang to her feet, up in arms, on the defensive and the offensive. While the astonished Cheerio still extended the book—a silent peace offering—Hilda’s dark head tossed up, in that characteristic motion, while her foot stamped the ground.
“I don’t care for that kind of rot, thank you. My dad’s right. It’s better to be real people in the world rather than fake folk in a book.”
Again the head toss and the blaze of angry wide eyes; then, swift as a fawn, Hilda sped across the verandah and the ranch house door banged hard. ”

“ This will be found in volume V of the Memoirs of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition, part I, pages 243 to 245. Apart from linguistics, the story is interesting from the point of view of Indian psychology. It was related by the present chief of Those-born-at-House-point (Na-iku′n qe′ig̣awa-i) , once the leading family of Rose Spit and Cape Ball, on the eastern coast of Graham island.
1 The half-rock woman in the corner, or the woman rooted to the ground, is very common in Haida stories. ”

“ Comparing their totem poles and memorial columns with those which we saw in the Haida villages, it becomes apparent at once that the symbols are more boldly executed and the conventionalism less pronounced. The figures are not blended and combined as they are among the Haidas. We noticed also that the human figure is repeated over and over again, and is always portrayed with a boldness and fidelity that are worthy of the highest praise. ”

“ The few captives who were retained after a fight were adopted into the tribe of the captors or else were allowed to live with them and shift for themselves—a practice very different from that of the Haidas.
Another feature of the Haidas' life which showed comparative progress was the social distinctions which existed among them. One of the ways in which individuals maintained their social position was by giving away quantities of goods of all kinds at the potlatches which they organized. A man sometimes went so far as to strip himself of nearly every possession except his house. ”

“ I thought from Lady Montella’s letters that Haifa was a beau ideal of a place; but she sees everything Jewish from behind rose-coloured spectacles. To me it is a desert with scarcely an oasis to break the monotony, with a climate as sultry as that of the Inferno, and an atmosphere of brick-dust and tar. Building to right of us, building to left of us—scaffoldings, ladders, and paint-pots; what is so depressing as a half-built town? And as for society—why, there isn’t any worth speaking of, because the people here will not recognise distinctions of class. ”

“ We can now see that the plan of universal federation and general peace which Hiawatha devised had nothing in itself so surprising as to excite our incredulity. It was, indeed, entirely in accordance with the genius of his people. Its essence was the extension to all nations of the methods of social and civil life which prevailed in his own nation. If the people of a town of four hundred families could live in constant "peace and friendship," why should not all the tribes of men dwell together in the same manner? ”

“ It will be observed that by the laws and customs of the Haidas, they not only prevent the accumulation of wealth and power in one branch of a family and allow it to grow opulent, corrupt and rotten, but provide for the widows as well. ”

“ Like all the other coast tribes, the Haidas are careful not to permit the intrusion of white persons or strangers to their Tomanawos cere [71] monies, and as a consequence but few white people, and certainly none of those who have ever written about those Indians, have been present at their opening ceremonies when the tattoo marks are shown.
My information was derived from the Haidas themselves, who explained to me while I was making the drawings, and illustrated some of the positions assumed in their dances by both sexes.
[72]
Fig. 25 represents a man. ”

“ With one more tack we have rounded the point and are headed due south, and a favorable tide bears us rapidly down the inlet; a minute more and we sight Masset—a strange, quaint little sleepy village, with its tall totem poles and row of cottages.
Masset is one of the two villages which to-day make up all that is left of the Haida nation on the Queen Charlotte Islands. The Haidas numbered seven thousand in 1840, and counted over thirty villages. To-day there are two inhabited villages and less than one thousand Haidas. They are a doomed race. ”

“ Very little can be said of the government of the Haidahs in distinction from that of the other nations of the Northwest Coast. Among nearly all of them rank is nominally hereditary, for the most part by the female line, but really depends to a great extent on wealth and ability in war. Females often possess the right of chieftainship. In early intercourse with whites the chief traded for the whole tribe, subject, however, to the approval of the several families, each of which seemed to form a kind of subordinate government by itself. ”

“ Bijdragen tot de Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië, xlvii. (1897) pp. 59 sq. Among the Haida Indians of Queen Charlotte Islands “every war-party must be accompanied by a shaman, whose duty it was to find a propitious time for making an attack, etc., but especially to war with and kill the souls of the enemy. Then the death of their natural bodies was certain.” See J. R. Swanton, “Contributions to the Ethnology of the Haida” (Leyden and New York, 1905) , p. 40 (Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History, The Jesup North Pacific Expedition, vol. v. part i.) ”

“ Made him captive to her singing and her smiles.
Till his hands forgot to havoc and his weapons lost their lusting,
Till his stormy eyes allured her from the land of Totem Poles,
Till she followed where he called her, followed with a woman's trusting,
To the canyon where the Capilano rolls.
And the women of the Haidas plied in vain their magic power,
Wailed for many moons her absence, wailed for many moons their prayer,
"Bring her back, O Squamish foeman, bring to us our Yaada flower!" ”

“ Go back now to your people; live with them, work with them, and free the land from all monsters and giants. And when Death at last lays his icy hand upon you, you shall share my kingdom and be ruler of the Northwest-Wind." Then all anger departed from Hiawatha and he went on his homeward way; only once did he turn aside, to buy arrow-heads from the ancient arrow-maker in the land of a neighboring Indian tribe. But do you not think that arrow-heads could equally well have been bought in his own village? ”

“ The fine flower of the native races of the coast are the Haidas. They are taller and fairer, with more regular features than any of the Columbian coast tribes. They are aliens to the Tlingits, differing from them mentally and physically, in speech and customs. The Tlingits call them “people of the sea.” They were the Norsemen of the Pacific shores; the coppery Erics and Harolds, who sailed the blue waters of the Pacific, sweeping the coast, attacking native villages, Hudson Bay Company posts, and the settlements of the whites. The harbor at Seattle was a place of rendezvous. ”

“ WORK OF DR. W. J. HOFFMAN. Dr. W. J. Hoffman proceeded early in August to Victoria, B. C., where numerous sketches of Haida totem posts and carvings were obtained, in connection with the myths which they illustrated. At this locality attention was paid to the XLIIburial customs and osteologic remains of the nearly extinct tribe of Songish Indians.
At Port Townsend sketches were obtained of Thlinkit ivory and wood carvings, clearly indicating the adoption by that tribe of Haida art designs. ”

“ It is in the intellect, however, that the greatest gulf exists between them. One visiting the Haidas sees many strikingly intelligent and attractive faces amongst the older men and women, where experience has given character to their expressions. ”

“ Like all of their tribe, these Kaigahnee Haidas are an intelligent and superior people, skilled in the arts of war and the crafts of peace, and their carvers have wrought matchless totem poles, canoes, bowls, spoons, halibut clubs and hooks, from time immemorial. 276These carvings show finer work and better ideas than the art relics of the other tribes, and in silver work they quite surpass the rest of the Thlinkets ”

“ The first day of the council the chiefs told their plans, and Hiawatha listened. The second day he arose in the council, and the people listened. Hiawatha said wise words. All the chiefs remembered the words of Hiawatha. He made this speech:
“My brothers: You are from many tribes. You have come here for one cause. It is to live in safety. We must join ourselves together. The tribes that are [248] on the warpath are strong. Not one tribe here is equal to that great people. Make yourselves a band of brothers. Then you will be stronger than they. ”

“ Albert looked at her with curiosity, for she had not yet related what he most desired to know, -- how she had become the slave of the count. Haidee saw at a glance the same expression pervading the countenances of her two auditors; she exclaimed, `When my mother recovered her senses we were before the serasker. `Kill,' said she, `but spare the honor of the widow of Ali.' -- `It is not to me to whom you must address yourself,' said Koorshid. ”

“ The desire and yearning of my soul is for an African nationality. I want a people that shall have a tangible, separate existence of its own; and where am I to look for it? Not in Hayti; for in Hayti they had nothing to start with. A stream cannot rise above its fountain. The race that formed the character of the Haytiens was a worn-out, effeminate one; and, of course, the subject race will be centuries in rising to anything. ”

“ Then he gave each man three dollars for travelling money, about nine shillings English, and out of it the mules were to be fed, the charges of n'zala and fandak to be met, and if there was anything over the men might buy food for themselves. They dared not protest, for El Arbi bel Hadj ben Haida had every man's house in his keeping, and if the muleteers had failed him he would have had compensation in a manner no father of a family would care to think about. ”

“ In their stead are little stuffy, propped-up cottages with iron stoves and glass windows, and by the side of this modern village is the marble burying ground with marble columns brought from Victoria. Masset is the Clyde of the coast, and in the fall and winter the little street along the water's edge is lined with great cedar logs, which are being chipped, steamed, pressed, and fashioned into canoes, some over fifty feet long. Strong and well built, the Haidas make journeys in them of hundreds of miles—they are the vikings of the New World. ”