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The Wak

ash.

BOOK It is especially in the environs of Nootka, that European LXXVI. travellers have had an opportunity of observing the indigenous inhabitants. These savages call themselves WakIndigenous tribes. ash. Their height is above the middle stature, and they are of a muscular frame. Their features are characterised by a prominence of the cheek-bones. Their face is often very much compressed above the cheeks, and appears to sink abruptly between the temples. Their nose, flat at the base, is marked by wide nostrils, and a round point. Their forehead is low, their eyes small and black, and their lips broad, thick, and round. In general, they are entirely destitute of beard, or, at most, have only a small thin tuft at the point of their chin. This deficiency, however, is, perhaps, owing to an artificial cause; for, some of them, and, especially their old men, have bushy beards, and even mustachios. Their eye-brows are scantily supplied with hair, and are always straight; but they have a considerable quantity of very harsh, and very strong hair on their head, which, without a single exception, is black and straight, and floats on their shoulders. A coarse dress of linen, with a covering from the skin of the bear or sea otter, red, black, and white pigments, with which they besmear their body, the whole of their ordinary costume, in short, forms the imTheir war- age of wretchedness and ignorance. Their war-dress is

dress.

extraordinary. They muffle up their head with pieces of wood, carved into the representation of eagles, wolves, and porpoises' heads. Several families live together in the same hut, the wooden half partitions of which give it the appearance of a stable. Some of their woollen stuffs, although manufactured without a loom, are very good, and are ornamented with figures of a brilliant colour. They carve clumsy statues of wood.

Their light canoes, which are flat and broad, bound over the waves in the steadiest manner, without the assistance of the outrigger, or balance board, an essential distinction between the canoes of the American tribes, and those of the southern parts of the East Indies, and the islands of Oceanica.

ratus.

The apparatus of which they make use in hunting and BOOK fishing, is equally ingenious and well executed. A kind LXXVI. of oar, furnished with teeth, with which they hook the Their fishfish, is particularly noticed. This weapon, as well as the ing appa javelins with which they strike the whale, announce a high inventive genius. The javelin is composed of a piece of bone, furnished with two barbs, in which is fixed the ovalcutting edge of a large muscle-shell, which forms the point. Two or three fathoms of cord are attached to it. In order to throw this weapon, they use a stick, 12 or 15 feet in length, with the line attached to one extremity, and the javelin to the other, so as to detach it from the stick, like a buoy, when the animal escapes. *

rior, and

beads.

The tribes that inhabit New Georgia, differ in stature, Tribes of manners, and mode of living; but in their characteristic the intefeatures, they quite resemble the inhabitants of Nootka of New Sound. The apparent depopulation of the environs of Georgia. Port Discovery, is singularly contrasted with the great number of skulls and other human bones, which have been found collected together here, as if all the neighbouring tribes had made this their common cemetery.† Messrs. Lewis and Clarke have observed the inhabitants of the interior. In descending the rocky mountains, they saw several tribes, who have the habit of flattening the heads Flattened of their children, at a very early period of infancy. The Solkouks have their heads flattened to such a degree, that the top of the head is placed in a perpendicular line to their nose. The idioms of these tribes differ as much as their features. The language of the Enuchuts is understood by all the tribes that inhabit the Columbia, above its great fall; but near the coast, it is not understood, and they make use of the idiom of the Echilluts, which is completely different. The language of the Killamuks is very widely diffused among the tribes that live to the south, between the coast and the river Multnomah. The Koukouses, who border on the Killamuks, but live farther in + Vancouver. t. II. p. 14, seg,

Cook's Third Voyage, passim.

BOOK the interior, are of another race, are fairer, and have not LXXVI. their heads flattened. In general, the colour of all these

Tribes of
New Ha-

nover.

tribes, whether they have round or flat heads, is of a brown copper hue, and is clearer than that of the tribes of the Missouri and Louisiana. Woman is not degraded as among nations of hunters; but is treated with considerable attention by this people, who subsist by fishing. The sea air destroys their eyes and teeth. The tribes who live near the great fall of the Columbia, build their houses of wood, a degree of industry which is not met with in the immense. tract of country between this fall and Saint Lewis.*

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Some tribes of New Hanover, observed by Mackenzie, present to us several characteristic features, which recall to our recollection the islanders of Otaheite and Tongataboo. The inhabitants of the Salmon River, or, as they themselves call it, Annah-you-Tessé, live under a despotic government. They have two religious festivals; the one in spring, the other in autumn. In their solemn entertainments, they spread mats before their guests, while the people are seated in front in a semicircle. They mark their friendship for an individual by clothing him with their own dress, to which they sometimes add the offer of their place in the conjugal bed.§ But these characteristic manners are likewise met with among many other tribes of America and Asia. These tribes are generally of a middling stature, strong, and muscular, have round faces, prominent cheek-bones, small, reddish-grey eyes, and a complexion of an olive-copper colour. Their head assumes a conical shape, in consequence of continual pressure from infancy. Their hair is of a deep brown. They make their dress of a kind of stuff composed of cedar bark, Sculpture and sometimes interlaced with otter skin. They are of the Sal- clever sculptors. Their temples are supported by wooden pillars, carved into caryatides. Some of these figures are in an upright posture, in the attitude of conquer

mon In

dians.

Lewis and Clarke's Travels.
Mackenzie, t. III. p. 170.

† Mackenzie, t. III. p. 271.

Ibid. p. 181.

ors; others are stooping, overwhelmed, as it were, with BOOK their load.*

LXXVI.

The Sloud-Couss Indians inhabit that part of the country Sloudwhere the high chain of mountains that border the sea be- Couss gins to sink towards the basin of the river Tacoutché-Tessé. Indians. These Indians possess an agreeable physiognomy, evince a great love of cleanliness, and do not ill-treat their women. They preserve the bones of their parents enclosed in chests, or suspended on posts. Though faithful guardians of the property deposited with them by travellers, they endeavour to steal whatever they find in the possession of those very strangers.+

The Indians named Nanscoud, or of the Cascade, the The AtNagailers, and the Atnahs, inhabit the summit of Tacoutché- nah's, &c. Tessé. Among their various idioms, there are some that resemble the languages of the Chipiwans, and other nations of Canada.

Vancouver saw villages on the coast that were built upon a sort of artificial terrace, the representation of which, as given in the atlas of this traveller, reminds one a little of the Hippas of New Zealand. The village of Chelaskys, situated in Johnston's Strait, although composed of miserable huts, is ornamented with paintings, which appear to have a hieroglyphical meaning. This description of painting is diffused over the whole of the north-western coast.

tané In

The inhabitants of Tchinkitané Bay, called by the Eng- Tchinkilish Norfolk Bay, in King George's Archipelago, resemble, dians. in stature and figure, those of Nootka; but their coarse, harsh hair, establishes a likeness between them and the more northern nations and the Esquimaux. The young people pluck out their beard, but the old allow it to grow. Their women wear an extraordinary kind of ornament, which gives them the appearance of having two mouths; it consists of a small piece of wood, which they force into the

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BOOK flesh below their under lip. These people show a great LXXVI. deal of address in their manner of carrying on trade, and

Their resemblance to the Aztecs.

are exceedingly courageous in the whale fishery. Their tanning, carving, painting, and other arts, prove them to be an intelligent and industrious people. They preserve the heads of their dead in a kind of sarcophagus, ornamented with polished stones.†

The moral sketch which we have now traced of the tribes of New Georgia and New Hanover, proves that their genius has been developed during many ages of liberty. We must allow that in the idioms, manners, and belief of these tribes, there is some similitude with the Aztecs, or Mexicans. Which of these two nations is the source of the other? Judicious criticism suggests that, to place the cradle of Mexican civilization in the midst of tribes of fishermen, would be to hazard an important conclusion from a small number of equivocal facts. Another hypothesis, altogether absurd and contemptible, considers them as a colony of the Malays of Polynesia, with whom they have not the slightest physical resemblance.

Marchand's Voyage, t. I. p. 243.

Dixon's Voyage Round the World, (English) p. 181.

Scarcely, in idiom. Vater gives several dialects of each, but nothing can be more dissimilar than the Aztec and New Georgian. The latter wants the great American characters of epenthesis and composition. Mithridates, Von Adelung, III. 65, 225-238.-TR.

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