Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/360

346 evidently been readily adopted by various tribes from whatever source they may have originated. In dexterity and constructive skill, as well as in artistic representation, the Haida people, however, excel all the others.

The villages consist usually of a single row of houses ranged along the edge of the beach and facing the sea. The houses are generally large, and are used as dwelling-places by two or more families, each occupying a corner, which is closed in by temporary partitions of split cedar planks, six or eight feet in height, or by a screen of cloth on one or two sides. Each family has, as a rule, its own fire, with cedar planks laid down near it to sit and sleep on. When, however, they are gathered in the houses of smaller and ruder construction, at summer fishing-places, etc., a single fire may serve for a whole household. The household effects and property of the inmates are piled up round the walls, or stored away in little cupboard-like partition spaces at the sides or back of the house. Above the fire belonging to each family is generally a frame of poles or slips of cedar, upon which clothes may be hung to dry, and dried fish or dried clams are stored in the smoke. Eating is a perpetually recurring occupation, and smoke appears to ooze out by every chink and cranny of the roofs of the large houses, the whole upper part of which is generally filled with it. The houses of the Kwakiool are not so large or so well constructed as those of the Haida, though, if Vancouver's representations of them are to be accepted as accurate, they are more commodious and better built now than in his time. The introduction of metal tools may have produced a change of that kind. Wood-carving is practiced, but not so extensively as among the Haida, and carved totem-posts are not nearly so numerous nor so large or artistic in design as among that people. Such examples of posts of this kind as occur are also invariably separate from the houses, and no instance of a carved post forming the door of a house was seen in any of the villages.

The most valuable possession of the Kwakiool and other northern tribes is the "copper" or copper plate of which the peculiar form is illustrated in my "Report on the Queen Charlotte Islands." A conventional face is often scraped out upon the surface of the "copper." The most valued coppers are very old and have been handed down for generations. These are known as tlâ-kwa. Smaller "coppers" of modern manufacture are named tlâ-tloh-sum. A copper, to be of value, should be of equal thickness throughout, except at the edges, where it should be thicker than elsewhere. When struck, it should emit a dull sound and not ring. The dentalium shell, named a-tl-a, was formerly used as a currency, but, as with other coast tribes, the blanket is now the unit of value. A somewhat inferior quality, known in the