Bay]; (7) Npapuk [Alberta Bay]; (8) Tumtis ‘paint’; (9) Tcakqai [Horseshoe Bay] ; (10) Stoktoks [Copper Point]; (11) Stcilks ’sling'; (12) Ketlalsm ‘nipping grass’ (deer come here in spring to eat the fresh grass) [Eagle Harbour] ; (13) Skeawatsut (Point Atkinson).
Islands in Sound: (1) Tlaqom (Anvil Island); (2) Tcalkunts (Gambier Island); (3) Qolelaqom (Bowen Island); (4) Sauqtitc (Hat Island) [Bowyer Island] ; (5) Mitlmetleltc (Passage Island).
English Bay, the Narrows, Burrard Inlet, and False Creek. From Coal Harbour to Mouth of North Arm of the Fraser: (1) Tcetcelmen; (2) Tcekoaltc; (3) Papiak (lighthouse) [Brockton Point]; (4) Qoiqoi ‘masks’ [Lumbermen’s Arch]; (5) Suntz; (6) Skeakunts; (7) Tcants; (8) Sqelc ’standing up' (Siwash Rock); (9) Stetuqk;(10) Helcen ’sandy beach, soft to the foot'; (11) Snauq (False Creek); (12) Skoatcais ‘deep hole in water’; (13) Skwaius; (14) lalmuq (Jericho); (15) Qapqapetlp ‘place of cedar’ (Point Grey); (16) Ulksn ‘point, nose’ [Point Grey]; (17) Tleatlum;(18) Tcitcileek; (19) Kulaqen;(20)Humelsom;(21)Mali. North Side from Point Atkinson, through the Narrows, up to the Inlet: (1) Stkqel [Cypress Creek]; (2) Smelakoa [West Bay] ; (3) Ktcam; (4) Homultcison (Capilano Creek, former headquarters of supreme chief); (5) Tlastlemauq (Saltwater Creek) [Mackay Creek]; (6) Stlaun [Mission Reservation]; (7) Qotlskaim ’serpent pond'; (8) Qoaltca (Lynn Creek); (9) Tcetcilqok (Seymour Creek); (10) Kiaken ‘palisade.’
Social Organisation
The social organisation of the Squamish has been so much broken up and modified by missionary and white influence that it is difficult now to learn any details about it. The tribe appears to have been divided, like the Thompson, into a number of okwumuq, or village communities, each of which was governed by its own local chief. I could gather nothing of their beliefs with regard to the origin of their different villages; they seem to have none or else to have lost or forgotten them. Of the origin of the tribe as a whole and some of the chief events of their existence I gathered an account a few years ago from an ancient member of the tribe, who was born a year or so after Captain Vancouver’s visit to them in 1792 [see article above]. Briefly it tells how the first Squamish men came into existence; how later the tribe was overwhelmed by a flood, and only one man and his wife escaped in their canoe, which landed on the mountains contiguous to the present Squamish territory; and how later again a severe and prolonged snowstorm caused, by cold and famine, the death of the whole tribe save one man and his daughter. From these two the Squamish trace their tribal descent.
The people were divided into the usual threefold division of chiefs, nobles, and common people. The lines, however, between these classes were not absolutely rigid. According to my informants, a member of the lower class, if a woman, could rise to the class above her by marriage with a member of that class, the wife usually taking the rank of her husband if not a slave. But a man of the lower rank, even if he succeeded in marrying a woman of the middle class, could only become a member of that class by undergoing a long and severe training, in which daily washings and scrubbings of the body played an important part. This was evidently a form of initiation the further particulars of which I could not learn. As a rule the chiefs and their families and immediate relatives formed a class or caste apart, the title of chief or headman descending from father to son, patriarchate prevailing among the Squamish. Consequently a chief usually married a chief’s daughter or daughters. But this rule was sometimes broken, and a woman of a lower class was taken to wife. In these cases the chieftainship would properly descend to one of the chief’s brothers or his son, and not to his own son. This was the rule. But it was possible to break this also and transmit the headship of the tribe to his own son by giving many potlatch feasts, and thus securing the goodwill of the tribe in his son’s favour. The son, too, upon his father’s death, would also give a feast and make handsome presents to all the influential men of the tribe. From this it would seem that children took their social rank from their mother rather than from their father, which looks like a trace of matriarchate, or mother-right. It is clear from their folk-tales, however, that these class divisions were not hard and fast, but that members of a lower caste could by the performance of certain acts pass into that above it.
Of secret societies I was unable to obtain any information whatever, and whether such formerly existed among the Squamish — of which I am extremely doubtful — it seems impossible to say.
Among the chiefs there were some of higher rank than the others, as among the Thompson. The supreme siam of the tribe was known by the title Te Kiapilanoq, and had his headquarters at the mouth of the Homultcison Creek, now called Capilano by the whites. He was local chief also of the Homultcison sept. Next in rank to him came one of the Squamish River chiefs. He likewise had a proper title, being known as Te Qatsilanoq.7 I was unable to learn what special significance these titles had. It is possible we may see in them the special names of two powerful gentes. The gentile system of the Squamish, if such existed, is not at all clear. The distinction between what might be regarded as a gens, or a sept, or a mere tribal division is very difficult to determine.
I could gather nothing satisfactory from any of my informants on this head. Heraldic and totemic symbols, according to some of them, were never used in the old days; but yet I was informed by others that some of the old houses had carved posts or columns, and that the figure of a bird or some other animal would sometimes be placed on a pole in front of the house or fastened to one of the gable ends. They also, sometimes at least, used masks in certain of their dances, if we may rely on the information on these points in their folk-tales. The tribe, as my ethnographical notes show, was formerly divided into a number of subdivisions, or okwumuq. Whether each of these should be regarded simply as a tribal subdivision, as among the Thompson, or as a gens, as among the northern tribes, is doubtful. Each division had its own proper name - in every instance, I think, a geographical one —derived from some local physical peculiarity, exactly as among the Thompson. In every okwumuq there existed the same threefold division of the people into three classes, and in some instances the total number of souls in each village would amount to several hundreds. Generally speaking, each community would be made up of several families or clans. The members of these clans were not bound together, as the gentes of the northern tribes, by common totems or crests. They comprised the blood relatives of any given family on both sides of the house for six generations. After the sixth generation the kinship ceases to hold good and the clanship is broken. Under this arrangement an individual’s relatives were legion, and he would often have family connection in a score or more different okwumuq. Among the present Squamish almost all of them are related in this way to one another, and their cousinships are endless and even perplexing to themselves. Marriage within the family or clan as thus constituted was prohibited, but members of different clans in the same village could intermarry with each other. If each village community is to be regarded as a separate gens having a common origin from some common ancestor — which I think is extremely doubtful — then marriage among the Squamish was not forbidden to members of the same gens. For my own part I am disposed to regard these separate communities as mere subdivisions of the tribe, which were effected at different periods in their tribal history, and generally, probably, from the same causes which have all over the world led to the founding of new homes and new settlements, viz., increase and stress of population. The evidence for regarding these divisions as distinct gentes having each a separate origin and springing from a separate ancestor, as among the northern tribes, is scanty and doubtful. This view is strengthened by the traditional origin of the tribe, which makes them all spring from a common pair. I do not desire to be understood as asserting that totemic gentes did not formerly exist among the Squamish, as Dr. Boas seems to hold. All I say is that after diligent inquiry from several of the chiefs and others I could myself find no evidence of it. I could not learn that any particular group or family bore names peculiar to that group or family, or possessed privileges not shared by the others other than the right to certain dances and their accompanying songs the origin and source of which was some personal dream or vision or experience of their own or their parents. But the ownership of these dances differed in no way from the ownership of a canoe or any other piece of property, and constituted no kind of bond or union between the owner of them and others of the tribe or okwumuq.
The
