commentary refer to a narrow type and a broad type, again without any speculation about relative age of the two types.
15 Harlan I. Smith Archaeology of the Gulf of Georgia (1907) pp. 354–355. The quotation continues: “Evidently in this region a peculiar type of culture existed. The significance of this fact will be discussed more fully in the conclusion of this paper.” I have failed to find such a discussion at the end of his paper.
16 Smith Archaeology of the Gulf of Georgia (1907) p. 436. Boas in the “Conclusion” to Teit’s The Thompson Indians (1900) writes: “We find in the earlier period, which is indicated by the lower strata of the shell-heaps, interspersed among the broad-headed type, a peculiar type of narrow face and narrow head, which has no analogue on the coast. These finds indicate a period of mixture of two distinct tribes” (p. 388). Ellen W. Robinson’s article “Harlan I. Smith, Boas, and the Salish: Unweaving Archaeological Hypotheses” (1976) puts the matter into historical perspective; the long-headed skulls could be due to “a variety of styles of head deformation, even styles not known recently” (p. 195).
17 T. P. O. Menzies “Northwest Coast Middens” in The Great Fraser Midden (1948) pp. 16–17. Dr. George E. Kidd listed the measurements of the Vancouver Museum holdings in “Report on a Collection of Skulls” Museum and Art Notes (June 1933 Supplement). Cybulski Skeletal Variability in British Columbia Coastal Populations (1975) uses only the skulls in the Field Museum, Chicago, for his Coast Salish sample (p. 34).
18 Donald H. Mitchell Archaeology of the Gulf of Georgia Area, Supplement 1 to Vol. 4 ofSyesis (B.C. Provincial Museum, 1971) p. 69.
19 See Hill-Tout “Later Prehistoric Man”; and Smith in Cairns of British Columbia (1901) p. 65.
20 Mitchell Archaeology of the Gulf of Georgia Area p. 64, figure 17, and p. 72: “The gaps in our knowledge of spatial and temporal distributions are still to be measured in the hundreds of miles and thousands of years; and it is clear that before adequate descriptions of the culture types are possible, and before the processes of culture-type formation can be offered with confidence, many more sites will have to be examined.”
21 Rohner’s The Ethnology of Franz Boas (1969) pp. 125–128 covers Boas’ Fraser River work of 1890, conducted entirely in New Westminster, except for a day trip by boat to Mission to take measurements of Indian schoolchildren. Wayne Suttles remarks in Katzie Ethnographic Notes (1955) that the Stalo region “has been rather neglected” (p. 6): “Boas’ brief paper of 1894 and Hill-Tout’s of 1902 and 1904 are all that we have until very recently on the native tribes of the Lower Fraser Valley. Barnett’s paper of 1938 and unpublished material touch the Musqueam of the mouth of the Fraser but ascend it no farther.” Wilson Duff’s statement in The Upper Stalo Indians (1952) that Hill-Tout “has done the only published work of any significance on the language” (p. 11) has stood unchallenged almost to the present. The work of the modern linguists, as summarized by Laurence C. Thompson in Native Languages of the Americas (1976) pp. 391392, has yet to reach general circulation in print. Oliver Wells’ contribution, though not mentioned by Thompson, is not negligible, and will be discussed below.
22 Rohner The Ethnology of Franz Boas (1969) p. 127: after a week with George Chehalis, Boas wrote to his wife, “At times I feel like giving up the whole trip and letting all the Indians run off.” His portrait of his informant is not flattering. Of the Chehalis stories in Indianische Sagen (1977, pp. 19–14) several are also told by Hill-Tout’s informants, and provide a basis for comparison.
23 Oliver Wells’ tapes amount to over twenty hours of conversation with the older Indians of the Chilliwack area, mainly between 1962 and 1965. Although Wells was not a linguist, he was extremely interested in Halkomelem vocabulary and place-names, and the tapes include much discussion of native words, and a few fine performances of Halkomelem story-telling. One gets a sense of the richness of this material in Wells’ publications, A Vocabulary of Native Words (1965; second edition 1969), Squamish Legends (1966), and Myths and Legends of the Staw-loh Indians (1970).
24 Norman Lerman’s thesis, An Analysis of Folktales of Lower Fraser Indians (University of Washington 1952) should be consulted, not only for the additional stories to be found there, but also for the different versions offered of the same story, and pertinent commentary. At the same time, Legends of the River People edited by Betty Keller from Lerman’s field notes, contains stories, albeit rewritten by the editor, not included in the thesis. Additional stories, not included in either of the above, may be found in Once Upon an Indian Tale, which Lerman published in 1968 in collaboration with Helen S. Carkin.
25 See Rev. Thomas Crosby Among the An-ko-me-hums (Toronto 1907) pp.187–188. The ms. “The Conversion of Capt. John” as narrated by himself and translated by Rev. W. H. Barraclough may be consulted at the Chilliwack Museum.
26 Dr. Jilek in his Salish Indian Mental Health and Culture Change: Psychohygienic and Therapeutic Aspects of the Guardian Spirit Ceremonial (1974) p. 1 gives the figures for new initiations per season as: 1967–68 one; 1968–69 three; 1969–70 four; 1970–71 sixteen; 1971–72 ten. “The drop in initiations during the 1971–72 season was not due to a lack of candidates, as we could verify, but rather to a deliberate effort on the part of the new initiator to limit the number of novices” (pp. 11–12). See also Pamela Amoss Coast Salish Spirit Dancing (1978).
27 See Oliver N. Wells “Return of the Salish Loom” The Beaver Vol. 296, No. 4 (Spring 1966) pp. 40–45, reprinted with additional materials in his Salish Weaving Primitive and Modern (1969). See also Elizabeth Hawkins Indian Weaving Knitting Basketry of the Northwest (1978) p. 8: “In 1961 the late Oliver Wells became vitally interested in the revival of Salish weaving techniques. His research led to the discovery of Mary Peters who was engaged in twine weaving with rags in her home. Through Mr. Wells’ help and encouragement Adeline Lorenzetto and many others learned to twill stitch. Today the Salish Weavers of Coqualeetza near Chilliwack, B.C. have achieved a high degree of excellence and their works of art are again coveted not only by handicraft enthusiasts but by professional designers, architects and collectors.”
28 A profusely illustrated guide to the practising carvers and artists of the Halkomelem area is Reg Ash well’s Coast Salish Their Art, Culture and Legends (1978).
29 I attended as an observer a planning meeting of the Chehalis Reserve School where it was decided that Halkomelem words would be used as often as was reasonably possible, not only in formal language tuition, but in nature study, geography, history and other classes. I am indebted to Dr. Brent Galloway, linguist at the Coqualeetza Indian Education Centre, for sharing with me some of his insights in the area of his expertise.
LATER PREHISTORIC MAN IN BRITISH COLUMBIA1
The following notes and observations on some ancient British Columbian middens and tumuli in the vicinity of the Lower Fraser are offered in the hope that they may be found to possess some ethnological value, and also with the desire to call forth a wider and more active interest in these vanishing and, for the most part, unrecorded vestiges of a distant past. The writer’s explorations among these melancholy monuments have led him to believe that we possess in them valuable records of the prehistoric conditions of the aborigines of this section of the Pacific slope and of their antiquity in that region. The middens of Europe and of the Atlantic seaboard, and the mounds of the great central and eastern valleys, have long been classic ground to the archaeologist, and much labour and attention have been profitably bestowed upon them; but the middens and tumuli of British Columbia are as yet but little known to him, and have not up to this time, I think, received any serious or systematic attention at his hands. Yet the tumuli herein described constitute a distinct type of their own, with many interesting and unique features about them; and the midden
