of Boas. A well-balanced survey of Hill-Tout’s and Teit’s work by Swanton appears under the heading “Salish” in ed. James Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics Vol. XI (1928).
12 Noel Robinson “Obituary” Man 45 (September-October 1945) p. 120. The University of British Columbia Library typescript quotes an address by Hill-Tout before “a public body in Vancouver": “I am a Vancouverite myself. I contribute to your revenues both directly and indirectly. I have seen this city, of which we are all so justly proud, grow from a village to her present leading position. My faith in her future has never wavered. I believe she is destined to play a great and important part in the future of this Province and the Dominion.”
13 The words of our epigraph are from the introductory remarks to the report of the Committee for an Ethnological Survey of Canada Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science 70th meeting (1900) p. 470. The text is unsigned, but was presumably written by the secretary of the Committee, Dr. George M. Dawson.
14 Noel Robinson quoting Hill-Tout in “Most Famous Canadian Geologist Was Very Human” Vancouver Province (5 August 1939). See also John J. Van West “George Mercer Dawson: An Early Canadian Anthropologist” (1976).
15 A letter in the University of British Columbia Library Vagabonds Club manuscripts from Dawson to Hill-Tout, 13 June 1899, thanks him for specimens from Lytton and an “interesting” skull, and encloses $50 for more.
16 In the obituary previously cited Barbeau adds (p. 91): “Left out of the federal field, Hill-Tout, like others, must have felt a bit slighted and at times provoked. This no doubt accounts for the loss of his active participation in the research and writing of later years, outside of purely local matters.” Although Hill-Tout ended his field excursions in 1906 (possibly because of ill-health), he participated internationally, in anthropological meetings and periodicals, until a reasonable retirement age of sixty-five, and only then lowered his sights to the local scene.
17 According to a letter of 1 March 1913 (in University of British Columbia Special Collections Library), Professor Goldenweiser, Boas’ colleague at Columbia University, invited Hill-Tout to contribute to an international symposium on Totemism sponsored by the German journal Anthropos, and he is listed in distinguished company in Anthropos 11 (1914) p. 287. The outbreak of war prevented him from fulfilling his agreement to contribute; one suspects a patriotic gesture here.
Bio-bibliography of Charles Hill-Tout
This chronology relies upon and quotes extensively from a typescript entitled “Professor Hill-Tout” in the Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia. Though unsigned, this typescript must have been the work of a close acquaintance, who was able to include many personal details from conversations with Hill-Tout. Noel Robinson, a Vancouver journalist, had access to it for his obituary published in Man (September-October 1945) which contains phrases identical to some of those in the typescript. Marius Barbeau for his obituary in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada (1945) acknowledged the help of Robinson. But both these writers make statements contrary to the facts as stated by the typescript where the latter seems more reliable. These discrepancies become further compounded if one takes into consideration Robinson’s earlier article on Hill-Tout for the Vancouver Province, “Delves Deep in History” (23 June 1934), and the even earlier biographical accounts by Alfred Buckley.1 Judith Banks interviewed Charles B. Hill-Tout (the eldest son) for her thesis, Comparative Biographies of Two British Columbia Anthropologists: Charles Hill-Tout and James A. Teit (1970), but his memory was not at its best. James E. Hill-Tout (the youngest son) has written a short family history, The Abbotsford Hill-Touts (1976), but recalls little of his father’s professional career.
1858–1884
Charles Hill-Tout was born on 28 September 1858 at Huntspill, Bridgewater, Somerset, of John Tout (farmer) and Elizabeth Hill.2 The family, which included a brother and a sister, lived there for some years. “While still in his teens, he went to live with his god-mother at Oxford, where he went to school. At the age of 16 he went to school at Weston-super-Mare. Following this he lived with his parents in Somersetshire.”3 There is evidence that his father died soon after Hill-Tout’s sixteenth year.4“Subsequently he lived with a group of clergymen in a Cardiff rectory under the superintendence of Father Puller. … When Father Puller joined the Cowley Fathers and went to live at Cowley St. John just outside Oxford, the future anthropologist went with him and remained there until he went to Lincoln to take his Theological Year, attending lectures at Oxford University while there.5 It was during this period that he came under the influence of Huxley and Darwin. This resulted in intellectual difficulties, and he gave up the idea of ordination. He married, when at Lincoln, Edith Mary Stothert, of Scottish extraction, to whom he had become engaged during his Cardiff period.”6 The birth of a daughter, Beatrice May, the first of eight children, was in October 1884.
1884–1889
“In 1884, at the age of 25, with his wife and one girl baby in arms, he emigrated to Canada, arriving in Toronto. He brought with him letters of introduction to, among others, Dr. Daniel Wilson (afterwards Sir Daniel Wilson), President of Toronto University. ‘He asked me (Professor Hill-Tout recalled), “What are you going to do?’' and I replied, “Farm.” His reply was, “I know what you young Englishmen think about farming — riding about on a horse and watching the men work. Why don’t you take up educational work? We want someone to take over Dr. Tassie’s private school, which is run by the Low Church party.” I said, “I don’t know whether I could teach,” to which his reply was “Go home and think it over,” which I did and decided to take over this private school. The undertaking proved a great success — so much that the High Church Party’s school, St. Luke’s I think, could not make headway and the Principal came to me one day to suggest amalgamation, but the proposal fell through. Our school continued to flourish and I had two assistant teachers and the sons of many of the leading men of Toronto.”7 Hill-Tout is listed as a member of the Canadian Institute of Toronto from 1884 to 1887. At the meeting of 2 April 1887 he read a paper, “The Study of Language,” which was published in the Proceedings (item #1 below).
“When the opportunity offered to buy a 100-acre farm on the shore of Lake Ontario, he resigned the post that he had occupied for three years and started farming. This was near a place called Port Credit, 17 miles from Toronto, then a city of about 50,000 people. Life on the lakeshore proved very congenial, and the farm prospered. Then a summer resort was started nearby, and this proved so successful that they wanted more land and offered to buy part of the farm. The offer was declined, upon which a very generous offer was made and ten acres was sold. In the meantime, the new settler had built a bam and put up five miles of fencing. Ultimately, after he had been on the farm for two years, the summer settlement people bought it and he realised four or five times the price he had given for the undeveloped land. Having also sold stock and utensils, the schoolmaster-farmer determined to return to England. By this time there were four or five children, and one of the reasons prompting this return was the desire to give the youngsters a grounding in education.”
1890–1891
“However, before leaving Canada he wanted to see the West; so, having bought tickets for his wife, the nurse, and children, and entrained them for New York on the way to England, he himself went west. Upon arrival in Vancouver in 1890 he met an old college friend, the Rev. Finnes Clinton, pioneer rector of the Anglican Church of St. James, who was just on the point of starting a boys’ school and asked the new arrival if he would take charge. Just then a cablegram arrived from Mrs. Hill-Tout stating that one of their children had died. The offer was declined, and Professor Hill-Tout returned to England and the family settled down at a very lovely spot, St. Brevils, expecting to remain there for some years. After two years he learned that the trustees had been playing ducks and drakes with the
