Title: Annual report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution
Identifier: annualreportofbu1018881889smit (find matches)
Year: 1880 (1880s)
Authors: Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of Ethnology
Subjects: Ethnology; Indians
Publisher: Washington : G. P. O.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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478 PICTURE-WRITING OF THE AMERICAN INDIANS. weather was calm ami the sea smooth. ()u(^ of these killcis, or hlaektisli. a sjjeeics of porpoise, kept alougside of a cauoe, aud the young men amused themselves by throwing stones from the eanoe ballast and hitting the fin of the killer. After some pnitty hard blows from these rocks the creature made for the shore, where it grounded on the beach. Soon a smoke was seen, aud their curiosity prompted them to a.scertaiu the canse, but when they reached the shore they discovered, to their surprise, that it was a large canoe, and not the Skaua that was in the beach, and that a man was on shore cooking some food. He asked them why they threw stones at his eanoe. 'You have broken it,' he said, ' and now go into the woods aud j;et some cedar withes and mend it.' They did .so, and when they had finished the man said, ' Turn you bacKs to the water and cover your heads with your skin blankets, and don't look till I call you.' They did so, aud heard the canoe grate on the beach as it was hauled down into the surf. Then the mau said, 'Look, now.' They looked, but when it came to the second breaker it went under and presently came up outside of the breaker a killer and not a canoe, aud the man or demon was iu its belly. This allegory is common among all the tribes on the Northwest Coast, aud even with the interior tribes with whom the salmon takes the place of the orea, which never ascends the fresh-water rivers. The Chileat aud other tribes of Ala.ska carve figures of salmon, inside of which is the full length figure of a nude Indian. * * * Casual observers without inquiry will at once pronounce it to be Jonah in the fi.sh's belly, but the allegory is of ancient origin, far antedating the advent of the white man or the teachings of the missionary.
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The same author, PI. xlix, gives an explauatiou of Pig. 605, which is a copy of a Haida shite carving, representing the " Bear-Motlier." The Haida version of the myth is as follows: A number of Indian squaws were in the woods gathering berries wheu one of them, the daughter of a chief, spoke in terms of ridicule of the whcde bear species. The bears descended on them and killed all but the chief's daughter, whom the king of the bears took to wife. She bore him a child half human aud half bear. The carv- ing reinesents the agony of the mother in suckling this rough and uncouth ottspriug. One day a party of Indian bear hunters discovered her up a tree and were about to kill her, thinking her a bear, but she made them understand that she was human. They took her home and she afterwards became the progenitor of all Indians belong- ing to the bear totem. They believe that the bear are men transformed for the time being. This carving was made by Skaows-ke'av. a Haida. Cat. No. 7.^117, II. S. Nat. Museum. Skidegate villase. Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia. Collected by James G. Swan.

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