The Salish People: Volume IV. Charles Hill-Tout
a trip to Europe. I have not been to London nor have I heard about the skull which interests me very much. Is it a find from the large stone graves and what were the copper implements found with it? Your find of longheaded skulls is important and I should like much to examine them. It is very likely that I shall be on the coast about the month of May and should be very glad if I could assist you in your interesting work. I may be able to obtain funds for this purpose.
Thanking you for your interesting letter and hoping to hear from you again,
I remain yours very truly
Franz Boas
Letter to Franz Boas
Buckland College
Van. B.C.
Nov 2nd 95
Dr. Franz Boas.
Dear Sir,
Many thanks for your reply to my letter forwarded through Dr. G. M. Dawson. I am expecting every day a proof copy of my paper on the mounds and middens of this area from the printers of the Royal Society of Canada’s Proceedings. I will send you one as soon as I am able. I have spoken of my work among these with some detail in this paper.
The contorted skull was taken from one of the Hatzic tumuli, which are made partly of stone and partly of earth. (They are described in full in the paper.) I had hoped to get a note from you on it before the paper was finally incorporated in the Proceedings. I will write and ask Dr. Dawson to forward it to you, and if you will write a few notes upon its physical characteristics and send me, I will send them to Dr. Bourinot and ask him to add them as a supplement to my paper. I think the matter is interesting enough for this to be done. I have photos of the most contorted skulls of this region known to most of the learned societies but none of them approaches to the excessive deformation of this one. I should value your opinion on this skull, from your wide experience in such matters, very much. You could either send it back to me direct or to Dr. Dawson. It is not in my power to present it to anyone. It is claimed by the person who gave me financial help in my explorations.
With regard to the longheads from the midden I saw their importance at once and the necessity of getting a higher opinion than my own upon the matter, and I shall look forward with much pleasure to meeting you in May next. If I might venture to offer a suggestion to one whose experience is so much wider than my own I would suggest a comparison with ancient Algonquian skulls. I am not familiar with the characteristics of these. I suggest comparison with them because it seems to me to be quite possible that these longheads may belong to the Algonquian or Iroquoian stocks. As you are aware there is a widely circulated tradition among the Eastern families of these stocks that their ancestors once lived west of the Rockies. This is but a vague conjecture of mine, and much more exploration and excavation must be done before one can do more than offer it as a simple suggestion. To do this more funds than I can command are needed. I am, therefore, very gratified to learn from your kind letter that you feel interested in my work and are inclined to help me. I should be glad and grateful if you could interest the B.A.A.S. in my undertaking, which is, in brief, to do for B.C. what Dr. Cyrus Thomas has done for the States.1 I am convinced from my experience of the past few years that B.C. is archaeologically as interesting as any part of this continent and considerably more important than some areas which have received far greater attention, seeing that it has been in the past in the direct line of the great migrations from N.E. Asia. I am exceedingly enthusiastic over the whole question and would like nothing better than to devote the next ten years of my life to the work in this district; but being a married man with a large growing family I cannot afford the time unless some of the learned Societies see fit to employ my services. I shall await your arrival here with considerable impatience.
You ask me what were the copper implements taken from the tumuli. Just four articles, and no more, viz. an awl or possibly a spindle about nine inches long and a quarter inch in diameter, a small finger ring wrapped in a piece of skin and the whole enclosed in a wad of cedar bark, and two pairs of bracelets apparently — possibly one pair was not bracelets as the wrist orifice is very small. They are figured in a plate which will appear (with the other illustrations) with my article mentioned before.
It seems hardly worth while to give you additional information as my paper must shortly be at hand, which will possibly give you all you want. May I then ask you to write a few notes for me on this Hatzic skull which I may add to my paper without any modification as a supplemental note from yourself? I will at any rate ask Dr. Dawson to forward it to you. I think I told you in my former letter that with the exception of a piece of the frontal bone of another skull this is the only one taken from the whole series of mounds there. The preservation of it was due without doubt to the presence of a large cedar tree which had grown out of and over the mound and which was in the last stages of decay when the mound was opened. You know something of the durability of B.C. cedar, so these mounds are of considerable age.
Hoping the skull will reach you safely and you will be able to comply with my request2
I remain
very truly
yours
Charles Hill-Tout
P.S.
You did not say if you had spare copies of your reports to B.A.A.S. other than those I have, 5th and 6th. If you have and can spare me one of each I shall find them interesting and useful and shall be grateful to you for them. I am indebted to Dr. Dawson for those I possess of yours. C. H-T.
Letter to J. W. Powell, Bureau of Ethnology 1
Buckland College
Vancouver B.C.
Feb 1st. 96
To Colonel Powell
Director Bureau of Ethnology etc.
Washington.
Dear Sir,
May I ask you if you have any linguistic material you can place at my disposal. I shall be grateful even for loans. I have been engaged upon the B.C. stocks this winter, and the result of my labors has been to bring out beyond question the radical unity of the whole group. Nor is this unity confined to the limits of B.C. tho’ my work has mainly and primarily been directed toward these. I find myself hampered by the imperfection and crudeness of my material. I can hear of only a very few grammars. I possess Hall’s on the Kwakiutl and have been promised Father Morice's. I have also a copy of Dr. Boas’ 6th Report on the Northwest Tribes of Canada, a copy of the 8th in which Dr. Chamberlain has treated of the Kitonaga, and the Comparative Vocabularies of Dawson and Tolmie. These with Father Morice’s list of Dene roots, which I only acquired a few days ago, constitutes the whole of my material. In these vocabularies the Tlinkit are represented by one poor and partial list only. And as this stock is of importance to another side of my work I feel its poverty very much. Can you help me in any way by putting me in the way of obtaining other vocabularies and grammars? I expect help from the Canadian Institute, but at present I do not know how far they can aid me.
Another and perhaps more important result of my work has been to disclose the existence of radical and structural relations with the Japo-Peninsular group of languages. The Japanese affinities with the northern tongues are very striking and far-reaching, and I am convinced from my long inquiry that with more perfect materials I can still further bring this out. I hope too to establish to the satisfaction of philologists a Law of Consonantal Equivalency which will be found workable outside the limits of my own inquiry. I drew the attention of Dr. John Campbell of Montreal to the affinities of the B.C. stocks with the Indo-Chinese group some time ago, that being the first Asiatic group with which I compared them, and he was of the opinion that I should find them connecting thro’ the Malay-Polynesian if there existed any relation at all. That a relation exists is certain but it is thro’ the Japo-Peninsulas I think rather than thro’ the Malay-Polynesian. How ever, this is a secondary consideration. That they are an undoubted member of his “Klictan” family there can be no two opinions when the evidence is examined. I shall venture to send you a few characteristic radicals that you may judge for yourself. I hope to have a paper ready