The Salish People: Volume IV. Charles Hill-Tout
that he had already made at least one trip to Lytton.
Public lectures listed for 1895, organized by the Art, Historical and Scientific Society, include two by Hill-Tout: “Indian Folklore” and “The Mind.”
1896–1909
“‘But throughout all this scholastic period I still retained my love of the land,’ the Professor recalled, ‘and I had bought a quarter section of land near Abbotsford, upon which two of my sons still farm.13 You see I come of a land-loving stock. Upon this land we built a log house, beautifully situated in the midst of virgin forest, and the family spent the summers there. Many of these trees were 11 feet through at the butt. Later I bought out another settler, who had already built a fine farmhouse on the land, and moved my family from Vancouver to the farm. My other children were born there. We built my barn on the first place from shakes and boards which we made from the cedars on the place. I split the shakes and boards for that bam myself. In those days it was not possible to get milled lumber, so they had to be split with a wooden hammer, and the boys carried them to the spot where the barn was to be built.’
“For three more years Professor Hill-Tout carried on educational work in Vancouver while the family lived near Abbotsford, and then, in 1899, he went to live there entirely and gave up scholastic work and took up the study of ethnology in all his leisure time.”
His earliest ethnological field-trip specifically reported on was to the Squamish Mission reserve in North Vancouver in the summer of 1896; the paper was communicated to the the Royal Society by Dr. G. M. Dawson on 23 June 1897 and published in the Transactions (item #4 below).
The British Association for the Advancement of Science decided at its Liverpool Meeting of 1896 to create a Committee for an Ethnological Survey of Canada, in anticipation of the Toronto Meeting of the following year. Dr. G. M. Dawson was Chairman, and Hill-Tout was nominated to the Committee. He prepared a paper for the 1897 meeting, “Historical and Philological Notes on the Indians of British Columbia,” which was unfortunately lost and could only be announced by title.14 He had also sent the “Benign-face” legend, obtained from Chief Mischelle of Lytton.15 This was passed on to the London Folklore Society and was subsequently published in Folk-Lore (item #8 below).
Hill-Tout met Franz Boas in Vancouver in June 1897, and worked with Harlan I. Smith in Lytton for a few weeks.16 For the Ethnological Survey of Canada Committee Report the following year (1898, around June-July), he could report the following: “I send in some notes on the folklore of this district [item #6 below] which I have sought to record whenever possible on the lines suggested by the English Committee, and trust they will be found useful. I enclose a set of (3) photographs in duplicate of a rock painting found on a cliff about twenty miles from Vancouver. The Indians of the neighbourhood know nothing of it or of its meaning. I venture no opinion upon it myself.17 In my next report I hope to have more to communicate. I have in hand the following:— 1. Report on the Archaeology of Lytton and its neighbourhood. 2. Folklore stories from same area. 3. Vocabulary and Grammar notes on the Ntlakapamuq [Thompson]. 4. Vocabulary and Grammar notes on the Squamish and Matsqui, Yale and other divisions of the Salish. 5. Ancient tribal divisions and place-names. 6. An account of a great confederacy of tribes in the Salish region of Chilliwack.
“I regard the collection of vocabularies and grammar notes from every dialect and sub-dialect as imperatively necessary for linguistic comparison. The lack of these has caused me the loss of much valuable time and retarded my own labours in this … l … . . In this connection it gives me pleasure to inform the Committee that several of the leading anthropologists of Australasia have accepted the evidence of Oceanic affinities of the Kwakiutl-Nootka and Salish stocks as set forth by me in a paper presented at the recent meeting of the Royal Society of Canada [see item #5 below]. Dr. Carroll, the editor of the Australasian Anthropological Journal, in particular regards the evidence as practically conclusive.
“The photographic and anthropometric work of the Survey I hope to begin next month, the camera and instruments for which have just come to hand.
“In concluding this report I desire to call the attention of the Committee to the fact that much important archaeological work is awaiting development here for lack of funds to carry it on; the necessity for energetically prosecuting which, without further delay if it is to be done at all, I cannot impress too strongly upon all who are interested in this work of the Survey. Every month sees valuable records defaced and obliterated, either by relic hunters or by the progress of civilisation, and the day is not far distant when all trace of the past life and conditions of the aborigines such as are contained in the middens and mounds will be entirely swept away.”18
During 1898 Hill-Tout gave a talk to the Art, Historical and Scientific Society of Vancouver on “Our Forerunners in British Columbia” (paper of the same title published much later, item #33 below). He was elected First Vice-President of the Society.
For the 1899 report of the Ethnological Survey of Canada Hill-Tout submitted his full-scale account of the Thompson (item #9 below). The secretary’s report states: “The important studies of Mr. Hill-Tout have been prosecuted under considerable difficulties, but with the most painstaking care. They represent, for the most part, material which is altogether new, while those which cover ground previously worked over embody results in such a way as to preserve their value as contributions to our knowledge of these people. One of the principal difficulties met with by Mr. Hill-Tout has been the reluctance of the Indians to submit themselves to the process of measurement, or even, under satisfactory conditions, to the camera.”19
The following year (1900) Hill-Tout submitted his Squamish work (item #12 below); the Committee Report, presumably written by the Secretary, G. M. Dawson, states: “Much attention has been given to the language, which has not heretofore been seriously investigated, and which shows numerous grammatical and other peculiarities. Mr. Hill-Tout’s work, in fact, constitutes a very important local contribution to the ethnology of the native races of the west coast.”20
During 1901 Hill-Tout finished and wrote up his Fraser Valley Halkomelem notes, and submitted them; but they were held over till the year following for publication (see items #14 and 17), the Committee Report being abbreviated by the death of G. M. Dawson on 2 March 1901. The Committee recommended that Hill-Tout be appointed Secretary to fill the vacancy.21
Loading Pack Horses, photographer probably Hill-Tout at Lytton.
The Report of the Ethnological Survey of Canada for 1902 includes the following statement: “Mr. Hill-Tout has continued to carry on his investigations among the Salish of British Columbia under greater difficulties than usual during the past year. Two of the three tribes which he has at present under observation were quarantined on account of an outbreak of small-pox among them just at the season when it was most convenient for him to be examining them. This and the shortness of the funds with which he was provided to prosecute the work have proved most serious obstacles to the completion of his report appended, and which is to be taken as a 'report of progress’ only. The work has been carried out on similar lines to those followed last year, and much labour and care have been given ungrudgingly to it. His studies have been directed in particular to the Nutsak [Nooksack], the Macqui [Matsqui], and the Siciatl [Sechelt]. Those last are a coast people differing in speech and in many of their old customs from the contiguous Salish bands. The study of their dialect promises to add to our knowledge of the Salish tongue, and to reveal many interesting grammatical features. Within their boundaries they have also peculiar archaeological remains in the form of stone enclosures, an account and full description of which will be found in the report appended hereto.” The Nooksack and Matsqui reports are not extant. The Sechelt report was “read” at the 1903 meeting of the British Association, but nothing more from the Ethnological Survey of Canada was to be published by them. The Sechelt and Hill-Tout’s subsequent reports were published by the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (see item #22 etc. below). The 1902 report ends: “It is encouraging to report that the Government of British Columbia has recognised the value and