10 ' BRITISH COLUMBIA.

‘wheel ” in any relation, neither were keeled boats or other than improvised sails
(to a quite limited extent) known to them before the coming of Europeans; each
of which devices is a recognized stimulus to progress.

(3.) Further, the area they occupied was unsuitable either as regards its fauna
or flora to the development of agriculture or to the domestication of animals.
The only cereal indigenous on this continent was maize, which, had it been known
to these earliest occupants, cannot ripen in this latitude, while the wild animals
were unsuited to domestication. Now agriculture is recognized as the basis of
progressive civilization, furnishing as it does a reliable and adequate supply of
food, which permits the aggregation of people into cities and encourages diversity
of labour. Hence their disadvantages were many; and much credit is due to
them for the ingenuity they exercised under these adverse conditions.

MODERN SENSE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO PRIMITIVE PEOPLE.

In the next place, a deeper sense of responsibility towards backward races has
aroused in recent years the desire to make amends, when opportunity offers, for
previous misunderstandings. It is now realized that the fast-diminishing numbers
of primitive people is not merely the result of being called upon so rapidly to
bridge the long gap in time, which suddenly introduced them to unfamiliar foods
and alcoholic drinks, exposed them to hitherto unknown infections, plunged them
into new methods of trade in which advantage was taken of their inexperience,
but, also, ignorant misunderstandings of deeply-rooted customs, carelessly ridiculed
and violated, cut at the roots of their culture, with destructive moral and physical

results.
DEFINITION OF CULTURE.

The culture of a people may be defined as a combination or embodiment of
inherited customs and traditions which control their actions, regulate their pro-
cedures, and find expression in their emotions and arts. The details of the
resultant culture vary widely among diverse peoples and, while always the main-
spring of tribal or national life, are intensified in their influence upon those
remote from contact with cultures different from their own. The culture of the
North-west Coast tribes was that of a virile, highly imaginative people; its
foundations were those of kinship, rank, and wealth, recognition of which per-
meated every detail of their lives and, in modified forms, influenced that of the
Interior; and it is important to emphasize the fact that in no region of the world
has less uniformity existed in details of customs. Not only is this so between
tribes but between the divisions of tribes. Variations are innumerable; hence
the difficulty of preserving accuracy in detail when presenting a compressed
account of the interesting culture of these early occupants of British Columbia.

THE ARTISTIC ENDOWMENTS OF THE NORTH-WEST
COAST TRIBES.

A third motive is to arouse a keener realization of the remarkable artistic
endowments of the North-west Coast tribes. The source of this art is still
unknown, but a study of the primitive culture of the Puget Sound tribes, just to
the south across the Juan de Fuca Strait, indicates that it was in this area that the
basic culture of these people took its rise. “The older and simpler forms extended
to and were exemplified by the tribes in the southern portion of Vancouver Island;
farther north they became highly elaborated, assuming distinctive features, par-
ticularly among the Haida and Tsimshian.