PACIFIC COAST TRIBES

ITH its mild climate, luxuriant vegetation, and abun-

dance of marine life the Pacific coast was the garden of

Canada. Two of nature’s gifts, the giant straight-
grained cedar trees and the shoals of salmon that annually
ascended the rivers to spawn, played a dominant réle in the
economy of the Indians. The salmon assured them of an
abundant food supply that enabled them to build permanent
homes. The cedar tree had manifold uses; from its trunk the
natives hollowed out their canoes; with its lumber they made
houses, furniture, and utensils; and from its bark they fashioned
clothing and ropes.

The rugged, heavily forested shores deeply indented with
innumerable fiords tended to isolate the villages from one an-
other, even though the sea served them as a common highway.

Formerly each village was self-supporting and _ largely
independent of its neighbours, so that there were no definite
tribal units. We can distinguish, however, seven major groups,
which have been named as follows:

Coast Salish Indians: on the lower Fraser River and south

Vancouver Island.
Nootka Indians: on the west coast of Vancouver Island.
Kwakiutl Indians: on the northeast coast of Vancouver
Island and on the mainland opposite.

Bella Coola Indians: around the present town of Bella Coola.

Tsimshian Indians: on Skeena and Nass Rivers.

Haida Indians: on Queen Charlotte Islands.

Tlinkit Indians: in southern Alaska.

The Indian population on the Canadian part of the coast
150 years ago numbered about 50,000; today it hardly exceeds
16,000.

Most of the seven Pacific Coast “‘tribes,”’ as we may perhaps
call them, spoke different languages; yet in physical appearance
all the natives from Vancouver to Alaska were much alike,
although very different from the Indians of the rest of Canada.
They were short and stocky in build, with rounded heads, and
with flat faces and noses that threw into relief the prominent
cheek-bones. They resembled, indeed, the primitive Asiatic
peoples of northeastern Siberia more than they resembled other
American Indians. This is one reason for believing that they
may have lived in northeastern Siberia until a few centuries
before the Christian era, and that they were the last, or one of
the last, peoples to cross over Bering Strait into the New World.