Official report of the exploration of the Queen Charlotte Islands | Page 8

property--and also on occasions of tattooing and death. The latter is
performed by a single man, naked with the exception of a breech-cloth,
wearing a hideous mask on his head. He runs at large through the
village, and simulating an infuriated wild beast, seizes dogs, tears them
in pieces, and eats the raw flesh. Nearly all these dances have been
abandoned at Massett and Skidegate, but most of them are still
practiced in those villages not yet reached by the missionaries.
* * * * *
Totems and Crests.
There are five separate totems or crests among these people, established,
apparently, to avoid too close blood relationships. These are Koot,
(eagle), Kooji, (wolf), Kit-si-naka, (crow), and Sxa-nu-xa, (black bear
and fin-whale united). The several tribes are supposed to have been
originally about equally divided under these different totems. Marriage
between those of the same totem is forbidden, and the system is
perpetuated by the children adopting the totem or crest of the mother.
* * * * *
Religion.

The Hydas, with the exception of those who have embraced the
Christian faith, have no forms of religious worship, and I am informed
by Rev. Mr Harrison, missionary at Massett, and probably the best
authority upon the subject, that there is no word in their language
which signifies the praise or adoration of a Supreme Being. They
believe in a Great Spirit, a future life, and in the transmigration of souls.
Their God, (Sha-nung-et-lag-e-das), possesses chiefly the attributes of
power, and is invoked to help them attain their desires. Their Devil,
(Het-gwa-lan-a), corresponds with the devil of common belief, a demon
who in various forms brings upon them evil and destruction.
* * * * *
Morals.
The moral degradation of these people is so great that they seem to be
nearly destitute of any sense of wrong-doing, while committing the
grossest social sins imaginable. There is every reason to believe that
before they came in contact with the whites, that they were much given
to licentious practices. Many of their legends and traditions are filled
with vulgarities too great for translation. But with the opportunities
afforded after the influx of whites into their country for obtaining
money by the prostitution of their females, this practice has prevailed
until many of the present generation of young Indian women seem to
regard this mode of serving their kindred as their legitimate end.
Almost incredible as it may appear, fathers and mothers become
procurers for their own daughters, brothers for sisters, and, in some
instances, husbands for their wives. Soon after my arrival at Skidegate,
a Hyda young man called at my cabin to see if I would not take a rather
comely Indian girl, about twenty years of age, who accompanied him,
to live with me, and neither seemed in the slightest degree embarrassed,
either in making the proposition or when it was declined. Immodesty of
speech or action in public places, however, is rare, even among those
women who change their man so often as it suits their caprice or
convenience. Both the married and unmarried have apparently not
neglected their opportunities to improve upon the native stock by the
introduction of foreign blood. There are Russian, English, Canadian,

American, Chinese and Negro Hydas; Hydas with fiery red hair, tow
heads, blue eyes, and all complexions from black to pale white. Many
of these homeless half-breeds are farmed out with relatives, by their
mothers, when single, thus leaving them free to go and come without
incumbrance. Barrenness, disease and early death are the fruits of such
promiscuous intercourse, to such an extent that their utter extinction
from these causes is inevitable, unless they are speedily removed. Their
only hope of long surviving lies in the careful training of the young
children by the missionaries. The habits and associations of the adults
are too strong to be much affected by their labors.
* * * * *
Legends and Traditions.
The mind of the Indian is full of weird strange fancies and imaginations.
Groping in darkness, in almost total ignorance of the discoveries of
science, with nothing to guide or correct him, it is no wonder that in his
blind struggles to solve the great problems which are more or less a
mystery to us all--the origin of man and original creations--that he has
wrought out the incongruous mixture of ignorance, superstition and
vulgar imagination which mainly compose their legends and traditions.
Some of them are doubtless based upon actual occurrences in the
remote ages, which they have interwoven with their own fancies; others
upon the exploits and experiences of their ancestors; though the greater
number are pure fictions, fairy tales and hobgoblin stories, handed
down from generation to generation. It would require a large volume to
contain them all, and years to translate