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Encounters Page 1
| Skidegate Indian village, Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia. |
| Date: |
1878 |
| Image: |
500 x 314 (30.3 K) |
|
| Cumshewa Indian village, Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia. |
| Date: |
1878 |
| Image: |
500 x 320 (35.8 K) |
|
The door is to one side of the middle, & not through the
bottom of the totem post as in the older fashioned buildings… The
floor boarded, with the exception of a square space of earth in the middle
for the fire. The Chattels of the family piled here & there in heaps along
the walls, leaving the greater part of the interior Clear. The dancers…
occupy the front end, the audience the sides & further (in)end of the house.
The smoke from the fire, - which the only light - escaping by wide openings
in the roof. The Audience nearly fill the building, squatting in various
attitudes on the floor, & Consisting of Men women & children of all ages.
Their faces all turned forward & expressive of various emotions lit up by
the fire.
(Skidegate village about 25 houses & some 53 totem posts.)… |
| & …The performers in this instance about twenty in number…
all wore head dresses, variously constructed of cedar bark rope ornamented
with feathers &c. or as in one case with a bristling circle of the whiskers
of the Sea-lion. Shouldered girdles made of Cedar-bark rope, variously ornamented
and coloured, with tassels etc. very common. One man wore gaiters covered
with fringes of strong puffin bills which rattled as he moved. Nearly if
not all held springs of fresh spruce, & were covered about the head with
downey feathers which also filled the warm atmosphere of the house. Rattles
were also in order. Different from the rest, however, five women who stood
in front, dressed with some uniformity. Several having the peculiarly beautiful
mountain goat shawls which are purchased from the Mainland Indians. The
head-dresses of these women were also pretty nearly the same consisting
of small mask faces carved in wood and inlaid with haliotis shell, these
Attached to Cedar bark and built around with gay feathers &c. stood above
the forehead… in the heat of the dance. I suppose the Indians may yet
almost imagine the old palmy days when hundreds crowded the village and
nothing had eclipsed the grandeur of their ceremonies and doings… to
remain.
- George M. Dawson,
The Journals of George M. Dawson: British Columbia,
1875-1878, Vol. 2, 1878 |
| Group of Blood Indians, Fort Whoop Up. |
| Date: |
1881 |
| Image: |
500 x 260 (23.4 K) |
|
| The murderer's wife, Hudson Bay. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
342 x 400 (23.9 K) |
|
| A few years ago the firm to which the Active belongs
established a station on the south side of Southampton, and imported a number
of the Big Island natives. These natives, being provided with modern rifles,
soon killed off or frightened away the deer in the neighbourhood. The old
inhabitants of the island (Sagdlingmuit) being armed only with bow and arrows
and spears, were unable to compete with the better armed strangers, and
as a result the entire tribe, who numbered 68 souls in 1900, died of starvation
and disease during the winter of 1902.
- A.P. Low, The Cruise of the Neptune, 1903-1904 |
| Cree Indian, Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. |
| Date: |
1884 |
| Image: |
300 x 400 (28.0 K) |
|
| Indian house, Fort Rupert, British Columbia. (Kwakiutl) |
| Date: |
1885 |
| Image: |
500 x 370 (36.9 K) |
|
| On the Stikine, as in the case of the other rivers and passes
forming routes between the coast and the interior, the Coast tribes assumed
the part of the middle-men in trade, before the incursion of the miners
broke up the old arrangements. The Stikine Indians allowed the Tahl-tan
to trade only with them, receiving furs in exchange for goods obtained on
the coast from the whites. The Tahl-tan, in turn, carried on a similar trade
with the Kaska, their next neighbours inland. The right to trade with the
Tahl-tan was, in fact, restricted by hereditary custom to two or three families
of the Stikina coast Indians.
- George M. Dawson,
Notes on the Indian Tribes of the Yukon District
and Adjacent Northern Portion of British Columbia, 1887 |
| Ow-wit, Qwatsino Chief, wife, son, son's wife and child, Quatsino, British, Columbia. |
| Date: |
1885 |
| Image: |
500 x 330 (43.5 K) |
|
| Big Bear's Camp (Cree Indian), Maple Creek, Saskatchewan. |
| Date: |
1883 |
| Image: |
500 x 357 (20.9 K) |
|
| Chief Wigamouskunk and family, Lake St. Martin, Manitoba. |
| Date: |
1888 |
| Image: |
500 x 392 (39.6 K) |
|
| Group of Indians, Fort George. |
| Date: |
1896 |
| Image: |
500 x 318 (27.8 K) |
|
| (Untitled), Hudson's Bay. |
| Date: |
1899 |
| Image: |
500 x 343 (27.6 K) |
|
| "Harry", chief of the Aivilirmuit, Fullerton, Hudson's Bay. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
292 x 400 (15.3 K) |
|
| & … in pursuing this research, it has been my ambition
to achieve a better understanding of the acculturation experienced by the
Inuit during early contact with Europeans. In so doing, I attempt to identify
the material evidence which differentiates the two cultures, to infer the
time when the Labrador Inuit began to settle in the Strait of Belle Isle,
and to draw some conclusions about the respective positions of European
and Inuit settlements in light of the seemingly confrontational relations
between the two cultures. Finally, I discuss the cultural, social and economic
factors which may have motivated the Inuit to settle in a region they had
not previously occupied.
- Reginald Auger, Labrador Inuit and Europeans in the Strait of Belle
Isle: from the
Written Sources to the Archaeological Evidence, 1991 |
| Aivillik women with tattooed faces, Fullerton, Hudson's Bay, 1903-4. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
411 x 400 (27.8 K) |
|
| Tattooed Aivillik woman, Igluirmuit, Southampton Island, Hudson's Bay. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
349 x 400 (14.9 K) |
|
| Aivilirmuit women, Fullerton, Hudson's Bay. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
500 x 277 (37.3 K) |
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| Eskimo children, Fullerton, Hudson's Bay. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
500 x 266 (31.3 K) |
|
| On the west side of Hudson bay the Kenipitus live inland,
and depend entirely upon the caribou for food, clothing and fuel. A large
number of these natives only leave their hunting grounds for short visits
to the whalers, to renew their supplies of ammunition and tobacco, or to
go to the northward to hunt the musk-ox in the spring.
The Aivilliks of that coast confine themselves to the seaboard. Their name
signifies walrus hunters, and they go inland in autumn only to procure sufficient
deerskins for their winter clothing.
- A.P. Low, The Cruise of the Neptune, 1903-1904 |
| Inside a snow house at Cape Fullerton, Hudson's Bay. |
| Date: |
1903 |
| Image: |
476 x 400 (27.2 K) |
|
| Camp of Micmac Indians, Elmsdale, Nova Scotia. |
| Date: |
1891 |
| Image: |
500 x 293 (36.8 K) |
|
The largest single house, seen by the winter, at Cape Fullerton,
was twenty-seven feet in diameter and twelve feet from the floor to the
centre of the dome; it was inhabited by four families.
This house was too large for the material, and the roof had to be supported
by props shortly after being built; but several others, eighteen feet in
diameter, showed no sign of weakness.
- A.P. Low,
Cruise of the Neptune, 1903-1904 |
| Indians, Hudson's Bay (Manitoba, 1880?). |
| Date: |
1891 |
| Image: |
500 x 297 (24.1 K) |
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| Eskimos on the Neptume, Arctic. |
| Date: |
1884 |
| Image: |
500 x 315 (32.8 K) |
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