The Salish People: Volume I. Charles Hill-Tout

      1 As far back as 17 June 1905, E. Sidney Hartland was expressing the hope that “your health is quite restored, so as to enable you to make another journey” (Hartland correspondence in the Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia). Presumably Hill-Tout went to the Okanagan in 1905 and/or 1906. In the letter printed in volume IV of the present edition, Hartland is still, on 27 January 1907, awaiting the report of that work. In May 1907 he writes that Hill-Tout’s application for funding has been withdrawn “as your letter precluded all hope of your undertaking any field-work this year.” The Okanagan report was written up for the Winnipeg meeting of the British Association in 1909. By the time he put it in final form for publication in 1911, Hill-Tout was aware that no field work had been done for some years and was not likely to be.

      2 See Melville Jacobs “Folklore” in the Anthropological Association’s memorial volume The Anthropology of Franz Boas (1959) p. 126; and p. 127: “The austere visitor probably mingled politely with the natives, but with some discomfort and always with a feeling of pressure to get the scientific task accomplished.” Boas’ attitude is clear in his diaries and letters from the field, as presented in Ronald P. Rohner’s The Ethnology of Franz Boas (1969).

      3 James Teit The Thompson Indians of British Columbia (1900) p. 297. Teit’s work, contemporaneous with Hill-Tout’s, provides confirmation and amplification at points too numerous to mention, except where especially pertinent.

      4 James Teit Myth ology of the Thompson Indians (1912) pp. 411-412.

      5 James Teit The Thompson Indians (1900) p. 269.

      6 When Hill-Tout refers to “the presen Lytton chief” in the 1899 report below (see footnote 4 to the section “Social Organisation"), this must be Cixpentlem’s grandson. An hereditary chieftainship seems to be existing alongside an elective one. I am indebted to Reuben Ware for advice on this question.

      7 James Teit The Thompson Indians (1900) p. 296.

      8 Harlan Smith also appreciated Mischelle’s expertise, soliciting his opinions on various artifacts; see Archaeology of the Thompson River Region (1900), where he refers to him as “an intelligent old Indian of Lytton” (p. 440). This is the only comment on Mischelle noted outside of Hill-Tout; but the Jesup Expedition indexes do not generally list informants, so that they are traced only with difficulty.

      9 I am indebted to George Brandak for drawing my attention to the Vagabonds Club papers in the Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia, where these two letters may be found. For a discussion of biographical sources, see the Bio-bibliography included in volume IV of the present edition. The most accessible life is Alfred Buckley’s in British Columbia from Earliest Times Vol. 4 (1914) pp. 1194-98. Judith Banks Comparative Biographies of Two British Columbia Anthropologists: Charles Hill-Tout and James A. Teit (M.A. thesis, University of British Columbia 1970) is useful.

      10 Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia. This extensive and detailed biographical summary seems to have been written at the time of Hill-Tout’s death, but it contains much information that only he personally could have supplied.

      11 Daniel Wilson “Inaugural Address” Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada 1 (1882) Section II, p. 11. And on pp. 4-5: “It is sad, surely, to realize the fact that the glimpse we thus catch of those artistic Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with all their peculiar aptitude in carving and constructive skill, is that of a vanishing race. Yet it cannot be said of the Haida, that he ‘dies and gives no sign.’ On the contrary his ingenious arts embody far-reaching glimpses of a remote past, the full significance of which has yet to be determined.”

      12 Of this period from 1889 to 1891 in England, Charles B. Hill-tout (the eldest son) remarked in a conversation with Judith Banks: “Like every other Englishman — couldn’t stand the damn country; took two breaths and then came back to Canada and never saw England again. Every Englishman has to go back once and that’s all they want" - M.A. theses (1970) p. 16. This possibly expresses the speaker’s view rather than his father’s. A more positive propulsion might have come from the celebrated linguist Max Mu’ller, whom Hill-Tout is said to have met at Oxford in earlier days and who was still lecturing as strongly as ever. He had just taken the Presidential Chair of Section H (Anthropology) of the British Association on the eve of Boas’ work under its auspicies. Hill-Tout kept in touch; witness a letter of 8 June 1899 from Muller, in the Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia.

      13 McGill College of British Columbia came into existence in 1905. Harry T.Logan makes no mention of Buckland College or its founder in Tuum Est: A History of the University of British Columbia (1958).

      14 University of British Columbia typescript. James E. Hill-Tout (the youngest son) remembers 1896 as the year the family of six young children was moved “from the comparative comforts of Vancouver to an unfinished log cabin on a forested hill a few miles west of what later became the village of Abbotsford” — The Abbotsford Hill-Touts (1976) p. 2. I am indebted to Grant Keddie for initially drawing my attention to this pamphlet, which is obtainable from the Abbotsford Museum. Speaking from personal experience of the farm operation, James E. Hill-Tout says, “My father’s contributions to the endless chores were, to be frank, minimal” (p. 21).

      15 This letter of 2 November 1895 is included in volume IV of the present edition. Also included there is a letter of 4 March 1901 to Charles Newcombe in which Hill-Tout states: “each year I am now devoting more than six months to the work.”

      16 Report to the British Association (1900) on the Squamish, included in volume II of the present edition. It is unfortunate that it was not the custom at that time to write full obituaries of native informants.

      17 Though there is no evidence that he was ever a matriculated student at Oxford University, Hill-Tout was certainly nurtured in its ambience.

      18 Letter to Mrs. Boas 3 June 1897, in Rohner The Ethnography of Franz Boas (1969) p. 201. Boas went on to Spences Bridge the same afternoon, where “Teit had prepared everything for us very well” (p. 202). Rohner’s compilation of the Boas letters and diaries contains no other mention of Hill-Tout. He is referred to occasionally in the Teit-Boas correspondence in the American Philosophical Society manuscript collection. There is no indication of a further meeting between Boas and Hill-Tout.

      19 Franz Boas “Operations of the Expedition in 1897” Memoirs of the American Museum of Natural History 2 (16 June 1898) p. 8. Harlan Smith in Archaeology of Lytton (1899) writes: “In the field, assistance was rendered by Mr. Charles Hill-Tout of Vancouver, who for many years has been much interested in the antiquities of British Columbia” (p. 130).

      20 Franz Boas “Rudolf Virchow’s Anthropological Work" Science 16 (1902) p. 443.

      21 “Notes on the Cosmogony and History of the Squamish” (included in volume II of the present edition) claims that “of the Dene tongue it is no exaggeration to say that 50 percent of its radicals are pure archaic Chinese.” Criticizing a linguistic theory of Ratzel’s, Boas had already made the point that “we desire to find uncontestable evidence of transmission, not alone the possibility or plausibility of transmission; and for this purpose our safeguards must be insisted on” - quoted by Robert H. Lowie History of Ethnological Theory (1937) p. 149.

      22 Ethnological Survey of Canada report to the British Association (1898) pp. 698-699.

      23 Richard M. Dorson The British Folklorists (1969) p. 202.

      24 The University of British Columbia typescript is worth quoting in full on this adventure:

      “In the neighbourhood of Abbotsford and on his own lands, there were large growths of fine tie timber, and it was suggested to him that he should utilise this timber and get a contract for ties from the CPR. At this time he was ignorant of what a tie was, but he was told that he could hire tie-cutters and get contracts. He got a contract for 50,000 ties and hired woodsmen to cut them. Unfortunately among the twelve men who came to him only two were actually tie-cutters. The others were lumber-jacks