The Salish People: Volume IV. Charles Hill-Tout

Hill-Tout” in the Special Collections Library of the University of British Columbia. Though unsigned, this typescript must have been the work of a close acquaintance, who was able to include many personal details from conversations with Hill-Tout. Noel Robinson, a Vancouver journalist, had access to it for his obituary published in Man (September-October 1945) which contains phrases identical to some of those in the typescript. Marius Barbeau for his obituary in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada (1945) acknowledged the help of Robinson. But both these writers make statements contrary to the facts as stated by the typescript where the latter seems more reliable. These discrepancies become further compounded if one takes into consideration Robinson’s earlier article on Hill-Tout for the Vancouver Province, “Delves Deep in History” (23 June 1934), and the even earlier biographical accounts by Alfred Buckley.¹ Judith Banks interviewed Charles B. Hill-Tout (the eldest son) for her thesis, Comparative Biographies of Two British Columbia Anthropologists: Charles Hill-Tout and James A. Teit (1970), but his memory was not at its best. James E. Hill-Tout (the youngest son) has written a short family history, The Abbotsford Hill-Touts (1976), but recalls little of his father’s professional career.

      1858–1884

      Charles Hill-Tout was born on 28 September 1858 at Huntspill, Bridgewater, Somerset, of John Tout (farmer) and Elizabeth Hill.² The family, which included a brother and a sister, lived there for some years. “While still in his teens, he went to live with his god-mother at Oxford, where he went to school. At the age of 16 he went to school at Weston-super-Mare. Following this he lived with his parents in Somersetshire.”³ There is evidence that his father died soon after Hill-Tout’s sixteenth year.⁴“Subsequently he lived with a group of clergymen in a Cardiff rectory under the superintendence of Father Puller. … When Father Puller joined the Cowley Fathers and went to live at Cowley St. John just outside Oxford, the future anthropologist went with him and remained there until he went to Lincoln to take his Theological Year, attending lectures at Oxford University while there.⁵ It was during this period that he came under the influence of Huxley and Darwin. This resulted in intellectual difficulties, and he gave up the idea of ordination. He married, when at Lincoln, Edith Mary Stothert, of Scottish extraction, to whom he had become engaged during his Cardiff period.”⁶ The birth of a daughter, Beatrice May, the first of eight children, was in October 1884.

      1884–1889

      “In 1884, at the age of 25, with his wife and one girl baby in arms, he emigrated to Canada, arriving in Toronto. He brought with him letters of introduction to, among others, Dr. Daniel Wilson (afterwards Sir Daniel Wilson), President of Toronto University. ‘He asked me (Professor Hill-Tout recalled), “What are you going to do?’' and I replied, “Farm.” His reply was, “I know what you young Englishmen think about farming — riding about on a horse and watching the men work. Why don’t you take up educational work? We want someone to take over Dr. Tassie’s private school, which is run by the Low Church party.” I said, “I don’t know whether I could teach,” to which his reply was “Go home and think it over,” which I did and decided to take over this private school. The undertaking proved a great success — so much that the High Church Party’s school, St. Luke’s I think, could not make headway and the Principal came to me one day to suggest amalgamation, but the proposal fell through. Our school continued to flourish and I had two assistant teachers and the sons of many of the leading men of Toronto.”⁷ Hill-Tout is listed as a member of the Canadian Institute of Toronto from 1884 to 1887. At the meeting of 2 April 1887 he read a paper, “The Study of Language,” which was published in the Proceedings (item #1 below).

      “When the opportunity offered to buy a 100-acre farm on the shore of Lake Ontario, he resigned the post that he had occupied for three years and started farming. This was near a place called Port Credit, 17 miles from Toronto, then a city of about 50,000 people. Life on the lakeshore proved very congenial, and the farm prospered. Then a summer resort was started nearby, and this proved so successful that they wanted more land and offered to buy part of the farm. The offer was declined, upon which a very generous offer was made and ten acres was sold. In the meantime, the new settler had built a bam and put up five miles of fencing. Ultimately, after he had been on the farm for two years, the summer settlement people bought it and he realised four or five times the price he had given for the undeveloped land. Having also sold stock and utensils, the schoolmaster-farmer determined to return to England. By this time there were four or five children, and one of the reasons prompting this return was the desire to give the youngsters a grounding in education.”

      1890–1891

      “However, before leaving Canada he wanted to see the West; so, having bought tickets for his wife, the nurse, and children, and entrained them for New York on the way to England, he himself went west. Upon arrival in Vancouver in 1890 he met an old college friend, the Rev. Finnes Clinton, pioneer rector of the Anglican Church of St. James, who was just on the point of starting a boys’ school and asked the new arrival if he would take charge. Just then a cablegram arrived from Mrs. Hill-Tout stating that one of their children had died. The offer was declined, and Professor Hill-Tout returned to England and the family settled down at a very lovely spot, St. Brevils, expecting to remain there for some years. After two years he learned that the trustees had been playing ducks and drakes with the family funds and there was very little left. That little he and his brother and cousin voluntarily gave to the new trustee for the women of the family, and he pulled up stakes again and, with his family, returned to Canada, this time to Vancouver and its superb environment, to which he had taken a great liking as a result of his previous visit.”

      1891–1896

      Hill-Tout assumed the teaching post at St. James Boys’ School. Upon its amalgamation with Whetham College, he became a housemaster and English teacher in the college buildings at Granville and Georgia.⁸ He is reported as present at a meeting of the Art Association of Vancouver in February 1892 “for the purpose of changing the scope of the organization to include history and literature.”⁹

      “Bishop Sillitoe had been anxious to start a Diocesan College in his diocese of New Westminster, which included Vancouver, and invited Professor Hill-Tout to organise this and become its principal. The offer was accepted and he resigned his post at Whetham College and opened Trinity College in a large building which, he thinks, today stands next the YMCA, just north of it. He conducted this for two years and then, as the Bishop and he could not see eye to eye upon some (to him) important points, Professor Hill-Tout resigned and opened a college of his own, which for eight or ten years was known as Buckland College on Burrard Street.”¹⁰

      From 1892 Hill-Tout was listed as a member of the Society for Psychical Research (London) and participated in seances in Vancouver, which he reported on to the Society, his paper “Some Psychical Phenomena” being “taken as read” at the meeting of 1 March 1895 and published in the Proceedings (item #2 below).¹¹

      From his arrival in Vancouver, Hill-Tout on his own initiative surveyed archaeological sites along the Fraser River, chiefly Marpole (Eburne), Port Hammond, and Hatzic. “Professor Hill-Tout’s attention was drawn to the making of a road at Eburne, where, as one of his students who passed that way told him, skeletons and curious stone objects were being turned up by the workmen daily. Again he recalled the advice of Sir Daniel Wilson about being on the look-out for anything of interest in an archaeological way. At the first opportunity he went out to see what was happening at Eburne and discovered that the road was being put through the virgin forest. This forest had grown out of an ancient and abundant Indian midden heap. At once he became intensely interested. Every day skeletons and ancient stone and bone artifacts were being excavated. He interested a surveyor friend and got him to survey the extent of the midden and it was found that it covered over four acres and a half of the land and averaged a depth of about five feet and a maximum depth of 18 feet.”¹² Hill-Tout participated in the opening of the Hatzic cairns in the summer of 1894, and reported on the finds in a lecture entitled “An Unique Skull” before the Art, Historical and Scientific Association of Vancouver (which had its first public meeting on 15 May 1894). He wrote the first survey of B.C. archaeology in a paper communicated to the Royal Society of Canada by Dr. G. M. Dawson at the meeting of 15 May 1895