Coast Salish Ethnography: The Sechelt, by Charles Hill-Tout Introduction The following notes are a summary of my studies among the Siciatl [Sechelt]. I have been enabled to complete them earlier, and in a more exhaustive manner than I could otherwise have done, by a timely grant of £40 from the Royal Society. By means of this help I was able to spend the greater portion of a month among them in the summer of 1902, visiting their different settlements and gathering all information now available from the most reliable sources. With the exception perhaps of a few folk-tales, I believe these notes record all that may now be gathered of the past concerning this tribe. Of all the native races of this Province, they are probably the most modified by white influences. They are now, outwardly at least, a civilized people, and their lives and condition compare favourably with those of the better class of peasants of Western Europe. Their permanent tribal home, or headquarters, contains about a hundred well-built cottages, many of them two-storied, and some of them having as many as six rooms. Each house has its own garden-plot attached to it, in which are grown European fruits and vegetables. In the centre of the village, and dominating the whole, stands an imposing church, which cost the tribe nearly $8000 a few years ago. Near by, they have also a commodious and well-built meeting-room, or public hall, capable of holding 500 persons or more, and a handsome pavilion or band-stand fronts the bay. They possess also a convenient and effective waterworks system of their own. The water has been brought in iron pipes from a mountain stream some three miles off, and every street has its hydrants at intervals of forty or fifty yards. From these, the water is easily carried into the houses in pails. As a body, the Sechelt are, without doubt, the most industrious and prosperous of all the native peoples of this Province. The men engage in fishing or lumbering the whole year round. Some of them are also expert hunters, and during the season ship a great number of deer to the Vancouver market, their territory abounding in game of that kind. Respecting their improved condition, their tribal and individual prosperity, highly moral character, and orderly conduct, it is only right to say that they owe it mainly, if not entirely, to the Fathers of the Oblate Mission, and particularly to the late Bishop Durieu, who more than forty years ago went first among them and won them to the Roman Catholic faith. And most devout and reverent converts have they become, cheerfully and generously sustaining the Mission in their midst, and supplying all of the wants of the Mission fathers when amongst them. Continue to "Ethnography and Sociology"