Note 289 — Chapter III · COLUMBIANS.

On the east side of Vancouver was a village of thirty-four houses, arranged in regular streets. The house of the leader 'was distinguished by three rafters of stout timber raised above the roof, according to the architecture of Nootka, though much inferior to those I had there seen, in point of size.' Bed-rooms were separated, and more decency observed than at Nootka Sound. Vancouver's Voy., vol. i., pp. 346-7, with a view of this village; also pp. 324-5, description of the village on Desolation Sound; p. 338, on Valdes Island; p. 326, view of village on Bute Canal; and vol. iii., pp. 310-11, a peculiarity not noticed by Cook—'immense pieces of timber which are raised, and horizontally placed on wooden pillars, about eighteen inches above the roof of the largest houses in that village; one of which pieces of timber was of a size sufficient to have made a lower mast for a third rate man of war.' See Cook's Voy. to Pac., vol. ii., pp. 281, 313-19, and Atlas, plate 40. A sort of a duplicate inside building, with shorter posts, furnishes on its roof a stage, where all kinds of property and supplies are stored. Sproat's Scenes, pp. 37-43. 'The planks or boards which they make use of for building their houses, and for other uses, they procure of different lengths, as occasion requires, by splitting them out, with hard wooden wedges from pine logs, and afterwards dubbing them down with their chizzels.' Jewitt's Nar., pp. 52-4. Grant states that the Nootka houses are palisade inclosures formed of stakes or young fir-trees, some twelve or thirteen feet high, driven into the ground close together, roofed in with slabs of fir or cedar. Lond. Geog. Soc., Jour., vol. xxvii., p. 299. The Teets have palisaded enclosures. Anderson, in Hist. Mag., vol. vii., p. 74. 'The chief resides at the upper end, the proximity of his relatives to him being according to their degree of kindred.' Macfie's Vanc. Isl., pp. 443-4; Dunn's Oregon, p. 243; Belcher's Voy., vol. i., p. 112; Lord's Nat., vol. i., pp. 158, 164-5, 167, 320-21; Seemann's Voy. of Herald, vol. i., pp. 105-6. The carved pillars are not regarded by the natives as idols in any sense. Sutil y Mexicana, Viage, pp. 128-9, 102; Barrett-Lennard's Trav., pp. 47, 73-4. Some houses eighty by two hundred feet. Colyer, in Ind. Aff. Rept., 1869, p. 533; Mayne's B. C., p. 296; Gordon's Hist. and Geog. Mem., pp. 120-1.