LOG OF THE COLUMBIA 281
shoulder. The Women are entirely cover'd, with Garments of their own manufactory, from the bark of tree. 39 They appear to carry full sway over the men 40 and have an incision cut through the under lip, which they spread out with a piece of wood, about the size and shape of a goose egg ( some much larger). It's considered as an ornament, but in my opinion looks very gastly. Some of them booms out two inches from the chin. 41 The women appear very fond of their offspring, and the Men of both. We remain'd in this sound till the 17th. During which time we purchas'd a good lot of Sea Otter and other furs chiefly for Iron and Cloth. Copper was not in demand. The boats were sent frequently after wood and water, but were always well arm'd. The Natives supplied us with plenty of Halibut and Rock Cod, for which we paid them in Nails. Wild fowl was plenty in this Sound, of which we caught and kill'd many. I landed at one of their villages, found the Indians comfortably lodg'd, and kept large fires, although the weather was temperate. When I went into one of their houses they was eating roast muscles and singing a warlike Song. They appear'd fond of our visit and never offer'd to molest any thing in the boat. Their canoes are not made near so neat as those we had seen before, but I think was more commodious. The females was not very chaste, but their lip pieces was enough to disgust any civilized being. However some of the Crew was quite partial.
39 The cedar the blessed tree of the Northwest Coast.
40 Both Hoskins Narrative and Ingraham's Journal are to the same effect and both give examples of this sway. See also Vancouver's Voyage, 4to. ed., vol. 2, p. 409, and Portlock's Voyage, p. 290.
41 This is the labret, or, as it is called amongst the Haida, the natives of Queen Charlotte Islands, the staie, which has excited the curiosfty and derision of all the visitors to those islands from the time of Perez downward. Dixon gives a description and a picture of one, which was three and seven-eighths inches long and two and five-eighths inches in the widest part: it was inlaid with a small pearly shell, round which was a rim of copper. See Dixon's Voyage, p. 208. The custom was not confined to the Haida; it extended from Yukatat Hay to the boundaries of the Kwakiutl. Sir George Simpson in his Narrative of his Journey round the World, vol. I, p. 204. records having met instances of its use at Fort McLoughlin, amongst the Bella Bella Indians. Father Crespi, who accompanied Juan Perez in 1774. gives the first account of this strange adornment. "They (the women) wear pendant from the lower lip, which is pierced, a disk painted in colors, which appeared to be of wood, slight and curved, which makes them seem very ugly, ana, at a little distance they appear as if the tongue was hanging out of the mouth. Easily, and with only a movement of the lip, they raise it so that it covers the mouth and part of the nose. Those of our people who saw them from a short distance said that a hole was pierced in the lower lip and the disk hung therefrom. We do no know the object of this; whether it be done to make themselves ugly, as some think, or for the purpose of ornament." Publications of the Histoncal Society of Southern California, vol. a, p. 19*.
