Fanny Johnson in Gitksan chiefly regalia in 1924, British Columbia, pictured above.

Nearly 40 years earlier, her husband Kitwancool Jim was shot in the back by British provincial police sent to arrest him for killing a shaman [Sorry, I don't know the correct term in Tsimshian. His family blamed that medicine man for their son's death of in a terrible measles epidemic brought by settlers coming into Gitksan lands. These events set off what whites called the Skeena Uprising in 1888. It was nothing of the sort; but a pretext for extending colonial control over Gitksan Country.

The Tsimshian speaking Gitksan then lived in seven villages along the Skeena river basin. Kitwancool was in the back country and therefore less assimilated to colonial culture. The first settler town Hazelton was founded in 1871, right in the middle of Gitksan country, on a key river juncture, from which they could access “the gold fields of the Omineca.” Eight years later, the Hudson’s Bay Company built a stockade with log bastions, as they did throughout First Nations lands. (Its commander was one of the men making panicked claims about the "uprising.")

“With the whites came diseases to which the Gitksans had no immunity. The Gitksans suffered great losses as successive epidemics swept through the region. There was a particularly bad epidemic of measles in the winter of 1887-1888. Large numbers of people died, especially the very young. Many blamed the whites or felt that they were being deliberately poisoned.

“Measles killed the son of Kitwancool Jim. Jim's wife, Fanny Johnson, of the neighbouring village of Kitsegukla, blamed a shaman of her village for the death. In her opinion, the shaman had killed the boy through spells to stop him from assuming his rightful position as a powerful chief. Upset by the death of his son, Jim met the shaman on the trail between Kitwancool and Kitsegukla and killed him on February 1,1888.

“Jim's death set off bad feelings on both sides. Fear, threats, and difficult communications combined to make the whites in the area fearful for their safety. For the Gitksans, Jim's death was unnecessary and even murder. They believed he was about to turn himself in. He was the first Gitksan to be shot by a white man. …

"“The handful of whites gathered together in the now-fotified Hudson's Bay compound at Hazelton. On July 1, they wrote Attorney General Alexander Davie that "our lives and property are in great, and we fear immediate, danger."

"The provincial government sent off 10 officers and militia troops "for the relief of the white people at that place.” But there was no uprising and no danger to settlers. “When Roycroft got to Hazelton on August 1, he found the Gitksans off fishing and the white residents "at liberty". It became evident that the "uprising" was not quite as serious as supposed. As the Victoria Colonist headlined on July 30, "The Hazelton Indians Have Committed No Outrage”.

Source: “The Skeena River Uprising of 1888,” by Maureen Cassidy. British Columbia Historical News, Vol. 16, No. 3, Spring 1983. I'm sure there is more detail about these events, but currently just have this one source.

But that false alarm facilitated the process of colonization, as the author explains: “For the white residents of Hazelton, the affair left certain tangible benefits. White authority had been asserted in a convincing manner, two constables remained in town,and an Indian Agent was hired the next year.

“For the Gitksans, the affair represented the end of a way of life. [Or we might better say, the begining of colonial rule, since the culture continues.] On August 8th, 1888, Stipendary Magistrate N. Fitzstubbs and Superintendent Roycroft called together the chiefs of the Gitksan people. The thirteen chiefs who came were informed by Fitzstubbs of "the terms on which for the future we are to live." These terms were that the "law is the British law not the Indian law." No longer would the chiefs be the arbitrators: "You may not settle your own quarrels."

"Superintendent Roycroft was even more explicit: "If you ever defy the Queen's authority, although you may kill a great number of whites, the Queen's soldiers would pursue you everywhere and shoot you down like rabbits." Direct threats, missionaries to follow.

"On August 14th, Roycroft wrote Davie. He noted that the expedition had been successful and that no further trouble would arise with the Gitksans on the upper Skeena. As he put it, "they seem now perfectly to understand our power." A clearer statement of the colonial preoccupation with domination would be hard to find.

But in fact the Gitksan had not given over, as this paragraph from the article explains. They tried to thwart the government surveyors that were advance agents of colonization everywhere (in the United States too), and attempts to make their community into a reserve (like reservation in the U.S.).

This photo shows the beauty of Kitwancool, with its mountain backdrop, and the lodge poles carved with clan crests standing before the timber houses.

This whole story came up in my web search for the term "chieftainess." It also yielded the painting below, "Mrs. Douse Chieftainess of Kitwancool B.C," by Emily Carr. But I can't find anything out about her. All web references are to the artist, and no information is given about her subject.

"'Tsimshian' means 'people inside the Skeena River. In this historic hall, the Nisg̱a’a, Gitxsan, and Tsimshian people are referred to together as “Tsimshian.” In the past, anthropologists categorized these three distinct nations as one people because they speak related languages."

Which are dialects of Sm'algya̱x.

This article says that a large group of Tsimshians, more than 800 people, left B.C. for Alaska in 1887, a year before these events. Apparently they saw what was coming and wanted no part of it.

"Tsimshian families are matrilineal—descent is traced through the mother’s line—and are organized into four clans. Each clan is represented by its crest, or symbolic animal: Eagle, Killer Whale, Wolf, and Raven."

Those lodge poles, which settlers commonly described as "totem poles," using a word from the totally unrelated Algonquin peoples, show the clan crests.

Source has a beautiful photo of the mountains behind the village: https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/northwest-coast/tsimshian?fbclid=IwAR0iD__ZViOXm3DsA70fja9ydZrLa4LcCDH1H-xdOMG1yzPAkN2SIb19heg

The place is called Gityanow (not the anglicized spelling Kitwancool in 19th century sources) and it remains one of the main places where lodgepoles remain on the land. "Although many of the original totem poles have been taken from Gitanyow and preserved at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria and replaced with replicas, many have stayed in place including the “Hole in the Ice” totem [shown], erected circa 1850." (Also called Hole in the Sky, see photo above, a portal!)

"In the collecting frenzy of the 1800s, Gitksan poles were taken to museums in Vancouver, Ottawa, Boston and Philadelphia, she says, but somehow these remained untouched.

"There are approximately 24 totem poles that are privately owned by House Groups. Some date as far back as 1880 and as recent as 1995.

"The much-admired Kispiox totem poles stand in the grass at the edge of the community where the Kispiox and Skeena Rivers meet. Carved with Eagle, Raven, Frog, Killer Whale, Bear, Wolf and Human figures, they commemorate the House/Family history, signify ownership and offer insight into the heritage of the Gitksan people.

"The characteristic figures on totem poles are symbols comparable to family crests. They illustrate historical events that occurred in a House’s past. If the historical event involved several Houses, those Houses may share the crest. The pole’s owners display their crests on the pole to establish and make public their claims to vested rights and privileges. They varied with each family; they were exclusive property and were guarded."

Which clarifies that all those museum lodge poles were stolen.

https://www.ourhomehas6wheels.com/bulkley-valley-totems/

Above, closeup of the portal in the Hole in the Sky lodgepole.

More photos here. https://cutterlight.com/tag/hole-in-the-ice-totem-pole/

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100131.txt?fbclid=IwAR1VH3R-ncWB-PibzzGgq5z5-HDqgpv7HO97xl9xddniPcjA6F8m0ZN1ScE

"Mrs. Douse was more important than Mr. Douse; she was a chieftainess in her own right, and had great dignity. Neither of them spoke to

me that night. Aleck showed me where to put my bed on the verandah and I hung the fly over it. I ate a dry scrap of food and turned

into my blankets. I had no netting, and the mosquitoes tormented me. My heart said into the thick dark, "Why did I come?" And the dark

answered, "You know."

In the morning the hero-man came to me and said, "My mother-in-law wishes to speak with you. She does not know English words so she

will talk through my tongue."

I stood before the tall, cold woman. She folded her arms across her body and her eyes searched my face. They were as expressive as

if she were saying the words herself instead of using the hero's tongue.

"My mother-in-law wishes to know why you have come to our village."

"I want to make some pictures of the totem poles."

"What do you want our totem poles for?"

"Because they are beautiful. They are getting old now, and your people make very few new ones. The young people do not value the

poles as the old ones did. By and by there will be no more poles. I want to make pictures of them, so that your young people as well

as the white people will see how fine your totem poles used to be."

Mrs. Douse listened when the young man told her this. Her eyes raked my face to see if I was talking "straight". Then she waved

her hand towards the village. "Go along," she said through the interpreter, "and I shall see."

She was neither friendly nor angry. Perhaps I was going to be turned out of this place that had been so difficult to get into.

The air was hot and heavy. I turned towards the old village with the pup Ginger Pop at my heels. Suddenly there was a roar of

yelpings, and I saw my little dog putting half a dozen big ones to rout down the village street. Their tails were flat, their tongues

lolled and they yelped. The Douses all rushed out of their house to see what the noise was about, and we laughed together so hard

that the strain, which before had been between us, broke.

The sun enriched the old poles grandly. They were carved elaborately and with great sincerity. Several times the, figure of a woman that

held a child was represented. The babies had faces like wise little old men. The mothers expressed all womanhood--the big wooden hands

holding the child were so full of tenderness they had to be distorted enormously in order to contain it all. Womanhood was strong in

Kitwancool. Perhaps, after all, Mrs. Douse might let me stay.

I sat in front of a totem mother and began to draw--so full of her strange, wild beauty that I did not notice the storm that was

coming, till the totem poles went black, flashed vividly white and then went black again. Bang upon bang, came the claps of thunder. ...

When I got back to the new village I found my bed and things in a corner of the Douses' great room. The hero told me, "My mother-in-law

says you may live in her house. Here is a rocking-chair for you."

Mrs. Douse acknowledged my gratitude stolidly. I gave Mr. Douse a dollar and asked if I might have a big fire to dry my things and make tea. There were two stoves the one at their end of the room was alight. Soon, mine too was roaring and it was cosy. When the Indians accepted me as one of themselves, I was very grateful.

[Matrilineal / matrilocal lodge] The people who lived in that big room of the Douses were two married daughters, their husbands and children, the son Aleck and an orphan girl called Lizzie. The old couple came and went continually, but they ate and slept in a shanty at the back of the new house. This little place had been made round them. The floor was of earth and the walls were of cedar. The fire on the ground sent its smoke through a smoke-hole in the roof. Dried salmon hung on racks. The old people's mattress was on the floor. The place was full of

themselves--they had breathed themselves into it as a bird, with

its head under its wing, breathes itself into its own cosiness.

The Douses were glad for their children to have the big fine house

and be modern but this was the right sort of place for themselves.

Life in the big house was most interesting. A baby swung in its

cradle from the rafters; everyone tossed the cradle as he passed

and the baby cooed and gurgled. There was a crippled child of

six--pinched and white under her brown skin; she sat in a chair

all day. And there was Orphan Lizzie who would slip out into the

wet bushes and come back with a wild strawberry or a flower in her

grubby little hand, and, kneeling by the sick child's chair, would

open her fingers suddenly on the surprise.

There was no rush, no scolding, no roughness in this household.

When anyone was sleepy he slept; when they were hungry they ate;

if they were sorry they cried, and if they were glad they sang.

They enjoyed Ginger Pop's fiery temper, the tilt of his nose and

particularly the way he kept the house free of Indian dogs. It was

Ginger who bridged the gap between their language and mine with

laughter. Ginger's snore was the only sound in that great room at

night. Indians sleep quietly.

Orphan Lizzie was shy as a rabbit but completely unselfconscious.

It was she who set the food on the big table and cleared away the

dishes. There did not seem to be any particular meal-times. Lizzie

always took a long lick at the top of the jam-tin as she passed it.

Carr's painting Kitwancool, 1926

Base of Kitwancool Pole, by Emily Carr

Emily Carr, 1909

"One of the painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist style,[2] Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her work until she changed subject matter from Aboriginal themes to landscapes—forest scenes in particular. ...

"Carr's father encouraged her artistic inclinations, but it was only in 1890, after her parents' deaths, that Carr pursued her art seriously. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute for two years (1890–92) before returning to Victoria. In 1899 Carr traveled to London, where she studied at the Westminster School of Art. Carr also visited the Nootka Indian mission at Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island in 1898. She traveled also to a rural art colony in St Ives, Cornwall, returning to British Columbia in 1905. Carr took a teaching position in Vancouver at the 'Ladies Art Club' that she held for no longer than a month – she was unpopular amongst her students due to her rude behavior of smoking and cursing at them in class, and the students began to boycott her courses.

"In 1898, at age 27, Carr made the first of several sketching and painting trips to Aboriginal villages. She stayed in a village near Ucluelet on the west coast of Vancouver Island, home to the Nuu-chah-nulth people, then commonly known to English-speaking people as 'Nootka'.[12] Carr recalled that her time in Ucluelet made "a lasting impression on me". Her interest in Indigenous life was reinforced by a trip to Alaska nine years later with her sister Alice. In 1912, Carr took a sketching trip to First Nations' villages in Haida Gwaii, the Upper Skeena River, and Alert Bay.[9] Even though Carr left the villages of the Pacific Northwest, the impact of the people stayed with her. Carr adopted the Indigenous name Klee Wyck ["laughing one"] and she also chose it as the title of one of her works of writings. 

"While there was some positive reaction to her work, even in the new 'French' style, Carr perceived that Vancouver's reaction to her work and new style was not positive enough to support her career. She recounted as much in her book Growing Pains. She was determined to give up teaching and working in Vancouver, and in 1913 she returned to Victoria, where several of her sisters still lived.

"During the next 15 years, Carr did little painting. She ran a boarding house known as the 'House of All Sorts'. It was the namesake and provided source material for her later book. With her financial circumstances straitened and her life in Victoria circumscribed, Carr painted a few works in this period drawn from local scenes: the cliffs at Dallas Road, the trees in Beacon Hill Park. Her own assessment of the period was that she had ceased to paint, which was not strictly true, although "[a]rt had ceased to be the primary drive of her life..."

Later, she gained more recognition. But trends in the art world were not to her liking. "I was not ready for abstraction. I clung to earth and her dear shapes, her density, her herbage, her juice. I wanted her volume and I wanted to hear her throb."

"Carr suffered a heart attack in 1937, and another in 1939, forcing her to move in with her sister Alice to recover. In 1940 Carr suffered a serious stroke, and in 1942 she had another heart attack.[32] With her ability to travel curtailed, Carr's focus shifted from her painting to her writing. The editorial assistance of Carr's friend Ira Dilworth, a professor of English, enabled Carr to see her own first book, Klee Wyck, published in 1941.[9] Carr was awarded the Governor-General's Award for non-fiction the same year for the work.[33][34]

"Paintings from Carr's last decade reveal her growing anxiety about the environmental impact of industry on British Columbia's landscape. Her work from this time reflected her growing concern over industrial logging, its ecological effects and its encroachment on the lives of Indigenous people. In her painting Odds and Ends, from 1939 "the cleared land and tree stumps shift the focus from the majestic forestscapes that lured European and American tourists to the West Coast to reveal instead the impact of deforestation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Carr

More from Carr's book, when she arrived alone in the village of Ucluelet, already under missionary sway, on the western side of Vancouver Island:

"The Missionaries were at the door. Smells of cooking fish jumped out past them. People lived on fish at Ucluelet.

Both the Missionaries were dignified, but the Greater Missionary had the most dignity. They had long noses straddled by spectacles, thin lips, mild eyes, and wore straight, dark dresses buttoned to the chin. There was only two of everything in the kitchen, so I had to sit on a box, drink from a bowl and eat my food out of a tin pie-dish.

After breakfast came a long prayer. Outside the kitchen window, just a few feet away at the edge of the forest, stood a grand balsam pine tree. It was very tall and straight. The Missionaries' "trespasses" jumped me back from the pine tree to the Lord's Prayer just in time to "Amen". We got up from our knees to find the house full of Indians. They had come to look at me.

I felt so young and empty standing there before the Indians and the two grave Missionaries! The Chief, old Hipi, was held to be a reader of faces. He perched himself on the top of the Missionaries' drug cupboard; his brown fists clutched the edge of it, his elbows taut and shoulders hunched. His crumpled shoes hung loose as if they dangled from strings and had no feet in them. The stare of his eyes searched me right through. Suddenly they were done; he lifted them above me to the window, uttered several terse sentences in Chinook, jumped off the cupboard and strode back to the village.

I was half afraid to ask the Missionary, "What did he say?"

"Not much. Only that you had no fear, that you were not stuck up, and that you knew how to laugh."

... On the point at either end of the bay crouched a huddle of houses--large, squat houses made of thick, hand-hewn cedar planks, pegged and slotted together. They had flat, square fronts. The side walls were made of driftwood. Bark and shakes, weighted with stones against the wind, were used for roofs. Every house stood separate from the next. Wind roared through narrow spaces between."

Her language is derogatory in the passage that follows, especially toward the old women, so i won't quote from it, but interesting to read.

The next story shows very high rates of infant mortality suffered by the women, and their manner of three day lamentation, their tending of all the little graves, and Sophie's attempt to punish the boys who wrecked her plaster flower offering on one of them.

"The forest was behind her, the sea in front. Her head and trunk were carved out of, or rather into, the bole of a great red cedar. She seemed to be part of the tree itself, as if she had grown there at its heart, and the carver had only chipped away the outer wood so that you could see her. Her arms were spliced and socketed to the trunk, and were flung wide in a circling, compelling movement. Her breasts were two eagle-heads, fiercely carved. That much, and the column of her great neck, and her strong chin, I had seen when I slithered to the ground beneath her. Now I saw her face.

"The eyes were two rounds of black, set in wider rounds of white, and placed in deep sockets under wide, black eyebrows. Their fixed stare bored into me as if the very life of the old cedar looked out, and it seemed that the voice of the tree itself might have burst from that great round cavity, with projecting lips, that was her mouth: Her ears were round, and stuck out to catch all sounds. The salt air had not dimmed the heavy red of her trunk and arms and thighs. Her hands were black, with blunt finger-tips painted a dazzling white. I stood looking at her for a long, long time.

"The rain stopped, and white mist came up from the sea, gradually paling her back into the forest. It was as if she belonged there, and the mist were carrying her home. Presently the mist took the forest too, and, wrapping them both together, hid them away.

"Who is that image?" I asked the little Indian girl, when I got back to the house.

She knew which one I meant, but to gain time, she said, "What image?"

"The terrible one, out there on the bluff."

"I dunno," she lied.

"I never went to that village again, but the fierce wooden image often came to me, both in my waking and in my sleeping.

...

"Several years passed, and I was once more sketching in an Indian village. There were Indians in this village, and in a mild backward way it was "going modern". That is, the Indians had pushed the forest back a little to let the sun touch the new buildings that were replacing the old community houses. Small houses, primitive enough to a white man's thinking, pushed here and there between the old. Where some of the big community houses had been torn down, for the sake of the lumber, the great corner posts and massive roof-beams of the old structure were often left, standing naked against the sky, and the new little house was built inside, on the spot where the old one had been.

"It was in one of these empty skeletons that I found her again. She had once been a supporting post for the great centre beam. Her pole-mate, representing the Raven, stood opposite her, but the beam that had rested on their heads was gone. The two poles faced in, and one judged the great size of the house by the distance between them. The corner posts were still in place, and the earth floor, once beaten to the hardness of rock by naked feet, was carpeted now with rich lush grass.

"I knew her by the stuck-out ears, shouting mouth, and deep eye-sockets. These sockets had no eye-balls, but were empty holes, filled with stare. The stare, though not so fierce as that of the former image, was more intense. The whole figure expressed power, weight, domination, rather than ferocity. Her feet were planted heavily on the head of the squatting bear, carved beneath them. A man could have sat on either huge shoulder. She was unpainted, weather-worn, sun-cracked, and the arms and hands seemed to hang loosely. The fingers were thrust into the carven mouths of two human heads, held crowns down. From behind, the sun made unfathomable shadows in eye, cheek and mouth. Horror tumbled out of them.

"I saw Indian Tom on the beach, and went to him. "Who is she?" The Indian's eyes, coming slowly from across the sea, followed my pointing finger. Resentment showed in his face, greeny-brown and wrinkled like a baked apple,--resentment that white folks should pry into matters wholly Indian.

"Who is that big carved woman?" I repeated.

"D'Sonoqua." No white tongue could have fondled the name as he did.

"Who is D'Sonoqua?"

"She is the wild woman of the woods."

"What does she do?"

"She steals children."

"To eat them?"

"No, she carries them to her caves; that," pointing to a purple scar on the mountain across the bay, "is one of her caves. When she cries `OO-oo-oo-oeo', Indian mothers are too frightened to move. They stand like trees, and the children go with D'Sonoqua."

"Then she is bad?"

"Sometimes bad. . .sometimes good," Tom replied, glancing furtively at those stuck-out ears. Then he got up and walked away.

...

"Long ago the trees had been felled and left lying. Young forest had burst through the slash, making an impregnable barrier, and sealing up the secrets which lay behind it. An eagle flew out of the forest, circled the village, and flew back again. Once again I broke silence, calling after him, "Tell D'Sonoqua--" and turning, saw her close, towering above me in the jungle.

"Like the D'Sonoqua of the other villages she was carved into the bole of a red cedar tree. Sun and storm had bleached the wood, moss here and there softened the crudeness of the modelling; sincerity underlay every stroke.

"She appeared to be neither wooden nor stationary, but a singing spirit, young and fresh, passing through the jungle. No violencecoarsened her; no power domineered to wither her. She was graciouslyfeminine. Across her forehead her creator had fashioned the Sistheutl,or mythical two-headed sea-serpent. One of its heads fell to either shoulder, hiding the stuck-out ears, and framing her face from a central parting on her forehead which seemed to increase its womanliness.

She caught your breath, this D'Sonoqua, alive in the dead bole of the cedar. She summed up the depth and charm of the whole forest, driving away its menace."

"When I was a child I was staying at one of Victoria's beaches. I was down on the point watching a school of porpoises at play off Trail Island when a canoe came round the headland. She was steering straight for our beach.

"The Government allowed the Indians to use the beaches [!] when they were travelling, so they made camp and slept wherever the night happened to fall.

"In the canoe were a man and woman, half a dozen children, a dog, a cat and a coop of fowls, besides all the Indians' things. She was a West Coast canoe--dug out of a great red cedar tree. She was long and slim, with a high prow shaped like a wolf's head. She was painted black with a line of blue running round the top of the inside. Her stern went straight down into the water. The Indian mother sat in the stern and steered the canoe with a paddle.

"When the canoe was near the shore, the man and the woman drove their paddles strong and hard, and the canoe shot high up on to the pebbles with a growling sound. The barefoot children swarmed over her side and waded ashore.

"The man and the woman got out and dragged the canoe high on-to the beach. There was a baby tucked into the woman's shawl; the shawl bound the child close to her body. She waddled slowly across the beach, her bare feet settling in the sand with every step, her fleshy body squared down on to her feet. All the movements of the man and the woman were slow and steady; their springless feet padded flatly; their backs and shoulders were straight. The few words they said to each other were guttural and low-pitched."

She was a skilled writer, but the negative tinge of white prejudice shows through, if not nearly as intense as was costumary then.

It was not unusual for women to travel by canoe, to pilot the craft:

"He did not come and there was no sign of his boat. An Indian woman came down the bank carrying a heavy not-walking-age child. A slim girl of twelve was with her. She carried a paddle and going to a light canoe that was high on the sand, she began to drag it towards the sea.

"The woman put the baby into the canoe and she and the girl grunted and shunted the canoe into the water, then they beckoned to me.

"Go now," said the woman.

"Go where?"

"Yan.--My man tell me come take you go Yan."

"But--the baby--?"

"Between Yan and Masset lay ugly waters--I could not--no, I really could not--a tippy little canoe--a woman with her arms full of baby--and a girl child--!

"The girl was rigging a ragged flour sack in the canoe for a sail. The pole was already placed, the rag flapped limply around it. The wind and the waves were crisp and sparkling. They were ready, waiting to bulge the sack and toss the canoe.

"How can you manage the canoe and the baby?" I asked the woman and hung back.

Pointing to the bow seat, the woman commanded, "Sit down." I got in and sat.

"The woman waded out holding the canoe and easing it about in the sand until it was afloat. Then she got in and clamped the child between her knees. Her paddle worked without noise among the waves. The wind filled the flour sack beautifully as if it had been a silk sail The canoe took the water as a beaver launches himself--with a silent scoot.

"The straight young girl with--black hair and eyes and the lank print dress that clung to her childish shape, held the sail rope and humoured the whimsical little canoe. The sack now bulged with wind as tight as once it had bulged with flour. The woman's paddle advised the canoe just how to cut each wave.

"We streaked across the water and were at Yan before I remembered to be frightened. The canoe grumbled over the pebbly beach and we got out. We lit a fire on the beach and ate.

"The brave old totems stood solemnly round the bay. Behind them were the old houses of Yan, and behind that again was the forest. All around was a blaze of rosy pink fireweed, rioting from the rich black soil and bursting into loose delicate blossoms, each head pointing straight to the sky."

One day our father and his three girls were going over James Bay Bridge in Victoria. We met a jolly-faced old Indian woman with a little fair-haired white boy about as old as I was. Father said, "Hello, Joey!", and to the woman he said: "How are you getting on, Martha?"

"Father had given each of us a big flat chocolate in silver paper done up like a dollar piece. We were saving them to eat when we got home.

Father said, "Who will give her chocolate to Joey?"

"We were all willing. Father took mine because I was the smallest and the greediest of his little girls. The boy took it from my hand shyly, but Martha beamed so wide all over me that I felt very generous. After we had passed on I said, "Father, who is Joey?"

"Joey," said my father, "was left when he was a tiny baby at Indian Martha's house. One very dark stormy night a man and woman knocked at her door. They asked if she would take the child in out of the wet, while they went on an errand. They would soon be back, they said, but they never came again, though Martha went on expecting them and caring for the child. She washed the fine clothes he had been dressed in and took them to the priest; but nobody could find out anything about the couple who had forsaken the baby."

"Martha had no children and she got to love the boy very much. Shedressed him in Indian clothes and took him for her own. She called him Joey." I often thought about what Father had told us about Joey. One day Mother said I could go with her, and we went to a little hut in a green field where somebody's cows grazed. That was where Martha lived.

"We knocked at the door but there was no answer. As we stood there we could hear someone inside the house crying and crying. Mother opened the door and we went in. Martha was sitting on the floor. Her hair was sticking out wildly, and her face was all swollen with crying. Things were thrown about the floor as if she did not care about anything any more. She could only sit swaying back and forth crying out, "Joey--my Joey--my Joey--"

"Mother put some nice things on the floor beside her, but she did not look at them. She just went on crying and moaning. Mother bent over Martha and stroked her shoulder; but it was no good saying anything, she was sobbing too hard to hear. I don't think she even knew we were there. The cat came and cried and begged for food. The house was cold. Mother was crying a little when we came away.

"Is Joey dead, Mother?"

"No, the priests have taken him from Martha and sent him away to school."

"Why couldn't he stay with Martha and go to school like other Indian boys?"

"Joey is not an Indian; he is a white boy. Martha is not his mother."

"But Joey's mother did not want him; she gave him away to Martha and that made him her boy. He's hers. It's beastly of the priest to steal him from Martha."

"Martha cried till she had no more tears and then she died."