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"I may add, when I visited Massett last October with Bishop Ridley, he left Cowhoe with Sneath to assist him during the winter, the first native teacher from the Hydahs. I trust the good seed has taken root in many hearts. "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform!" It was to show me this book, and to shake me by the hand, that the father and son came this long journey."

When Duncan first arrived at Fort Simpson, in 1857, he frequently entreated him to come over and teach the Hydahs, and when I met him again on board the Satellite in 1859, he made a similar request to me.

When they work they are not to be relied on to continue at it steadily, and when drunk they are only too often dangerous. Their type of face is often very low, and I never saw but one handsome man among the half-breeds, though the women, especially the Hydahs, are passable in looks. This man was a pilot, and a good one, on the lakes; but he was perpetually being discharged for drunkenness.

Many years before, a young Tsimshean woman had been captured by a party of Hydahs, and carried as a slave to Queen Charlotte Islands, where, after a while, a son was born to her. Five and twenty years passed away, and then she was restored by her owner, for a consideration, to her relatives at Fort Simpson.

At Christmas , when the Indians from other villages came in canoes to Massett, the usual festive custom of "dancing with painted faces, and naked slaves with their bodies blackened," was dispensed with, and in lieu of it the visitors were received by a choir of a hundred Hydahs, children and adults, chanting the anthem, "How beautiful upon the mountains."

No tribe, moreover, has been more fearfully demoralised by the proximity of the white man's "civilization." Drunkenness and the grossest vices have spread disease and death among them. But the Hydahs have not failed to recognise the advantages that Christianity has conferred upon their neighbours on the mainland.

The Hydahs seem to have thought this a good opportunity to make friends with their old enemies, and they sent a deputation to Metlakahtla with her son, now a grown man, to give him up as a voluntary peace-offering. "We had," wrote Mr. Duncan, "a solemn peace-making at the Mission-house.

Among the Tsimsheans and their neighbours, the Hydahs, great importance is attached to this heraldry, and their crests are often elaborately engraved on large copper plates from three to five feet in length, and about two in breadth. These plates are very highly valued, and are often heir-looms in families. No Indian would think of killing the animal which had been taken for his crest.

He was most anxious to purchase one, but they would not consent to it at any price." Patiently and prayerfully for the next two years and a half, with one or two intervals for visits to Metlakahtla, did Mr. Collison labour among the Hydahs, on the same lines as Mr.

The Hydahs were then at least ten times their present numbers, swarming in the waters and on the shores around the villages of Kioosta, Yakh and Tadense, where now only carved poles, houses in ruins, and numerous graves attest their former greatness. Two Indian dogs were the sole occupants of the fishing and hunting village of Tadense, at the time of our arrival.