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Day after day and week after week we paddled, rowed and sailed along these wonderful shores, visiting the Indian villages of Cumshewa, Skedance, Laskeek, or Tanoo, and Ninstints, all occupied, and several others now abandoned.
We found Chief Skidegate and about twenty of his people catching their spring supply of a very fine small salmon, in the river flowing into Copper Bay, and met Chief Skedance en route to a river flowing from the north side of Lyell Island into Cumshewa Inlet, for the same purpose. There is also a salmon stream emptying into that inlet on the north side near Conglomerate Point.
Our route was via Sand Spit Point, Copper Bay, the villages of Cumshewa and Skedance, Cumshewa Inlet, Louise Island, Selwyn Inlet, Talunkwan Island, Dana Inlet, Logan Inlet, Tanoo Island, the village of Tanoo or Laskeek, Bichardson Inlet, Darwin Sound, De La Beche Inlet, Hutton Inlet, Werner Bay, Huxley Island, Barnaby Island, Scudder Point, Granite Point, Skincuttle Inlet, Deluge Point, Collison Bay, Carpenter Bay and Forsyth Point, all on the east side of Moresby Island; thence across Houston Stewart Channel, around Provost Island, entering Provost and Luxana Bays and Seal Cove, rounding Cape St.
Cumahewa, situated on the north shore of the inlet of that name, contains 60 people, 18 houses and 25 carved poles, and Skedance, on the opposite, only 12 Indians, but 25 houses and 30 carved poles. Tanoo, or Laskeek, on Tanoo Island, is next reached. It is second in population to Massett, containing 150 natives, 20 houses and 25 carved poles.
They are inhabited exclusively by the Hyda Indians, now numbering about 800 souls, who live in the villages of Massett and Skidegate, on Graham Island; Gold Harbor, on Maud Island, in Skidegate Inlet; Cumshewa, on Moresby Island; Skedance, on Lyell Island: Tanoo, or Laskeek, on Tanoo Island, and at Ninstints, on a little island opposite the west coast entrance to Houston Stewart Channel.
There are several halibut banks besides those located on the charts, where the Indians obtain the most abundant supplies of these, their principal article of food. On the day of our arrival at Ninstints, the Indians returned with a large number caught upon banks opposite the central portion of the western shore of Provost Island. There are also banks off Sand Spit Point and Skedance.
We found Chief Skidegate and several of his people securing their spring supply by means of traps, from a creek flowing into Copper Bay, and Chief Skedance en route for the same purpose to a small stream emptying into Cumshewa Inlet from Louise Island. The rivers, which I followed to their source, rise in lakes and small swampy mountain basins.
The best bodies of timber seen were on the south shore of Skidegate Inlet on a small stream flowing into Copper Bay on the north side of Louise Island, bordering a river flowing into Cumshewa Inlet, about ten miles west of the village of Skedance, on Hutton Inlet, Carpenter and Henry Bays. Nearly all of the choicest varieties of fish found in this region abound in the waters traversed.
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