In the winter of 1887–8 I was traveling on snowshoes down the Skeena Valley from Gaat-a-maksk to Gaet-wan-gak, which must be railway stations now on the Grand Trunk Pacific. My packer was Willie-the-Bear, so named because a grizzly had eaten off half his face, the side of his face, in fact, which had to be covered with a black veil. We were crossing some low hills when I asked him about the coming of the white men. Promptly he told me of the first ship--a Spaniard; the second--Vancouver’s; and the third--an American, all in correct order after a hundred years. Who told him? His mother. And who told her? Her mother, of course. So, living as I was among the Indians, and seeing no white man’s face for months on end, I gathered up the various memories of the people. At Massett, on the north coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, the Haidas were amazed by a great bird which came to rest in front of the village. When she had folded her wings a lot of little birds shot out from under her, which came to the beach and turned out to be full of men. They were as fair of color as the Haidas, some even more so, and some red as the meat of salmon. The people went out in their dugouts to board the bird, which was a vast canoe. All of them got presents, but there was one, a person of no account, who got the finest gift, better than anything received by the highest chiefs, an iron cooking-pot. In those days the food was put with water into a wooden trough and red-hot stones thrown in until it boiled. The people had copper, but that was worth many times the present price of gold, not to be wasted on mere cooking pots. So the man with the iron pot, in his joy, called all the people to a feast, and gave away the whole of his property, which of course was the right thing to do. The chiefs were in a rage at his new importance, but they came, as did every one else. And at the feast the man of no account climbed the tall pole in front of his house, the totem pole carved with the arms of his ancestors, passing a rope over the top by which he hauled up the iron pot so that it might be seen by the whole tribe. “See,” he said, “what the great chief has given me, the Big Spirit whose people have tails stiff as a beaver tail behind their heads, whose canoe is loaded with thunder and lightning, the mother of all canoes, with six young canoes growing up, whose medicine is so strong that one dose makes you sick for three days, whose warriors are so brave that one got two black eyes and did not run away, who have a little dog which scratches and says meaou! “This great chief has given us presents according to our rank, little no-account presents to the common people; but when I came he knew I was his brother, his equal, and to me, to me alone, he gave this pot which sits upon the fire and does not burn, this pot which boils the water, and will not break!”