The Haidas have become famous for their gigantic canoes carved from single logs and elaborately decorated.[144] The other Amerinds of this region also dig out fine boats from the huge logs they obtain so easily in the forest, but there are none equal to those of the Haida, who, indeed, require specially good boats for navigating the waters around their island, Queen Charlotte’s. They are the best carvers of all the tribes now living north of Mexico. Their work is grotesque, corresponding with the singular mythology of the artists and their inability to render accurately the forms they see about them. Combinations of human and animal forms are often seen, such as the panther-man found by Swan in this region—a crouching figure with an attempt at a panther’s head and forelegs, with the hind legs human. One of the most remarkable of all the Haida works from an artistic point of view is the group called the “Bear-mother,”[145] now in the National Museum at Washington, and made by _Skaowskeav_, one of the tribe. It apparently shows European influence. The lines are more flowing and soft than the ordinary Amerind method of execution, and the conception is more in range with European ideas. This may be accidental, however, and merely in the line of the sculptor’s development. The material is slate. The subject is a child at the breast of the “Bear-mother.” The story of the bear-mother, as told by J. G. Swan, is that “a number of Indian squaws were in the woods gathering berries when one of them, the daughter of a chief, spoke in terms of ridicule of the whole bear species. The bears descended on them and killed all but the chief’s daughter, whom the king of the bears took to wife. She bore him a child, half human and half bear. The carving represents the agony of the mother in suckling this rough and uncouth offspring.” From an art standpoint, one failure in the execution of this conception is that the child does not suggest sufficiently its half-bear character. Nevertheless, it is an extraordinary work for an Amerind. [Illustration: TERRA-COTTA STATUETTE, CHIRIQUI.] [Illustration: THE BEAR-MOTHER, HAIDA, N. W. COAST]