Indigenous people living in Quatsino Sound in the 1800s undertook a unique practice of head binding female infants. This created an elongated shape in the skull, and was of much interest to ethnographers when they began studying the First Nations on the Northern Vancouver Island. This photo shows local women with bound heads undertaking the practice on a baby. By the early 1900s the practice seemed to be dying out. Lucy Moon, who married Quatsino character Ned Frigon, was said to have been known locally as the 'last of the long heads' in the early 1900s.
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| BC Archives E-01482 |
Frederick Dally, a visiting photographer, gave the following commentary on the practice in the late 1800s: "The Quatseeno Indian Village in Quatseeno Sound on the north west coast of Vancouver Island at which place the mode of flattening the skull is carried out to perfection one girl had her head so flattened that it appeared conical and half as high again as it ought to have done; as far as I know the mothers only flatten the skulls of their daughters as it is the fashion, commencing soon after the child is born, it is placed in a basket, or bark cradle and a splint of wood is held down with thongs over the head of the infant having a pad of pulled soft cedar bark which is placed on the forehead of the child and held there for the first year or eighteen months, or as long as the child remains in the cradle, it does not appear to imp[air] the mental faculties of the adult in the least ... The mode of building the lodges is different to that of the southern or eastern tribes of indians living on the island, their food consists principally of fish whic[h] they have in abundance, but deer, elk, grouse, ducks, berries and roots are also plentiful, the indians are stout, healthy and strong of a dark tan color. F. Dally."
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