The Return of the Dagger

In 1938 Bruce A. McKelvie wrote about the return of the dagger:

“Chief Louis Billy Prince, the aged councilor of his people mourns no more and head chief Thomas Julian wears a glad smile. The reason for this happiness in the tribe is in the fact that Chief Quaw's dagger has been restored to the custody of Chief Louis Billy Prince, its guardian. It was nearly ten years ago that a white man ‘borrowed' the ancient weapon. It disappeared. Several years ago Chief Louis Billy Prince told his great friend, J. B. Munro, deputy minister of agriculture, of the tribal loss. [Munro] …enlisted the aid of Rev. Father Morice, …and of the Hudson 's Bay Company officials at Winnipeg , and as a result, the bloodstained blade was located …and has been duly restored”.

We can conclude that Robert Watson obtained the dagger from Louie Billie in the spring of 1928 and loaned it for exhibition later that year. It remained in Winnipeg and was not returned until about December of 1937. Dr. John Bunyan Munro, who had visited Louie Billie Prince on several occasions, obtained and returned the dagger to him with the help of Father Morice - who lived in Winnipeg at the time.

At a later date, Louie Billie must have loaned Munro the dagger for safekeeping – under the conditions explained by his daughter Lizette in her letter of 1998.

In the September 1943, W. P. Johnston noted in a newspaper article that the dagger was “now” in Munro's possession.

John Munro must have deposited the dagger in the British Columbia Archives between 1939 and 1943. In his 1945, Doctoral thesis Munro indicates:

“Kwah owned the first iron dagger ever to appear among his tribe. It has been in the possession of Kwah and his descendants for two hundred years and is now in safekeeping in the Parliament Buildings at Victoria ”.

At this time both the Provincial Archives and Provincial Museum were in the east wing of the Legislative buildings.

In an earlier manuscript version of his thesis [Kindly donated to the RBCM by James Munro on September 25, 1998] Munro indicates that the dagger “is now in the Archives at Victoria ”. The fact that Munro had crossed out the statement in his earlier manuscript that the dagger “is still in the possession of Chief Louis Billy Prince”, strongly suggests that he had acquired it recently.

Munro went on to say:

“For many years Chief Louie Billie Prince, …was the guardian of this famous weapon, but he found some difficulty in retaining it due to the eagerness of souvenir hunters. He worried over its safe-keeping when absent from his cabin on hunting and trapping expeditions”.

 

Rediscovering Kwah’s Dagger

Figure 5

A key sentence in John Munro's thesis caught my attention:

“For many years it served as a knife and was occasionally fitted into a long pole and used as a spear. In later years, it has had an artistically carved whalebone handle”.

After first reading this, it became clear to me that the dagger in the Royal B.C. Museum - #13345, was likely the one once in the possession of Louis Billy Prince.

I contacted the, now elderly, son's of John Munro - James Munro and G. Eric Munro. They saw the knife with the older plain handle in the old Museum basement in the Parliament buildings and thought it was likely donated before the 1940s. Eric Munro kindly loaned me an original photograph of the dagger. The photograph shows the dagger with its earlier 1920s handle. A comparison of this photo with RBCM specimen #13345 clearly shows in detail that the latter has the same blade as the Louis Billy Prince dagger. The handle on the photograph dagger, however, shows a mark that is either indicative of a loose handle or a mark caused by an even earlier handle? This observation may support Morice's contention that there was once an even earlier handle on the dagger.

There is some uncertainty as to whether John Munro eventually received permission from Chief Louie Billie to donate the dagger to the Museum. In an essay of Eric Munro, John Munro's grandson, he states that (shortly after 1945):

“It was at this point in time that Dr. Munro asked the Chiefs permission to present the dagger to the Provincial Museum where it could be on display to the advantage of all to see.”

In 1998, Lizette Hall was sent a xerox of a photo of artifact #13345 - the Louis Billy dagger with the new handle. She said:

“Now the picture of a sword you sent me. That is not the picture of my great grand-father's sword. …Both my 85 year old brother Solomon and I know what Chief Kw'ah's dagger looks like. I saw it in the museum in November 1959 under a glass case. There was identification on it. I know it was Kw'ah's dagger.”

The Royal B.C. Museum accession records indicate that the dagger #13345, was turned over to the Museum July 21, 1972 by the Archives. The information recorded states:

“Presented to Dr. J.B. Munro, B.C. Dept. of Agriculture who presented it to Archives who presented it to Prov. Museum ”.

Figure 6

The original Provincial Museum catalogue description was “Tsimshian or Tlingit. Dagger – iron blade, flat, with carved whalebone handle, Blade attached to Handle with gut”. The designation as “Tsimshian or Tlingit” was based solely on the artistic style of the handle.

The new handle of this dagger was put on sometime between its return to Nak'azdli in 1937 and its being brought to Victoria before the end of 1943. The dagger observed in 1959 by Lizette Hall may have been one similar to the older version of the Louis Billy Prince dagger. Specimen 2912 is an iron dagger from Fort St. James that was collected by surveyor Frank Swannell and donated to the RBCM in 1917. The end of the handle on this specimen has a knob similar to that shown in the Morice drawings. The age and history of #2912 is unknown.

Figure 7

The question of the dating of the new handle and its location was resolved with the observation of an original photograph owned by Lillian Sam, of Nakadzli. The photograph clearly shows Lillian's grandfather, Chief Louie Billie Prince, holding the dagger with the new carved whalebone handle. A Prince George photographer took the picture in the early part of 1943. It was likely just after this photograph was taken that Munro brought the dagger to Victoria .

After all this detective work, I finally found a 1969 letter from G. Clifford Carl, then director of the Provincial Museum, addressed to Clifford Wilson who worked for The Beaver Magazine of the Hudson's Bay Company. This letter clearly filled in the time gaps in the recent history of the dagger. Carl stated that he consulted with the archivist Willard Ireland who said the dagger was “turned over to the Provincial Archives some years ago by Dr. J. B. Munro … It is now on display in the Forestry Exhibit in the rotunda of the Parliament Buildings”.

Subsequent to this letter, Bob Griffin, the Museum's manager of human history provided me with a 1964 list of archives “Bayonets, Daggers, Swords, etc.” that was later turned over (except one) to the history collection. The one item on the list, #96, was the dagger “presented to Dr. J.B. Munro” and noted as being “Loaned to Forestry Display”.

So it appears that, when Lizette Hall visited the Legislative Building in 1959, the dagger now catalogued as RBCM #13345, was on display and probably labeled as being Kwah's dagger. It was not in the Museum exhibit but in a special Forestry display in the Legislative rotunda.

Comparative analysis of Dagger & knife types

We have now established that the RBCM dagger number 13345 is, in fact, the dagger that was once in the possession of Louis Billy prior to the 1940s. But is this the original dagger owned by Kwah? What can we tell about the age of this dagger by its physical structure and chemical composition?

Knives were made by Europeans and Americans in their home countries, and by their own armourers on board their trading ships. Some aboriginal peoples made their own knives from copper and some by modifications to European wrought iron. Things changed substantially when some First Nation individuals leaned to forge iron. Our current knowledge of what types were made by whom is in need of a serious synthesis beyond the scope of this paper.

Ferdinand Von Wrangell, made significant observations when writing in the c. 1830-38 period about the people on the Copper River of S.E. Alaska. The people of Copper River traded with the Tlingit to the south and the Tanaina to the north. They called the Russians ketchetnyai, from ketchi, the word for iron. Before the arrival of Europeans they used the local copper to hammer out hatchets, knives and breastplates for themselves and to sell:

“Nowadays they have become the only blacksmiths who know how to forge iron which they obtain from the Russians; neither the Kolosh [Tlingit] nor other peoples in the colonies know this art”. (VanStone, 1970:5).

I examined descriptions and drawings in 18 th century journals and daggers in museum collections to gain an understanding of the types of trade knives that were extant at various time-periods. I then searched out archaeological examples that where found in a context that suggested they were associated with the early trade contact period or of a possible pre-contact age. I found that knives in Museum collections often tended to be ascribed to time-periods earlier than the evidence allowed.

It was difficult to place many knives in distinct groups with shared characteristics. I have included here (APPENDIX II) an overview of a few general types that have been recognized in the literature. Chief Louie Billy's dagger is what I define as a later period notched knife.

Metalurgical analysis

I investigated ways in which it may be possible to date daggers by metallurgical analysis. Could the dagger of Louis Billy (RBCM #13345) be dated before or after a certain time period?

One method of analysis is Metallographic examination. This involves studying the techniques employed in the fabrication of metal artifacts (for details see Appendix III). A polished etched surface of a section, cut from an artifact, is examined under an intense reflected light source to observe grain size and other features. This examination reveals the internal structure of the metal, providing information on the thermal and mechanical treatments to which the metal has been subjected. The surface structure can tell us about chemical composition and serve as a general dating tool.

What I needed was precise data on the composition of a knife that would assist in identifying either specific time-periods or a geographical source for the raw material. Information on both these topics can be obtained more readily from the chemical analysis of the metal artifact.

One purpose of chemical analysis is to determine the concentrations of major elements (greater than 2%), minor elements (2 % to 0.1 %) or trace elements (less than 0.1 %) that can serve as a dating tool or source indicator. In some traditional techniques, element percentages need to be estimated and no one method of analysis will operate over a wide range for all the elements in the periodic table.

Knowing what elements are important in an analysis that can act as a dating tool, usually requires a large existing database that includes a wide range of elements produced from iron and steel of a known production date.

A prime consideration in museum specimens that are to undergo metallographic or chemical examination is the amount of damage to the artifact that can be permitted. Taking a thin cross-section or a tapered slice of an artifact are destructive processes.

Dating Louis Billie’s Dagger

In researching the history of metals found in iron, I concluded that one element would be useful as a good time indicator for my purposes - manganese. Manganese was discovered and named as a substance by Carl Wilhelm in 1774. When manganese is added to steel, it forms hard steel that is very resistant to shock. Although some experimentation using manganese occurred as early as 1827, it was not until 1839 that a patent was taken out for the use of manganese in steel production and not until after the mid 1840s that steel production involved the use of manganese in any significant way.

Studies on metals dating from ancient times until the 1840s, and iron dating after the 1840s that did not have manganese as a deliberate additive, consistently show very small trace amounts of manganese, usually in the .04% or less range.

In order to get a precise answer on manganese content, and by minimal destructive means, I went to Kevin Telmer at the University of Victoria 's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences. In his aqueous geochemistry lab, Telmer uses a technique known as laser ablations inductively coupled plasma (ICP) mass spectrometry that can analyze micro-targets as small as one-tenth the width of a human hair.

The laser ablation microprobe directed an intense laser beam onto a tiny fragment from the edge of the dagger. The target point gave off a puff of dust, which was then carried away by a stream of argon gas to be analyzed by a mass spectrometer. The results provided information on the content of manganese and many other elements. The dagger owned by Billy Louie was shown to contain 0.3% manganese.

Conclusion

The Royal B.C. Museum dagger #13345, is the dagger once owned by Chief Louis Billy. A new handle of whalebone, carved with a Tlingit-like design, was attached to the dagger sometime between 1937 and 1943. It was presented to the British Columbia Archives about 1943 and later placed on a long-term loan for a forestry display in the Rotunda of the Legislative buildings.

The proportionately large amount of manganese found in the iron blade of Louis Billie's dagger clearly indicates that the dagger had to be made after 1839, and likely the later part of the 1840s at the earliest. Kwah died in the spring of 1840. The dagger is of the notched blade type, which also fits with a later date for the dagger.

With this evidence we must conclude that the dagger owned by chief Louie Billy was not Kwah's dagger. It may have been a dagger owned by one or two of Kwah's sons and then passed on to Louie Billy. It is likely that Kwah had several daggers in his lifetime and some of these may still be around in private or museum collections.

The specific dagger in the Royal B.C. Museum collection that once belonged to Chief Louis Billy has been shown to be a product of the post 1830, trade period. In spite of the results of the study of this particular dagger, it is clear that both direct and circumstantial evidence support the oral traditions of First Nations in the Northern Interior of British Columbia that claim the use of iron tools long before the European fur trade period.

The information presented here is often that of outsiders. The Nakazdli have other versions of the Kwah story - which I will leave for them to tell. The dagger of Louis Billy has an interesting story in itself, and has helped keep alive some of the oral traditions of the Nakazdli people - traditions that weave into the story of Kwah's dagger. This research demonstrates how artifacts in museum collections may have bigger stories to tell than their current documentation reveals.

It is certainly reasonable to suggest that this story has not come to an end. That somewhere out there, lying in some museum or private collection, and waiting to be found, is the first iron dagger that once belonging to the Nakazdli noble, Kwah.

End Note

Elements of the Chinlac story, and the subsequent revenge raid on the village about 1780, appear to be combined in some later telling of the stories (see story by Maxine George, Duff, 1951, and story by Sarah Prince (ed) Sam, 2001, pp. 20-23).

Morice was told about a nephew and son-in-law of Na'kwoel, named Tsaluk'ulyea, who inherited his noble title. Tsaluk'ulyea was born about 1735 and lived at the village of Pinche on Stuart Lake . His brother-in-law and first cousin was Nak'woel's son A'ke'toes.

In the traditional Nak'azdli society it was the preferred practice for a man to marry his mother's brother's daughter, live in his uncles household and inherit his uncles land and title.

KWAH’S DAGGER                          
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