CHAPTER III.

COLUMBIANS.

HABITAT OF THE COLUMBIAN GROUP--PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY--SOURCES

OF FOOD-SUPPLY--INFLUENCE OF FOOD AND CLIMATE--FOUR EXTREME

CLASSES--HAIDAHS--THEIR HOME--PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES--

CLOTHING--SHELTER--SUSTENANCE--IMPLEMENTS--MANUFACTURES--

ARTS--PROPERTY--LAWS--SLAVERY--WOMEN--CUSTOMS--MEDICINE--

DEATH--THE NOOTKAS--THE SOUND NATIONS--THE CHINOOKS--THE

SHUSHWAPS--THE SALISH--THE SAHAPTINS--TRIBAL BOUNDARIES.

The term COLUMBIANS, or, as Scouler[228] and others have called them,

_Nootka-Columbians_, is, in the absence of a native word, sufficiently

characteristic to distinguish the aboriginal nations of north-western

America between the forty-third and fifty-fifth parallels, from those of

the other great divisions of this work. The Columbia River, which

suggests the name of this group, and Nootka Sound on the western shore

of Vancouver Island, were originally the chief centres of European

settlement on the North-west Coast; and at an early period these names

were compounded to designate the natives of the Anglo-American

possessions on the Pacific, which lay between the discoveries of the

Russians on the north and those of the Spaniards on the south. As a

simple name is always preferable to a complex one, and as no more

pertinent name suggests itself than that of the great river which, with

its tributaries, drains a large portion of this territory, I drop

'Nootka' and retain only the word 'Columbian.'[229] These nations have

also been broadly denominated Flatheads, from a custom practiced more or

less by many of their tribes, of compressing the cranium during

infancy;[230] although the only Indians in the whole area, tribally

known as Flatheads, are those of the Salish family, who do not flatten

the head at all.

[Sidenote: COLUMBIAN FAMILIES.]

In describing the Columbian nations it is necessary, as in the other

divisions, to subdivide the group; arbitrarily this may have been done

in some instances, but as naturally as possible in all. Thus the people

of Queen Charlotte Islands, and the adjacent coast for about a hundred

miles inland, extending from 55° to 52° of north latitude, are called

_Haidahs_ from the predominant tribe of the islands. The occupants of

Vancouver Island and the opposite main, with its labyrinth of inlets

from 52° to 49°, I term _Nootkas_. The _Sound Indians_ inhabit the

region drained by streams flowing into Puget Sound, and the adjacent

shores of the strait and ocean; the _Chinooks_ occupy the banks of the

Columbia from the Dalles to the sea, extending along the coast northward

to Gray Harbor, and southward nearly to the Californian line. The

interior of British Columbia, between the Cascade and Rocky Mountains,

and south of the territory occupied by the Hyperborean Carriers, is

peopled by the _Shushwaps_, the _Kootenais_, and the _Okanagans_.

Between 49° and 47°, extending west from the Cascade to the Rocky

Mountains, chiefly on the Columbia and Clarke Fork, is the _Salish_ or

Flathead family. The nations dwelling south of 47° and east of the

Cascade range, on the Columbia, the lower Snake, and their tributary

streams, may be called _Sahaptins_, from the name of the Nez Percé

tribes.[231] The great _Shoshone_ family, extending south-east from the

upper waters of the Columbia, and spreading out over nearly the whole of

the Great Basin, although partially included in the Columbian limits,

will be omitted in this, and included in the Californian Group, which

follows. These divisions, as before stated, are geographic rather than

ethnographic.[232] Many attempts have been made by practical

ethnologists, to draw partition lines between these peoples according to

race, all of which have proved signal failures, the best approximation

to a scientific division being that of philologists, the results of

whose researches are given in the third volume of this series; but

neither the latter division, nor that into coast and inland tribes--in

many respects the most natural and clearly defined of all[233]--is

adapted to my present purpose. In treating of the Columbians, I shall

first take up the coast families, going from north to south, and

afterward follow the same order with those east of the mountains.

[Sidenote: HOME OF THE COLUMBIANS.]

No little partiality was displayed by the Great Spirit of the Columbians

in the apportionment of their dwelling-place. The Cascade Mountains,

running from north to south throughout their whole territory, make of it

two distinct climatic divisions, both highly but unequally favored by

nature. On the coast side--a strip which may be called one hundred and

fifty miles wide and one thousand miles long--excessive cold is unknown,

and the earth, warmed by Asiatic currents and watered by numerous

mountain streams, is thickly wooded; noble forests are well stocked with

game; a fertile soil yields a great variety of succulent roots and

edible berries, which latter means of subsistence were lightly

appreciated by the indolent inhabitants, by reason of the still more

abundant and accessible food-supply afforded by the fish of ocean,

channel, and stream. The sources of material for clothing were also

bountiful far beyond the needs of the people.

Passing the Cascade barrier, the climate and the face of the country

change. Here we have a succession of plains or table-lands, rarely

degenerating into deserts, with a good supply of grass and roots; though

generally without timber, except along the streams, until the heavily

wooded western spurs of the Rocky Mountains are reached. The air having

lost much of its moisture, affords but a scanty supply of rain, the

warming and equalizing influence of the ocean stream is no longer felt,

and the extremes of heat and cold are undergone according to latitude

and season. Yet are the dwellers in this land blessed above many other

aboriginal peoples, in that game is plenty, and roots and insects are at

hand in case the season's hunt prove unsuccessful.

Ethnologically, no well-defined line can be drawn to divide the people

occupying these two widely different regions. Diverse as they certainly

are in form, character, and customs, their environment, the climate, and

their methods of seeking food may well be supposed to have made them so.

Not only do the pursuit of game in the interior and the taking of fish

on the coast, develop clearly marked general peculiarities of character

and life in the two divisions, but the same causes produce grades more

or less distinct in each division. West of the Cascade range, the

highest position is held by the tribes who in their canoes pursue the

whale upon the ocean, and in the effort to capture Leviathan become

themselves great and daring as compared with the lowest order who live

upon shell-fish and whatever nutritious substances may be cast by the

tide upon the beach. Likewise in the interior, the extremes are found in

the deer, bear, elk, and buffalo hunters, especially when horses are

employed, and in the root and insect eaters of the plains. Between these

four extreme classes may be traced many intermediate grades of physical

and intellectual development, due to necessity and the abilities

exercised in the pursuit of game.

The Columbians hitherto have been brought in much closer contact with

the whites than the Hyperboreans, and the results of the association are

known to all. The cruel treacheries and massacres by which nations have

been thinned, and flickering remnants of once powerful tribes gathered

on government reservations or reduced to a handful of beggars, dependent

for a livelihood on charity, theft, or the wages of prostitution, form

an unwritten chapter in the history of this region. That this process of

duplicity was unnecessary as well as infamous, I shall not attempt to

show, as the discussion of Indian policy forms no part of my present

purpose. Whatever the cause, whether from an inhuman civilized policy,

or the decrees of fate, it is evident that the Columbians, in common

with all the aborigines of America, are doomed to extermination.

Civilization and savagism will not coalesce, any more than light and

darkness; and although it may be necessary that these things come, yet

are those by whom they are unrighteously accomplished none the less

culpable.

Once more let it be understood that the time of which this volume

speaks, was when the respective peoples were first known to Europeans.

It was when, throughout this region of the Columbia, nature's wild

magnificence was yet fresh; primeval forests unprofaned; lakes, and

rivers, and rolling plains unswept; it was when countless villages

dotted the luxuriant valleys; when from the warrior's camp-fire the

curling smoke never ceased to ascend, nor the sounds of song and dance

to be heard; when bands of gaily dressed savages roamed over every

hill-side; when humanity unrestrained vied with bird and beast in the

exercise of liberty absolute. This is no history; alas! they have none;

it is but a sun-picture, and to be taken correctly must be taken

quickly. Nor need we pause to look back through the dark vista of

unwritten history, and speculate, who and what they are, nor for how

many thousands of years they have been coming and going, counting the

winters, the moons, and the sleeps; chasing the wild game, basking in

the sunshine, pursuing and being pursued, killing and being killed. All

knowledge regarding them lies buried in an eternity of the past, as all

knowledge of their successors remains folded in an eternity of the

future. We came upon them unawares, unbidden, and while we gazed they

melted away. The infectious air of civilization penetrated to the

remotest corner of their solitudes. Their ignorant and credulous nature,

unable to cope with the intellect of a superior race, absorbed only its

vices, yielding up its own simplicity and nobleness for the white man's

diseases and death.

[Sidenote: HAIDAH NATIONS.]

In the HAIDAH family I include the nations occupying the coast and

islands from the southern extremity of Prince of Wales Archipelago to

the Bentinck Arms in about 52°. Their territory is bounded on the north

and east by the Thlinkeet and Carrier nations of the Hyperboreans, and

on the south by the Nootka family of the Columbians. Its chief nations,

whose boundaries however can rarely be fixed with precision, are the

_Massets_, the _Skiddegats_, and the _Cumshawas_, of Queen Charlotte

Islands; the _Kaiganies_, of Prince of Wales Archipelago; the

_Chimsyans_, about Fort Simpson, and on Chatham Sound; the _Nass_ and

the _Skeenas_, on the rivers of the same names; the _Sebassas_, on Pitt

Archipelago and the shores of Gardner Channel; and the Millbank Sound

Indians, including the _Hailtzas_ and the _Bellacoolas_, the most

southern of this family. These nations, the orthography of whose names

is far from uniform among different writers, are still farther

subdivided into numerous indefinite tribes, as specified at the end of

this chapter.

The Haidah territory, stretching on the mainland three hundred miles in

length, and in width somewhat over one hundred miles from the sea to the

lofty Chilkoten Plain, is traversed throughout its length by the

northern extension of the Cascade Range. In places its spurs and broken

foot-hills touch the shore, and the very heart of the range is

penetrated by innumerable inlets and channels, into which pour short

rapid streams from interior hill and plain. The country, though hilly,

is fertile and covered by an abundant growth of large, straight pines,

cedars, and other forest trees. The forest abounds with game, the waters

with fish. The climate is less severe than in the middle United States;

and notwithstanding the high latitude of their home, the Haidahs have

received no small share of nature's gifts. Little has been explored,

however, beyond the actual coast, and information concerning this

nation, coming from a few sources only, is less complete than in the

case of the more southern Nootkas.

[Sidenote: PHYSICAL PECULIARITIES OF THE HAIDAHS.]

Favorable natural conditions have produced in the Haidahs a tall,

comely, and well-formed race, not inferior to any in North-western

America;[234] the northern nations of the family being generally

superior to the southern,[235] and having physical if not linguistic

affinities with their Thlinkeet neighbors, rather than with the Nootkas.

Their faces are broad, with high cheek bones;[236] the eyes small,

generally black, though brown and gray with a reddish tinge have been

observed among them.[237] The few who have seen their faces free from

paint pronounce their complexion light,[238] and instances of Albino

characteristics are sometimes found.[239] The hair is not uniformly

coarse and black, but often soft in texture, and of varying shades of

brown, worn by some of the tribes cut close to the head.[240] The beard

is usually plucked out with great care, but moustaches are raised

sometimes as strong as those of Europeans;[241] indeed there seems to

be little authority for the old belief that the North-western American

Indians were destitute of hair except on the head.[242] Dr Scouler,

comparing Chimsyan skulls with those of the Chinooks, who are among the

best known of the north-western nations, finds that in a natural state

both have broad, high cheek-bones, with a receding forehead, but the

Chimsyan skull, between the parietal and temporal bones, is broader than

that of the Chinook, its vertex being remarkably flat.[243] Swollen and

deformed legs are common from constantly doubling them under the body

while sitting in the canoe. The teeth are frequently worn down to the

gums by eating sanded salmon.[244]

[Sidenote: HAIDAH DRESS AND ORNAMENT.]

The Haidahs have no methods of distortion peculiar to themselves, by

which they seek to improve their fine physique; but the custom of

flattening the head in infancy obtains in some of the southern nations

of this family, as the Hailtzas and Bellacoolas,[245] and the Thlinkeet

lip-piece, already sufficiently described, is in use throughout a larger

part of the whole territory. It was observed by Simpson as far south as

Millbank Sound, where it was highly useful as well as ornamental,

affording a firm hold for the fair fingers of the sex in their drunken

fights. These ornaments, made of either wood, bone, or metal, are worn

particularly large in Queen Charlotte Islands, where they seem to be

not a mark of rank, but to be worn in common by all the women.[246]

Besides the regular lip-piece, ornaments, various in shape and material,

of shell, bone, wood, or metal, are worn stuck in the lips, nose, and

ears, apparently according to the caprice or taste of the wearer, the

skin being sometimes, though more rarely, tattooed to correspond.[247]

Both for ornament and as a protection against the weather, the skin is

covered with a thick coat of paint, a black polish being a full dress

uniform. Figures of birds and beasts, and a coat of grease are added in

preparation for a feast, with fine down of duck or goose--a stylish coat

of tar and feathers--sprinkled over the body as an extra

attraction.[248] When the severity of the weather makes additional

protection desirable, a blanket, formerly woven by themselves from dog's

hair, and stained in varied colors, but now mostly procured from

Europeans, is thrown loosely over the shoulders. Chiefs, especially in

times of feasting, wear richer robes of skins.[249] The styles of dress

and ornament adopted around the forts from contact with the whites need

not be described. Among the more unusual articles that have been noticed

by travelers are, "a large hat, resembling the top of a small parasol,

made of the twisted fibres of the roots of trees, with an aperture in

the inside, at the broader end" for the head, worn by a Sebassa chief;

and at Millbank Sound, "masks set with seals' whiskers and feathers,

which expand like a fan," with secret springs to open the mouth and

eyes.[250] Mackenzie and Vancouver, who were among the earliest visitors

to this region, found fringed robes of bark-fibre, ornamented with fur

and colored threads. A circular mat, with an opening in the centre for

the head, was worn as a protection from the rain; and war garments

consisted of several thicknesses of the strongest hides procurable,

sometimes strengthened by strips of wood on the inside.[251]

[Sidenote: HAIDAH HOUSES.]

The Haidahs use as temporary dwellings, in their frequent summer

excursions for war and the hunt, simple lodges of poles, covered, among

the poorer classes by cedar mats, and among the rich by skins. Their

permanent villages are usually built in strong natural positions,

guarded by precipices, sometimes on rocks detached from the main land,

but connected with it by a narrow platform. Their town houses are built

of light logs, or of thick split planks, usually of sufficient size to

accommodate a large number of families. Poole mentions a house on Queen

Charlotte Islands, which formed a cube of fifty feet, ten feet of its

height being dug in the ground, and which accommodated seven hundred

Indians. The buildings are often, however, raised above the ground on a

platform supported by posts, sometimes carved into human or other

figures. Some of these raised buildings seen by the earlier visitors

were twenty-five or thirty feet from the ground, solidly and neatly

constructed, an inclined log with notches serving as a ladder. These

houses were found only in the southern part of the Haidah territory.

The fronts were generally painted with figures of men and animals. There

were no windows or chimney; the floors were spread with cedar mats, on

which the occupants slept in a circle round a central fire, whose smoke

in its exit took its choice between the hole which served as a door and

the wall-cracks. On the south-eastern boundary of this territory,

Mackenzie found in the villages large buildings of similar but more

careful construction, and with more elaborately carved posts, but they

were not dwellings, being used probably for religious purposes.[252]

[Sidenote: FOOD OF THE HAIDAHS.]

Although game is plentiful, the Haidahs are not a race of hunters, but

derive their food chiefly from the innumerable multitude of fish and sea

animals, which, each variety in its season, fill the coast waters. Most

of the coast tribes, and all who live inland, kill the deer and other

animals, particularly since the introduction of firearms, but it is

generally the skin and not the flesh that is sought. Some tribes about

the Bentinck channels, at the time of Mackenzie's visit, would not taste

flesh except from the sea, from superstitious motives. Birds that burrow

in the sand-banks are enticed out by the glare of torches, and knocked

down in large numbers with clubs. They are roasted without plucking or

cleaning, the entrails being left in to improve the flavor. Potatoes,

and small quantities of carrots and other vegetables, are now cultivated

throughout this territory, the crop being repeated until the soil is

exhausted, when a new place is cleared. Wild parsnips are abundant on

the banks of lakes and streams, and their tender tops, roasted, furnish

a palatable food; berries and bulbs abound, and the inner tegument of

some varieties of the pine and hemlock is dried in cakes and eaten with

salmon-oil. The varieties of fish sent by nature to the deep inlets and

streams for the Haidah's food, are very numerous; their standard

reliance for regular supplies being the salmon, herring, eulachon or

candle-fish, round-fish, and halibut. Salmon are speared; dipped up in

scoop-nets; entangled in drag-nets managed between two canoes and forced

by poles to the bottom; intercepted in their pursuit of smaller fish by

gill-nets with coarse meshes, made of cords of native hemp, stretched

across the entrance of the smaller inlets; and are caught in large

wicker baskets, placed at openings in weirs and embankments which are

built across the rivers. The salmon fishery differs little in different

parts of the Northwest. The candle-fish, so fat that in frying they melt

almost completely into oil, and need only the insertion of a pith or

bark wick to furnish an excellent lamp, are impaled on the sharp teeth

of a rake, or comb. The handle of the rake is from six to eight feet

long, and it is swept through the water by the Haidahs in their canoes

by moonlight. Herring in immense numbers are taken in April by similar

rakes, as well as by dip-nets, a large part of the whole take being used

for oil. Seals are speared in the water or shot while on the rocks, and

their flesh is esteemed a great delicacy. Clams, cockles, and shell-fish

are captured by squaws, such an employment being beneath manly dignity.

Fish, when caught, are delivered to the women, whose duty it is to

prepare them for winter use by drying. No salt is used, but the fish are

dried in the sun, or smoke-dried by being hung from the top of

dwellings, then wrapped in bark, or packed in rude baskets or chests,

and stowed on high scaffolds out of the reach of dogs and children.

Salmon are opened, and the entrails, head, and back-bone removed before

drying. During the process of drying, sand is blown over the fish, and

the teeth of the eater are often worn down by it nearly even with the

gums. The spawn of salmon and herring is greatly esteemed, and besides

that obtained from the fish caught, much is collected on pine boughs,

which are stuck in the mud until loaded with the eggs. This native

caviare is dried for preservation, and is eaten prepared in various

ways; pounded between two stones, and beaten with water into a creamy

consistency; or boiled with sorrel and different berries, and moulded

into cakes about twelve inches square and one inch thick by means of

wooden frames. After a sufficient supply of solid food for the winter is

secured, oil, the great heat-producing element of all northern tribes,

is extracted from the additional catch, by boiling the fish in wooden

vessels, and skimming the grease from the water or squeezing it from the

refuse. The arms and breast of the women are the natural press in which

the mass, wrapped in mats, is hugged; the hollow stalks of an abundant

sea-weed furnish natural bottles in which the oil is preserved for use

as a sauce, and into which nearly everything is dipped before eating.

When the stock of food is secured, it is rarely infringed upon until the

winter sets in, but then such is the Indian appetite--ten pounds of

flour in the pancake-form at a meal being nothing for the stomach of a

Haidah, according to Poole--that whole tribes frequently suffer from

hunger before spring.[253]

The Haidah weapons are spears from four to sixteen feet long, some with

a movable head or barb, which comes off when the seal or whale is

struck; bows and arrows; hatchets of bone, horn, or iron, with which

their planks are made; and daggers. Both spears and arrows are

frequently pointed with iron, which, whether it found its way across the

continent from the Hudson-Bay settlements, down the coast from the

Russians, or was obtained from wrecked vessels, was certainly used in

British Columbia for various purposes before the coming of the whites.

Bows are made of cedar, with sinew glued along one side. Poole states

that before the introduction of fire-arms, the Queen Charlotte Islanders

had no weapon but a club. Brave as the Haidah warrior is admitted to be,

open fair fight is unknown to him, and in true Indian style he resorts

to night attacks, superior numbers, and treachery, to defeat his foe.

Cutting off the head as a trophy is practiced instead of scalping, but

though unmercifully cruel to all sexes and ages in the heat of battle,

prolonged torture of captives seems to be unknown. Treaties of peace are

arranged by delegations from the hostile tribes, following set forms,

and the ceremonies terminate with a many days' feast.[254] Nets are made

of native wild hemp and of cedar-bark fibre; hooks, of two pieces of

wood or bone fastened together at an obtuse angle; boxes, troughs, and

household dishes, of wood; ladles and spoons, of wood, horn, and bone.

Candle-fish, with a wick of bark or pith, serve as lamps; drinking

vessels and pipes are carved with great skill from stone. The Haidahs

are noted for their skill in the construction of their various

implements, particularly for sculptures in stone and ivory, in which

they excel all the other tribes of Northern America.[255]

[Sidenote: HAIDAH MANUFACTURES.]

The cedar-fibre and wild hemp were prepared for use by the women by

beating on the rocks; they were then spun with a rude distaff and

spindle, and woven on a frame into the material for blankets, robes, and

mats, or twisted by the men into strong and even cord, between the hand

and thigh. Strips of otter-skin, bird-feathers, and other materials,

were also woven into the blankets. Dogs of a peculiar breed, now nearly

extinct, were shorn each year, furnishing a long white hair, which,

mixed with fine hemp and cedar, made the best cloth. By dyeing the

materials, regular colored patterns were produced, each tribe having

had, it is said, a peculiar pattern by which its matting could be

distinguished. Since the coming of Europeans, blankets of native

manufacture have almost entirely disappeared. The Bellacoolas made very

neat baskets, called _zeilusqua_, as well as hats and water-tight

vessels, all of fine cedar-roots. Each chief about Fort Simpson kept an

artisan, whose business it was to repair canoes, make masks, etc.[256]

The Haidah canoes are dug out of cedar logs, and are sometimes sixty

feet long, six and a half wide, and four and a half deep, accommodating

one hundred men. The prow and stern are raised, and often gracefully

curved like a swan's neck, with a monster's head at the extremity. Boats

of the better class have their exteriors carved and painted, with the

gunwale inlaid in some cases with otter-teeth. Each canoe is made of a

single log, except the raised extremities of the larger boats. They are

impelled rapidly and safely over the often rough waters of the coast

inlets, by shovel-shaped paddles, and when on shore, are piled up and

covered with mats for protection against the rays of the sun. Since the

coming of Europeans, sails have been added to the native boats, and

other foreign features imitated.[257]

[Sidenote: TRADE AND GOVERNMENT.]

Rank and power depend greatly upon wealth, which consists of implements,

wives, and slaves. Admission to alliance with medicine-men, whose

influence is greatest in the tribe, can only be gained by sacrifice of

private property. Before the disappearance of sea-otters from the Haidah

waters, the skins of that animal formed the chief element of their trade

and wealth; now the potatoes cultivated in some parts, and the various

manufactures of Queen Charlotte Islands, supply their slight

necessities. There is great rivalry among the islanders in supplying the

tribes on the main with potatoes, fleets of forty or fifty canoes

engaging each year in the trade from Queen Charlotte Islands. Fort

Simpson is the great commercial rendezvous of the surrounding nations,

who assemble from all directions in September, to hold a fair, dispose

of their goods, visit friends, fight enemies, feast, and dance. Thus

continue trade and merry-making for several weeks. Large fleets of

canoes from the north also visit Victoria each spring for trading

purposes.[258]

Very little can be said of the government of the Haidahs in distinction

from that of the other nations of the Northwest Coast. Among nearly all

of them rank is nominally hereditary, for the most part by the female

line, but really depends to a great extent on wealth and ability in war.

Females often possess the right of chieftainship. In early intercourse

with whites the chief traded for the whole tribe, subject, however, to

the approval of the several families, each of which seemed to form a

kind of subordinate government by itself. In some parts the power of

the chief seems absolute, and is wantonly exercised in the commission

of the most cruel acts according to his pleasure. The extensive

embankments and weirs found by Mackenzie, although their construction

must have required the association of all the labor of the tribe, were

completely under the chief's control, and no one could fish without his

permission. The people seemed all equal, but strangers must obey the

natives or leave the village. Crimes have no punishment by law; murder

is settled for with relatives of the victim, by death or by the payment

of a large sum; and sometimes general or notorious offenders, especially

medicine-men, are put to death by an agreement among leading men.[259]

Slavery is universal, and as the life of the slave is of no value to the

owner except as property, they are treated with extreme cruelty. Slaves

the northern tribes purchase, kidnap, or capture in war from their

southern neighbors, who obtain them by like means from each other, the

course of the slave traffic being generally from south to north, and

from the coast inland.[260]

Polygamy is everywhere practiced, and the number of wives is regulated

only by wealth, girls being bought of parents at any price which may be

agreed upon, and returned, and the price recovered, when after a proper

trial they are not satisfactory. The transfer of the presents or price

to the bride's parents is among some tribes accompanied by slight

ceremonies nowhere fully described. The marriage ceremonies at Millbank

Sound are performed on a platform over the water, supported by canoes.

While jealousy is not entirely unknown, chastity appears to be so, as

women who can earn the greatest number of blankets win great admiration

for themselves and high position for their husbands. Abortion and

infanticide are not uncommon. Twin births are unusual, and the number of

children is not large, although the age of bearing extends to forty or

forty-six years. Women, except in the season of preparing the winter

supply of fish, are occupied in household affairs and the care of

children, for whom they are not without some affection, and whom they

nurse often to the age of two or three years. Many families live

together in one house, with droves of filthy dogs and children, all

sleeping on mats round a central fire.[261]

[Sidenote: HAIDAH GAMBLERS.]

The Haidahs, like all Indians, are inveterate gamblers, the favorite

game on Queen Charlotte Islands being odd and even, played with small

round sticks, in which the game is won when one player has all the bunch

of forty or fifty sticks originally belonging to his opponent. Farther

south, and inland, some of the sticks are painted with red rings, and

the player's skill or luck consists in naming the number and marks of

sticks previously wrapped by his antagonist in grass. All have become

fond of whisky since the coming of whites, but seem to have had no

intoxicating drink before. At their annual trading fairs, and on other

occasions, they are fond of visiting and entertaining friends with

ceremonious interchange of presents, a suitable return being expected

for each gift. At these reception feasts, men and women are seated on

benches along opposite walls; at wedding feasts both sexes dance and

sing together. In dancing, the body, head, and arms are thrown into

various attitudes to keep time with the music, very little use being

made of the legs. On Queen Charlotte Islands the women dance at feasts,

while the men in a circle beat time with sticks, the only instruments,

except a kind of tambourine. For their dances they deck themselves in

their best array, including plenty of birds' down, which they delight to

communicate to their partners in bowing, and which they also blow into

the air at regular intervals, through a painted tube. Their songs are a

simple and monotonous chant, with which they accompany most of their

dances and ceremonies, though Mackenzie heard among them some soft,

plaintive tones, not unlike church music. The chiefs in winter give a

partly theatrical, partly religious entertainment, in which, after

preparation behind a curtain, dressed in rich apparel and wearing masks,

they appear on a stage and imitate different spirits for the instruction

of the hearers, who meanwhile keep up their songs.[262]

After the salmon season, feasting and conjuring are in order. The chief,

whose greatest authority is in his character of conjurer, or

_tzeetzaiak_ as he is termed in the Hailtzuk tongue, pretends at this

time to live alone in the forest, fasting or eating grass, and while

there is known as _taamish_. When he returns, clad in bear-robe,

chaplet, and red-bark collar, the crowd flies at his approach, except a

few brave spirits, who boldly present their naked arms, from which he

bites and swallows large mouthfuls. This, skillfully done, adds to the

reputation of both biter and bitten, and is perhaps all the foundation

that exists for the report that these people are cannibals; although Mr

Duncan, speaking of the Chimsyans in a locality not definitely fixed,

testifies to the tearing to pieces and actual devouring of the body of a

murdered slave by naked bands of cannibal medicine-men. Only certain

parties of the initiated practice this barbarism, others confining their

tearing ceremony to the bodies of dogs.[263]

[Sidenote: MAGICIANS AND MEDICINE-MEN.]

None of these horrible orgies are practiced by the Queen Charlotte

Islanders. The performances of the Haidah magicians, so far as they may

differ from those of the Nootkas have not been clearly described by

travelers. The magicians of Chatham Sound keep infernal spirits shut up

in a box away from the vulgar gaze, and possess great power by reason of

the implicit belief on the part of the people, in their ability to charm

away life. The doctor, however, is not beyond the reach of a kinsman's

revenge, and is sometimes murdered.[264] With their ceremonies and

superstitions there seems to be mixed very little religion, as all their

many fears have reference to the present life. Certain owls and

squirrels are regarded with reverence, and used as charms; salmon must

not be cut across the grain, or the living fish will leave the river;

the mysterious operations with astronomical and other European

instruments about their rivers caused great fear that the fisheries

would be ruined; fogs are conjured away without the slightest suspicion

of the sun's agency.[265] European navigators they welcome by paddling

their boats several times round the ship, making long speeches,

scattering birds' down, and singing.[266] Ordinary presents, like

tobacco or trinkets, are gladly received, but a written testimonial is

most highly prized by the Haidahs, who regard writing as a great and

valuable mystery. They have absolutely no methods of recording events.

Although living so constantly on the water, I find no mention of their

skill in swimming, while Poole states expressly that they have no

knowledge of that art.[267]

Very slight accounts are extant of the peculiar methods of curing

diseases practiced by the Haidahs. Their chief reliance, as in the case

of all Indian tribes, is on the incantations and conjurings of their

sorcerers, who claim supernatural powers of seeing, hearing, and

extracting disease, and are paid liberally when successful. Bark, herbs,

and various decoctions are used in slight sickness, but in serious cases

little reliance is placed on them. To the bites of the sorcerer-chiefs

on the main, eagle-down is applied to stop the bleeding, after which a

pine-gum plaster or sallal-bark is applied. On Queen Charlotte Islands,

in a case of internal uneasiness, large quantities of sea-water are

swallowed, shaken up, and ejected through the mouth for the purpose, as

the natives say, of 'washing themselves inside out.'[268]

[Sidenote: HAIDAH BURIALS.]

Death is ascribed to the ill will and malign influence of an enemy, and

one suspected of causing the death of a prominent individual, must make

ready to die. As a rule, the bodies of the dead are burned, though

exceptions are noted in nearly every part of the territory. In the

disposal of the ashes and larger bones which remain unburned, there

seems to be no fixed usage. Encased in boxes, baskets, or canoes, or

wrapped in mats or bark, they are buried in or deposited on the ground,

placed in a tree, on a platform, or hung from a pole. Articles of

property are frequently deposited with the ashes, but not uniformly.

Slaves' bodies are simply thrown into the river or the sea. Mourning for

the dead consists usually of cutting the hair and blackening anew the

face and neck for several months. Among the Kaiganies, guests at the

burning of the bodies are wont to lacerate themselves with knives and

stones. A tribe visited by Mackenzie, kept their graves free from

shrubbery, a woman clearing that of her husband each time she passed.

The Nass Indians paddle a dead chief, gaily dressed, round the coast

villages.[269]

The Haidahs, compared with other North American Indians, may be called

an intelligent, honest, and brave race, although not slow under European

treatment to become drunkards, gamblers, and thieves. Acts of unprovoked

cruelty or treachery are rare; missionaries have been somewhat

successful in the vicinity of Fort Simpson, finding in intoxicating

liquors their chief obstacle.[270]

[Sidenote: THE NOOTKAS.]

THE NOOTKAS, the second division of the Columbian group, are

immediately south of the Haidah country; occupying Vancouver Island,

and the coast of the main land, between the fifty-second and the

forty-ninth parallels. The word _nootka_ is not found in any native

dialect of the present day. Captain Cook, to whom we are indebted for

the term, probably misunderstood the name given by the natives to the

region of Nootka Sound.[271]The first European settlement in this

region was on the Sound, which thus became the central point of early

English and Spanish intercourse with the Northwest Coast; but it was

soon abandoned, and no mission or trading post has since taken its

place, so that no tribes of this family have been less known in later

times than those on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The chief

tribes of the Nootka family, or those on whose tribal existence, if

not on the orthography of their names authors to some extent agree,

are as follows.[272] The _Nitinats_, _Clayoquots_, and _Nootkas_, on

the sounds of the same names along the west coast of Vancouver Island;

the _Quackolls_ and _Newittees_,[273] in the north; the _Cowichins_,

_Ucletas_, and _Comux_, on the east coast of Vancouver and on the

opposite main; the _Saukaulutuchs_[274], in the interior of the

island; the _Clallums_,[275] _Sokes_, and _Patcheena_, on the south

end; and the _Kwantlums_ and _Teets_,[276] on the lower Fraser River.

These tribes differ but little in physical peculiarities, or manners

and customs, but by their numerous dialects they have been classed in

nations. No comprehensive or satisfactory names have, however, been

applied to them as national divisions.[277]

Between the Nootka family and its fish-eating neighbors on the north and

south, the line of distinction is not clearly marked, but the contrast

is greater with the interior hunting tribes on the east. Since their

first intercourse with whites, the Nootkas have constantly decreased in

numbers, and this not only in those parts where they have been brought

into contact with traders and miners, but on the west coast, where they

have retained in a measure their primitive state. The savage fades

before the superior race, and immediate intercourse is not necessary to

produce in native races those 'baleful influences of civilization,'

which like a pestilence are wafted from afar, as on the wings of the

wind.[278]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA PHYSIQUE.]

The Nootkas are of less than medium height, smaller than the Haidahs,

but rather strongly built; usually plump, but rarely corpulent;[279]

their legs, like those of all the coast tribes, short, small, and

frequently deformed, with large feet and ankles;[280] the face broad,

round, and full, with the usual prominent cheek-bone, a low forehead,

flat nose, wide nostrils, small black eyes, round thickish-lipped mouth,

tolerably even well-set teeth; the whole forming a countenance rather

dull and expressionless, but frequently pleasant.[281] The Nootka

complexion, so far as grease and paint have allowed travelers to

observe it, is decidedly light, but apparently a shade darker than that

of the Haidah family.[282] The hair, worn long, is as a rule black or

dark brown, coarse, and straight, though instances are not wanting where

all these qualities are reversed.[283] The beard is carefully plucked

out by the young men, and this operation, repeated for generations, has

rendered the beard naturally thin. Old men often allow it to grow on the

chin and upper lip.

[Sidenote: NOOTKA HAIR AND BEARD.]

To cut the hair short is to the Nootka a disgrace. Worn at full length,

evened at the ends, and sometimes cut straight across the forehead, it

is either allowed to hang loosely from under a band of cloth or fillet

of bark, or is tied in a knot on the crown. On full-dress occasions the

top-knot is secured with a green bough, and after being well saturated

with whale-grease, the hair is powdered plentifully with white feathers,

which are regarded as the crowning ornament for manly dignity in all

these regions. Both sexes, but particularly the women, take great pains

with the hair, carefully combing and plaiting their long tresses,

fashioning tasteful head-dresses of bark-fibre, decked with beads and

shells, attaching leaden weights to the braids to keep them straight.

The bruised root of a certain plant is thought by the Ahts to promote

the growth of the hair.[284]

The custom of flattening the head is practiced by the Nootkas, in common

with the Sound and Chinook families, but is not universal, nor is so

much importance attached to it as elsewhere; although all seem to admire

a flattened forehead as a sign of noble birth, even among tribes that do

not make this deformity a sign of freedom. Among the Quatsinos and

Quackolls of the north, the head, besides being flattened, is elongated

into a conical sugar-loaf shape, pointed at the top. The flattening

process begins immediately after birth, and is continued until the child

can walk. It is effected by compressing the head with tight bandages,

usually attached to the log cradle, the forehead being first fitted with

a soft pad, a fold of soft bark, a mould of hard wood, or a flat stone.

Observers generally agree that little or no harm is done to the brain by

this infliction, the traces of which to a great extent disappear later

in life. Many tribes, including the Aht nations, are said to have

abandoned the custom since they have been brought into contact with the

whites.[285]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA FACE-PAINTING.]

The body is kept constantly anointed with a reddish clayey earth, mixed

in train oil, and consequently little affected by their frequent baths.

In war and mourning the whole body is blackened; on feast days the head,

limbs, and body are painted in fantastic figures with various colors,

apparently according to individual fancy, although the chiefs monopolize

the fancy figures, the common people being restricted to plain colors.

Solid grease is sometimes applied in a thick coating, and carved or

moulded in _alto-rilievo_ into ridges and figures afterwards decorated

with red paint, while shining sand or grains of mica are sprinkled over

grease and paint to impart a glittering appearance. The women are either

less fond of paint than the men, or else are debarred by their lords

from the free use of it; among the Ahts, at least of late, the women

abandon ornamental paint after the age of twenty-five. In their dances,

as in war, masks carved from cedar to represent an endless variety of

monstrous faces, painted in bright colors, with mouth and eyes movable

by strings, are attached to their heads, giving them a grotesquely

ferocious aspect.[286] The nose and ears are regularly pierced in

childhood, with from one to as many holes as the feature will hold, and

from the punctures are suspended bones, shells, rings, beads, or in fact

any ornament obtainable. The lip is sometimes, though more rarely,

punctured. Bracelets and anklets of any available material are also

commonly worn.[287]

The aboriginal dress of the Nootkas is a square blanket, of a coarse

yellow material resembling straw matting, made by the women from cypress

bark, with a mixture of dog's hair. This blanket had usually a border of

fur; it sometimes had arm-holes, but was ordinarily thrown over the

shoulders, and confined at the waist by a belt. Chiefs wore it painted

in variegated colors or unpainted, but the common people wore a coarser

material painted uniformly red. Women wore the garment longer and

fastened under the chin, binding an additional strip of cloth closely

about the middle, and showing much modesty about disclosing the person,

while the men often went entirely naked. Besides the blanket, garments

of many kinds of skin were in use, particularly by the chiefs on public

days. In war, a heavy skin dress was worn as a protection against

arrows. The Nootkas usually went bareheaded, but sometimes wore a

conical hat plaited of rushes, bark, or flax. European blankets have

replaced those of native manufacture, and many Indians about the

settlements have adopted also the shirt and breeches.[288]

[Sidenote: DWELLINGS OF THE NOOTKAS.]

The Nootkas choose strong positions for their towns and encampments. At

Desolation Sound, Vancouver found a village built on a detached rock

with perpendicular sides, only accessible by planks resting on the

branches of a tree, and protected on the sea side by a projecting

platform resting on timbers fixed in the crevices of the precipice. The

Nimkish tribe, according to Lord, build their homes on a table-land

overhanging the sea, and reached by ascending a vertical cliff on a

bark-rope ladder. Each tribe has several villages in favorable locations

for fishing at different seasons. The houses, when more than one is

needed for a tribe, are placed with regularity along streets; they vary

in size according to the need or wealth of the occupants, and are held

in common under the direction of the chief. They are constructed in the

manner following. A row of large posts, from ten to fifteen feet high,

often grotesquely carved, supports an immense ridge-pole, sometimes two

and a half feet thick and one hundred feet long. Similar but smaller

beams, on shorter posts, are placed on either side of the central row,

distant from it fifteen, twenty, or twenty-five feet, according to the

dimensions required. This frame is then covered with split cedar planks,

about two inches thick, and from three to eight feet wide. The side

planks are tied together with bark, and supported by slender posts in

couples just far enough apart to receive the thickness of the plank. A

house like this, forty by one hundred feet, accommodates many families,

each of which has its allotted space, sometimes partitioned off like a

double row of stalls, with a wide passage in the middle. In the centre

of each stall is a circle of stones for a fire-place, and round the

walls are raised couches covered with mats. In rainy weather, cracks in

the roof and sides are covered with mats. No smoke or window holes are

left, and when smoke becomes troublesome a roof-plank is removed. The

entrance is at one end. These dwellings furnish, according to Nootka

ideas, a comfortable shelter, except when a high wind threatens to

unroof them, and then the occupants go out and sit on the roof to keep

it in place. Frequently the outside is painted in grotesque figures of

various colors. Only the frame is permanent; matting, planks, and all

utensils are several times each year packed up and conveyed in canoes to

another locality where a frame belonging to the tribe awaits covering.

The odor arising from fish-entrails and other filth, which they take no

pains to remove, appears to be inoffensive, but the Nootkas are often

driven by mosquitos to sleep on a stage over the water.[289]

[Sidenote: FOOD OF THE NOOTKAS.]

The Nootkas, like the Haidahs, live almost wholly on the products of the

sea, and are naturally expert fishermen. Salmon, the great staple, are

taken in August and September, from sea, inlet, and river, by nets,

spears, pots or baskets, and even by hooks. Hooks consist of sharp

barbed bones bound to straight pieces of hard wood; sea-wrack,

maple-bark, and whale-sinew furnish lines, which in salmon-fishing are

short and attached to the paddles. The salmon-spear is a forked pole,

some fifteen feet long, the detachable head having prongs pointed with

fish-bone or iron, and the fish in deep water is sometimes attracted

within its reach by a wooden decoy, forced down by a long pole, and then

detached and allowed to ascend rapidly to the surface. Spearing is

carried on mostly by torch-light. A light-colored stone pavement is

sometimes laid upon the bottom of the stream, which renders the fish

visible in their passage over it. Nets are made of nettles or of wild

flax, found along Fraser River. They are small in size, and used as

dip-nets, or sunk between two canoes and lifted as the fish pass over. A

pot or basket fifteen to twenty feet long, three to five feet in

diameter at one end, and tapering to a point at the other, is made of

pine splinters one or two inches apart, with twig-hoops; and placed,

large end up stream, at the foot of a fall or at an opening in an

embankment. The salmon are driven down the fall with poles, and entering

the basket are taken out by a door in the small end. This basket is

sometimes enclosed in another one, similar but of uniform diameter, and

closed at one end. Fences of stakes across the river oblige the salmon

to enter the open mouth in their passage up, and passing readily

through an opening left in the point of the inner basket, they find

themselves entrapped. In March, herring appear on the coast in great

numbers, and in April and May they enter the inlets and streams, where

they are taken with a dip-net, or more commonly by the fish-rake--a pole

armed with many sharp bones or nails. Early in the season they can be

taken only by torch-light. Halibut abound from March to June, and are

caught with hooks and long lines, generally at some distance from shore.

For all other fish, European hooks were early adopted, but the halibut,

at least among the Ahts, must still be taken with the native hook. Many

other varieties of fish, caught by similar methods, are used as food,

but those named supply the bulk of the Nootka's provision. In May or

June, whales appear and are attacked in canoes by the chief, with the

select few from each tribe who alone have the right to hunt this monarch

of the sea. The head of their harpoon is made of two barbed bones and

pointed with muscle-shell; it is fastened to a whale-sinew line of a few

feet in length, and this short line to a very long bark rope, at one end

of which are seal-skin air-bags and bladders, to keep it afloat. The

point is also fastened to a shaft from ten to twenty-five feet in

length, from which it is easily detached. With many of these buoys in

tow the whale cannot dive, and becomes an easy prey. Whale-blubber and

oil are great delicacies, the former being preferred half putrid, while

the oil with that of smaller denizens of the sea preserved in bladders,

is esteemed a delicious sauce, and eaten with almost everything.

Sea-otters and seals are also speared, the former with a weapon more

barbed and firmly attached to the handle, as they are fierce fighters;

but when found asleep on the rocks, they are shot with arrows. Seals are

often attracted within arrow-shot by natives disguised as seals in

wooden masks.

Clams and other shell-fish, which are collected in great numbers by the

women, are cooked, strung on cypress-bark cords, and hung in the houses

to dry for winter use. Fish are preserved by drying only, the use of

salt being unknown. Salmon, after losing their heads and tails, which

are eaten in the fishing season, are split open and the back-bone taken

out before drying; smaller fry are sometimes dried as they come from

their element; but halibut and cod are cut up and receive a partial

drying in the sun. The spawn of all fish, but particularly of salmon and

herring, is carefully preserved by stowing it away in baskets, where it

ferments. Bear, deer, and other land animals, as well as wild fowl, are

sometimes taken for food, by means of rude traps, nets, and covers,

successful only when game is abundant, for the Nootkas are but

indifferent hunters. In the time of Jewitt, three peculiarities were

observable in the Nootka use of animal food, particularly bear-meat.

When a bear was killed, it was dressed in a bonnet, decked with fine

down, and solemnly invited to eat in the chief's presence, before being

eaten; after partaking of bruin's flesh, which was appreciated as a

rarity, the Nootka could not taste fresh fish for two months; and while

fish to be palatable must be putrid, meat when tainted was no longer fit

for food. The Nootka cuisine furnished food in four styles; namely,

boiled--the mode par excellence, applicable to every variety of food,

and effected, as by the Haidahs, by hot stones in wooden vessels;

steamed--of rarer use, applied mostly to heads, tails, and fins, by

pouring water over them on a bed of hot stones, and covering the whole

tightly with mats; roasted--rarely, in the case of some smaller fish and

clams; and raw--fish-spawn and most other kinds of food, when

conveniences for cooking were not at hand. Some varieties of sea-weed

and lichens, as well as the camass, and other roots, were regularly laid

up for winter, while berries, everywhere abundant, were eaten in great

quantities in their season, and at least one variety preserved by

pressing in bunches. In eating, they sit in groups of five or six, with

their legs doubled under them round a large wooden tray, and dip out the

food nearly always boiled to a brothy consistency, with their fingers or

clam-shells, paying little or no attention to cleanliness. Chiefs and

slaves have trays apart, and the principal meal, according to Cook, was

about noon. Feasting is the favorite way of entertaining friends, so

long as food is plentiful; and by a curious custom, of the portion

allotted them, guests must carry away what they cannot eat. Water in

aboriginal days was the only Nootka drink; it is also used now when

whisky is not to be had.[290]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA BATTLES AND BOATS.]

Lances and arrows, pointed with shell, slate, flint, or bone, and clubs

and daggers of wood and bone, were the weapons with which they met their

foes; but firearms and metallic daggers, and tomahawks, have long since

displaced them, as they have to a less degree the original hunting and

fishing implements.[291] The Nootka tribes were always at war with each

other, hereditary quarrels being handed down for generations. According

to their idea, loss of life in battle can be forgotten only when an

equal number of the hostile tribe are killed. Their military tactics

consist of stratagem and surprise in attack, and watchfulness in

defense. Before engaging in war, some weeks are spent in preparation,

which consists mainly of abstinence from women, bathing, scrubbing the

skin with briers till it bleeds, and finally painting the whole body

jet-black. All prisoners not suitable for slaves are butchered or

beheaded. In an attack the effort is always made to steal into the

adversary's camp at night and kill men enough to decide the victory

before the alarm can be given. When they fail in this, the battle is

seldom long continued, for actual hand-to-hand fighting is not to the

Nootka taste. On the rare occasions when it is considered desirable to

make overtures of peace, an ambassador is sent with an ornamented pipe,

and with this emblem his person is safe. Smoking a pipe together by

hostile chiefs also solemnizes a treaty.[292]

Nootka boats are dug out each from a single pine-tree, and are made of

all sizes from ten to fifty feet long, the largest accommodating forty

or fifty men. Selecting a proper tree in the forest, the aboriginal

Nootka fells it with a sort of chisel of flint or elk-horn, three by six

inches, fastened in a wooden handle, and struck by a smooth stone

mallet. Then the log is split with wooden wedges, and the better piece

being selected, it is hollowed out with the aforesaid chisel, a

mussel-shell adze, and a bird's-bone gimlet worked between the two

hands. Sometimes, but not always, fire is used as an assistant. The

exterior is fashioned with the same tools. The boat is widest in the

middle, tapers toward each end, and is strengthened by light

cross-pieces extending from side to side, which, being inserted after

the boat is soaked in hot water, modify and improve the original form.

The bow is long and pointed, the stern square-cut or slightly rounded;

both ends are raised higher than the middle by separate pieces of wood

painted with figures of birds or beasts, the head on the bow and the

tail on the stern. The inside is painted red; the outside, slightly

burned, is rubbed smooth and black, and for the whale fishery is

ornamented along the gunwales with a row of small shells or seal-teeth,

but for purposes of war it is painted with figures in white. Paddles are

neatly made of hard wood, about five and a half feet long with a

leaf-shaped blade of two feet, sharp at the end, and used as a weapon in

canoe-fighting. A cross-piece is sometimes added to the handle like the

top of a crutch.[293]

In addition to the implements already named are chests and boxes,

buckets, cups and eating-troughs, all of wood, either dug out or pinned

together; baskets of twigs and bags of matting; all neatly made, and

many of the articles painted or carved, or ornamented with shell work.

As among the Haidahs, the dried _eulachon_ is often used as a lamp.[294]

The matting and coarser kinds of cloth are made of rushes and of pine

or cedar bark, which after being soaked is beaten on a plank with a

grooved instrument of wood or bone until the fibres are separated. The

threads are twisted into cords between the hand and thigh; these cords,

hung to a horizontal beam and knotted with finer thread at regular

intervals, form the cloth. Thread of the same bark is used with a

sharpened twig for a needle. Intercourse with Europeans has modified

their manufactures, and checked the development of their native

ingenuity.[295]

[Sidenote: PROPERTY OF THE NOOTKAS.]

Captain Cook found among the Ahts very "strict notions of their having a

right to the exclusive property of everything that their country

produces," so that they claimed pay for even wood, water, and grass. The

limits of tribal property are very clearly defined, but individuals

rarely claim any property in land. Houses belong to the men who combine

to build them. Private wealth consists of boats and implements for

obtaining food, domestic utensils, slaves, and blankets, the latter

being generally the standard by which wealth or price is computed. Food

is not regarded as common property, yet any man may help himself to his

neighbor's store when needy. The accumulation of property beyond the

necessities of life is considered desirable only for the purpose of

distributing it in presents on great feast-days, and thereby acquiring a

reputation for wealth and liberality; and as these feasts occur

frequently, an unsuccessful man may often take a fresh start in the

race. Instead of being given away, canoes and blankets are often

destroyed, which proves that the motive in this disposal of property is

not to favor friends, but merely to appear indifferent to wealth. It is

certainly a most remarkable custom, and one that exerts a great

influence on the whole people. Gifts play an important part in procuring

a wife, and a division of property accompanies a divorce. To enter the

ranks of the medicine-men or magicians, or to attain rank of any kind,

property must be sacrificed; and a man who receives an insult or suffers

any affliction must tear up the requisite quantity of blankets and

shirts, if he would retain his honor.[296] Trade in all their

productions was carried on briskly between the different Nootka tribes

before the coming of the whites. They manifest much shrewdness in their

exchanges; even their system of presents is a species of trade, the full

value of each gift being confidently expected in a return present on the

next festive occasion. In their intertribal commerce, a band holding a

strong position where trade by canoes between different parts may be

stopped, do not fail to offer and enforce the acceptance of their

services as middlemen, thereby greatly increasing market prices.[297]

The system of numeration, sufficiently extensive for the largest

numbers, is decimal, the numbers to ten having names which are in some

instances compounds but not multiples of smaller numbers. The fingers

are used to aid in counting. The year is divided into months with some

reference to the moon, but chiefly by the fish-seasons, ripening of

berries, migrations of birds, and other periodical events, for which the

months are named, as: 'when the herrings spawn,' etc. The unit of

measure is the span, the fingers representing its fractional parts.[298]

The Nootkas display considerable taste in ornamenting with sculpture

and paintings their implements and houses, their chief efforts being

made on the posts of the latter, and the wooden masks which they wear in

war and some of their dances; but all implements may be more or less

carved and adorned according to the artist's fancy. They sometimes paint

fishing and hunting scenes, but generally their models exist only in

imagination, and their works consequently assume unintelligible forms.

There seems to be no evidence that their carved images and complicated

paintings are in any sense intended as idols or hieroglyphics. A rude

system of heraldry prevails among them, by which some animal is adopted

as a family crest, and its figure is painted or embroidered on canoes,

paddles, or blankets.[299]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA ART AND GOVERNMENT.]

To the Nootka system of government the terms patriarchal, hereditary,

and feudal have been applied. There is no confederation, each tribe

being independent of all the rest, except as powerful tribes are

naturally dominant over the weak. In each tribe the head chief's rank is

hereditary by the male line; his grandeur is displayed on great

occasions, when, decked in all his finery, he is the central figure. At

the frequently recurring feasts of state he occupies the seat of honor;

presides at all councils of the tribe, and is respected and highly

honored by all; but has no real authority over any but his slaves.

Between the chief, or king, and the people is a nobility, in number

about one fourth of the whole tribe, composed of several grades, the

highest being partially hereditary, but also, as are all the lower

grades, obtainable by feats of valor or great liberality. All

chieftains must be confirmed by the tribe, and some of them appointed by

the king; each man's rank is clearly defined in the tribe, and

corresponding privileges strictly insisted on. There are chiefs who have

full authority in warlike expeditions. Harpooners also form a privileged

class, whose rank is handed down from father to son. This somewhat

complicated system of government nevertheless sits lightly, since the

people are neither taxed nor subjected to any laws, nor interfered with

in their actions. Still, long-continued custom serves as law and marks

out the few duties and privileges of the Nootka citizen. Stealing is not

common except from strangers; and offenses requiring punishment are

usually avenged--or pardoned in consideration of certain blankets

received--by the injured parties and their friends, the chiefs seeming

to have little or nothing to do in the matter.[300]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA SLAVERY AND MARRIAGE.]

Slavery is practiced by all the tribes, and the slave-trade forms an

important part of their commerce. Slaves are about the only property

that must not be sacrificed to acquire the ever-desired reputation for

liberality. Only rich men--according to some authorities only the

nobles--may hold slaves. War and kidnapping supply the slave-market, and

no captive, whatever his rank in his own tribe, can escape this fate,

except by a heavy ransom offered soon after he is taken, and before his

whereabouts becomes unknown to his friends. Children of slaves, whose

fathers are never known, are forever slaves. The power of the owner is

arbitrary and unlimited over the actions and life of the slave, but a

cruel exercise of his power seems of rare occurrence, and, save the hard

labor required, the material condition of the slave is but little worse

than that of the common free people, since he is sheltered by the same

roof and partakes of the same food as his master. Socially the slave is

despised; his hair is cut short, and his very name becomes a term of

reproach. Female slaves are prostituted for hire, especially in the

vicinity of white settlements. A runaway slave is generally seized and

resold by the first tribe he meets.[301]

[Sidenote: THE NOOTKA FAMILY.]

The Nootka may have as many wives as he can buy, but as prices are high,

polygamy is practically restricted to the chiefs, who are careful not to

form alliances with families beneath them in rank. Especially

particular as to rank are the chiefs in choosing their first wife,

always preferring the daughters of noble families of another tribe.

Courtship consists in an offer of presents by the lover to the girl's

father, accompanied generally by lengthy speeches of friends on both

sides, extolling the value of the man and his gift, and the attractions

of the bride. After the bargain is concluded, a period of feasting

follows if the parties are rich, but this is not necessary as a part of

the marriage ceremony. Betrothals are often made by parents while the

parties are yet children, mutual deposits of blankets and other property

being made as securities for the fulfillment of the contract, which is

rarely broken. Girls marry at an average age of sixteen. The common

Nootka obtains his one bride from his own rank also by a present of

blankets, much more humble than that of his rich neighbor, and is

assisted in his overtures by perhaps a single friend instead of being

followed by the whole tribe. Courtship among this class is not

altogether without the attentions which render it so charming in

civilized life; as when the fond girl lovingly caresses and searches her

lover's head, always giving him the fattest of her discoveries. Wives

are not ill treated, and although somewhat overworked, the division of

labor is not so oppressive as among many Indian tribes. Men build

houses, make boats and implements, hunt and fish; women prepare the fish

and game for winter use, cook, manufacture cloth and clothing, and

increase the stock of food by gathering berries and shell-fish; and most

of this work among the richer class is done by slaves. Wives are

consulted in matters of trade, and in fact seem to be nearly on terms of

equality with their husbands, except that they are excluded from some

public feasts and ceremonies. There is much reason to suppose that

before the advent of the whites, the Nootka wife was comparatively

faithful to her lord, that chastity was regarded as a desirable female

quality, and offenses against it severely punished. The females so

freely brought on board the vessels of early voyagers and offered to

the men, were perhaps slaves, who are everywhere prostituted for gain,

so that the fathers of their children are never known. Women rarely have

more than two or three children, and cease bearing at about twenty-five,

frequently preventing the increase of their family by abortions.

Pregnancy and childbirth affect them but little. The male child is named

at birth, but his name is afterwards frequently changed. He is suckled

by the mother until three or four years old, and at an early age begins

to learn the arts of fishing by which he is to live. Children are not

quarrelsome among themselves, and are regarded by both parents with some

show of affection and pride. Girls at puberty are closely confined for

several days, and given a little water but no food; they are kept

particularly from the sun or fire, to see either of which at this period

would be a lasting disgrace. At such times feasts are given by the

parents. Divorces or separations may be had at will by either party, but

a strict division of property and return of betrothal presents is

expected, the woman being allowed not only the property she brought her

husband, and articles manufactured by her in wedlock, but a certain

proportion of the common wealth. Such property as belongs to the father

and is not distributed in gifts during his life, or destroyed at his

death, is inherited by the eldest son.[302]

From the middle of November to the middle of January, is the Nootka

season of mirth and festivity, when nearly the whole time is occupied

with public and private gaiety. Their evenings are privately passed by

the family group within doors in conversation, singing, joking, boasting

of past exploits, personal and tribal, and teasing the women until

bed-time, when one by one they retire to rest in the same blankets worn

during the day.[303] Swimming and trials of strength by hooking together

the little fingers, or scuffling for a prize, seem to be the only

out-door amusements indulged in by adults, while the children shoot

arrows and hurl spears at grass figures of birds and fishes, and prepare

themselves for future conflicts by cutting off the heads of imaginary

enemies modeled in mud.[304] To gambling the Nootkas are passionately

addicted, but their games are remarkably few and uniform. Small bits of

wood compose their entire paraphernalia, sometimes used like dice, when

the game depends on the side turned up; or passed rapidly from hand to

hand, when the gamester attempts to name the hand containing the trump

stick; or again concealed in dust spread over a blanket and moved about

by one player that the rest may guess its location. In playing they

always form a circle seated on the ground, and the women rarely if ever

join the game.[305] They indulge in smoking, the only pipes of their

own manufacture being of plain cedar, filled now with tobacco by those

who can afford it, but in which they formerly smoked, as it is supposed,

the leaves of a native plant--still mixed with tobacco to lessen its

intoxicating properties. The pipe is passed round after a meal, but

seems to be less used in serious ceremonies than among eastern Indian

nations.[306]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA AMUSEMENTS.]

But the Nootka amusement par excellence is that of feasts, given by the

richer classes and chiefs nearly every evening during 'the season.' Male

and female heralds are employed ceremoniously to invite the guests, the

house having been first cleared of its partitions, and its floor spread

with mats.[307] As in countries more civilized, the common people go

early to secure the best seats, their allotted place being near the

door. The élite come later, after being repeatedly sent for; on arrival

they are announced by name, and assigned a place according to rank. In

one corner of the hall the fish and whale-blubber are boiled by the

wives of the chiefs, who serve it to the guests in pieces larger or

smaller, according to their rank. What can not be eaten must be carried

home. Their drink ordinarily is pure water, but occasionally berries of

a peculiar kind, preserved in cakes, are stirred in until a froth is

formed which swells the body of the drinker nearly to bursting.[308]

Eating is followed by conversation and speech-making, oratory being an

art highly prized, in which, with their fine voices, they become

skillful. Finally, the floor is cleared for dancing. In the dances in

which the crowd participate, the dancers, with faces painted in black

and vermilion, form a circle round a few leaders who give the step,

which consists chiefly in jumping with both feet from the ground,

brandishing weapons or bunches of feathers, or sometimes simply bending

the body without moving the feet. As to the participation of women in

these dances, authorities do not agree.[309] In a sort of conversational

dance all pass briskly round the room to the sound of music, praising in

exclamations the building and all within it, while another dance

requires many to climb upon the roof and there continue their motions.

Their special or character dances are many, and in them they show much

dramatic talent. A curtain is stretched across a corner of the room to

conceal the preparations, and the actors, fantastically dressed,

represent personal combats, hunting scenes, or the actions of different

animals. In the seal-dance naked men jump into the water and then crawl

out and over the floors, imitating the motions of the seal. Indecent

performances are mentioned by some visitors. Sometimes in these dances

men drop suddenly as if dead, and are at last revived by the doctors,

who also give dramatic or magic performances at their houses; or they

illuminate a wax moon out on the water, and make the natives believe

they are communing with the man in the moon. To tell just where

amusement ceases and solemnity begins in these dances is

impossible.[310] Birds' down forms an important item in the decoration

at dances, especially at the reception of strangers. All dances, as well

as other ceremonies, are accompanied by continual music, instrumental

and vocal. The instruments are: boxes and benches struck with sticks; a

plank hollowed out on the under side and beaten with drum-sticks about a

foot long; a rattle made of dried seal-skin in the form of a fish, with

pebbles; a whistle of deer-bone about an inch long with one hole, which

like the rattle can only be used by chiefs; and a bunch of

muscle-shells, to be shaken like castanets.[311] Their songs are

monotonous chants, extending over but few notes, varied by occasional

howls and whoops in some of the more spirited melodies, pleasant or

otherwise, according to the taste of the hearer.[312] Certain of their

feasts are given periodically by the head chiefs, which distant tribes

attend, and during which take place the distributions of property

already mentioned. Whenever a gift is offered, etiquette requires the

recipient to snatch it rudely from the donor with a stern and surly

look.[313]

[Sidenote: MISCELLANEOUS CUSTOMS.]

Among the miscellaneous customs noticed by the different authorities

already quoted, may be mentioned the following. Daily bathing in the sea

is practiced, the vapor-bath not being used. Children are rolled in the

snow by their mothers to make them hardy. Camps and other property are

moved from place to place by piling them on a plank platform built

across the canoes. Whymper saw Indians near Bute Inlet carrying burdens

on the back by a strap across the forehead. In a fight they rarely

strike but close and depend on pulling hair and scratching; a chance

blow must be made up by a present. Invitations to eat must not be

declined, no matter how often repeated. Out of doors there is no native

gesture of salutation, but in the houses a guest is motioned politely to

a couch; guests are held sacred, and great ceremonies are performed at

the reception of strangers; all important events are announced by

heralds. Friends sometimes saunter along hand in hand. A secret society,

independent of tribe, family, or crest, is supposed by Sproat to exist

among them, but its purposes are unknown. In a palaver with whites the

orator holds a long white pole in his hand, which he sticks occasionally

into the ground by way of emphasis. An animal chosen as a crest must not

be shot or ill-treated in the presence of any wearing its figure; boys

recite portions of their elders' speeches as declamations; names are

changed many times during life, at the will of the individual or of the

tribe.

[Sidenote: CUSTOMS AND CANNIBALISM.]

In sorcery, witchcraft, prophecy, dreams, evil spirits, and the

transmigration of souls, the Nootkas are firm believers, and these

beliefs enable the numerous sorcerers of different grades to acquire

great power in the tribes by their strange ridiculous ceremonies. Most

of their tricks are transparent, being deceptions worked by the aid of

confederates to keep up their power; but, as in all religions, the

votary must have some faith in the efficacy of their incantations. The

sorcerer, before giving a special demonstration, retires apart to

meditate. After spending some time alone in the forests and mountains,

fasting and lacerating the flesh, he appears suddenly before the tribe,

emaciated, wild with excitement, clad in a strange costume, grotesquely

painted, and wearing a hideous mask. The scenes that ensue are

indescribable, but the aim seems to be to commit all the wild freaks

that a maniac's imagination may devise, accompanied by the most

unearthly yells which can terrorize the heart. Live dogs and dead human

bodies are seized and torn by their teeth; but, at least in later times,

they seem not to attack the living, and their performances are somewhat

less horrible and bloody than the wild orgies of the northern tribes.

The sorcerer is thought to have more influence with bad spirits than

with good, and is always resorted to in the case of any serious

misfortune. New members of the fraternity are initiated into the

mysteries by similar ceremonies. Old women are not without their

traditional mysterious powers in matters of prophecy and witchcraft; and

all chiefs in times of perplexity practice fasting and laceration.

Dreams are believed to be the visits of spirits or of the wandering soul

of some living party, and the unfortunate Nootka boy or girl whose

blubber-loaded stomach causes uneasy dreams, must be properly hacked,

scorched, smothered, and otherwise tormented until the evil spirit is

appeased.[314] Whether or not these people were cannibals, is a disputed

question, but there seems to be little doubt that slaves have been

sacrificed and eaten as a part of their devilish rites.[315]

The Nootkas are generally a long-lived race, and from the beginning to

the failing of manhood undergo little change in appearance. Jewitt

states that during his captivity of three years at Nootka Sound, only

five natural deaths occurred, and the people suffered scarcely any

disease except the colic. Sproat mentions as the commonest diseases;

bilious complaints, dysentery, a consumption which almost always follows

syphilis, fevers, and among the aged, ophthalmia. Accidental injuries,

as cuts, bruises, sprains, and broken limbs, are treated with

considerable success by means of simple salves or gums, cold water,

pine-bark bandages, and wooden splints. Natural pains and maladies are

invariably ascribed to the absence or other irregular conduct of the

soul, or to the influence of evil spirits, and all treatment is directed

to the recall of the former and to the appeasing of the latter. Still,

so long as the ailment is slight, simple means are resorted to, and the

patient is kindly cared for by the women; as when headache, colic, or

rheumatism is treated by the application of hot or cold water, hot

ashes, friction, or the swallowing of cold teas made from various roots

and leaves. Nearly every disease has a specific for its cure. Oregon

grape and other herbs cure syphilis; wasp-nest powder is a tonic, and

blackberries an astringent; hemlock bark forms a plaster, and dog-wood

bark is a strengthener; an infusion of young pine cones or the inside

scrapings of a human skull prevent too rapid family increase, while

certain plants facilitate abortion. When a sickness becomes serious, the

sorcerer or medicine-man is called in and incantations begin, more or

less noisy according to the amount of the prospective fee and the

number of relatives and friends who join in the uproar. A very poor

wretch is permitted to die in comparative quiet. In difficult cases the

doctor, wrought up to the highest state of excitement, claims to see and

hear the soul, and to judge of the patient's prospects by its position

and movements. The sick man shows little fortitude, and abandons himself

helplessly to the doctor's ridiculous measures. Failing in a cure, the

physician gets no pay, but if successful, does not fail to make a large

demand. Both the old and the helplessly sick are frequently abandoned by

the Ahts to die without aid in the forest.[316]

[Sidenote: NOOTKA BURIAL.]

After death the Nootka's body is promptly put away; a slave's body is

unceremoniously thrown into the water; that of a freeman, is placed in a

crouching posture, their favorite one during life, in a deep wooden box,

or in a canoe, and suspended from the branches of a tree, deposited on

the ground with a covering of sticks and stones, or, more rarely,

buried. Common people are usually left on the surface; the nobility are

suspended from trees at heights differing, as some authorities say,

according to rank. The practice of burning the dead seems also to have

been followed in some parts of this region. Each tribe has a

burying-ground chosen on some hill-side or small island. With chiefs,

blankets, skins, and other property in large amounts are buried, hung up

about the grave, or burned during the funeral ceremonies, which are not

complicated except for the highest officials. The coffins are often

ornamented with carvings or paintings of the deceased man's crest, or

with rows of shells. When a death occurs, the women of the tribe make a

general howl, and keep it up at intervals for many days or months; the

men, after a little speech-making, keep silent. The family and friends,

with blackened faces and hair cut short, follow the body to its last

resting-place with music and other manifestations of sorrow, generally

terminating in a feast. There is great reluctance to explain their

funeral usages to strangers; death being regarded by this people with

great superstition and dread, not from solicitude for the welfare of the

dead, but from a belief in the power of departed spirits to do much harm

to the living.[317]

[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE NOOTKAS.]

The Nootka character presents all the inconsistencies observable among

other American aborigines, since there is hardly a good or bad trait

that has not by some observer been ascribed to them. Their

idiosyncrasies as a race are perhaps best given by Sproat as "want of

observation, a great deficiency of foresight, extreme fickleness in

their passions and purposes, habitual suspicion, and a love of power and

display; added to which may be noticed their ingratitude and revengeful

disposition, their readiness for war, and revolting indifference to

human suffering." These qualities, judged by civilized standards

censurable, to the Nootka are praiseworthy, while contrary qualities are

to be avoided. By a strict application, therefore, of 'put yourself in

his place' principles, to which most 'good Indians' owe their

reputation, Nootka character must not be too harshly condemned. They are

not, so far as physical actions are concerned, a remarkably lazy people,

but their minds, although intelligent when aroused, are averse to effort

and quickly fatigued; nor can they comprehend the advantage of continued

effort for any future good which is at all remote. What little foresight

they have, has much in common with the instinct of beasts. Ordinarily,

they are quiet and well behaved, especially the higher classes, but when

once roused to anger, they rage, bite, spit and kick without the

slightest attempt at self-possession. A serious offense against an

individual, although nominally pardoned in consideration of presents,

can really never be completely atoned for except by blood; hence

private, family, and tribal feuds continue from generation to

generation. Women are not immodest, but the men have no shame. Stealing

is recognized as a fault, and the practice as between members of the

same tribe is rare, but skillful pilfering from strangers, if not

officially sanctioned, is extensively carried on and much admired; still

any property confided in trust to a Nootka is said to be faithfully

returned. To his wife he is kind and just; to his children affectionate.

Efforts for their conversion to foreign religions have been in the

highest degree unsuccessful.[318]

[Sidenote: THE SOUND INDIANS.]

THE SOUND INDIANS, by which term I find it convenient to designate the

nations about Puget Sound, constitute the third family of the Columbian

group. In this division I include all the natives of that part of

Washington which lies to the west of the Cascade Range, except a strip

from twenty-five to forty miles wide along the north bank of the

Columbia. The north-eastern section of this territory, including the San

Juan group, Whidbey Island, and the region tributary to Bellingham Bay,

is the home of the _Nooksak_, _Lummi_, _Samish_ and _Skagit_ nations,

whose neighbors and constant harassers on the north are the fierce

Kwantlums and Cowichins of the Nootka family about the mouth of the

Fraser. The central section, comprising the shores and islands of

Admiralty Inlet, Hood Canal, and Puget Sound proper, is occupied by

numerous tribes with variously spelled names, mostly terminating in

_mish_, which names, with all their orthographic diversity, have been

given generally to the streams on whose banks the different nations

dwelt. All these tribes may be termed the _Nisqually_ nation, taking the

name from the most numerous and best-known of the tribes located about

the head of the sound. The _Clallams_ inhabit the eastern portion of the

peninsula between the sound and the Pacific. The western extremity of

the same peninsula, terminating at Cape Flattery, is occupied by the

_Classets_ or _Makahs_; while the _Chehalis_ and _Cowlitz_ nations are

found on the Chehalis River, Gray Harbor, and the upper Cowlitz.

Excepting a few bands on the headwaters of streams that rise in the

vicinity of Mount Baker, the Sound family belongs to the coast

fish-eating tribes rather than to the hunters of the interior. Indeed,

this family has so few marked peculiarities, possessing apparently no

trait or custom not found as well among the Nootkas or Chinooks, that it

may be described in comparatively few words. When first known to

Europeans they seem to have been far less numerous than might have been

expected from the extraordinary fertility and climatic advantages of

their country; and since they have been in contact with the whites,

their numbers have been reduced,--chiefly through the agency of

small-pox and ague,--even more rapidly than the nations farther to the

north-west.[319]

These natives of Washington are short and thick-set, with strong limbs,

but bow-legged; they have broad faces, eyes fine but wide apart; noses

prominent, both of Roman and aquiline type; color, a light copper,

perhaps a shade darker than that of the Nootkas, but capable of

transmitting a flush; the hair usually black and almost universally worn

long.[320]

All the tribes flatten the head more or less, but none carry the

practice to such an extent as their neighbors on the south, unless it be

the Cowlitz nation, which might indeed as correctly be classed with the

Chinooks. By most of the Sound natives tattooing is not practiced, and

they seem somewhat less addicted to a constant use of paint than the

Nootkas; yet on festive occasions a plentiful and hideous application is

made of charcoal or colored earth pulverized in grease, and the women

appreciate the charms imparted to the face by the use of vermilion clay.

The nose, particularly at Cape Flattery, is the grand centre of facial

ornamentation. Perforating is extravagantly practiced, and pendant

trinkets of every form and substance are worn, those of bone or shell

preferred, and, if we may credit Wilkes, by some of the women these

ornaments are actually kept clean.

[Sidenote: SOUND DRESS AND DWELLINGS.]

The native garment, when the weather makes nakedness uncomfortable, is a

blanket of dog's hair, sometimes mixed with birds' down and bark-fibre,

thrown about the shoulders. Some few fasten this about the neck with a

wooden pin. The women are more careful in covering the person with the

blanket than are the men, and generally wear under it a bark apron

hanging from the waist in front. A cone-shaped, water-proof hat, woven

from colored grasses, is sometimes worn on the head.[321]

Temporary hunting-huts in summer are merely cross-sticks covered with

coarse mats made by laying bulrushes side by side, and knotting them at

intervals with cord or grass. The poorer individuals or tribes dwell

permanently in similar huts, improved by the addition of a few slabs;

while the rich and powerful build substantial houses, of planks split

from trees by means of bone wedges, much like the Nootka dwellings in

plan, and nearly as large. These houses sometimes measure over one

hundred feet in length, and are divided into rooms or pens, each house

accommodating many families. There are several fire-places in each

dwelling; raised benches extend round the sides, and the walls are often

lined with matting.[322]

[Sidenote: FOOD OF THE SOUND INDIANS.]

In spring time they abandon their regular dwellings and resort in small

companies to the various sources of food-supply. Fish is their chief

dependence, though game is taken in much larger quantities than by the

Nootkas; some of the more inland Sound tribes subsisting almost entirely

by the chase and by root-digging. Nearly all the varieties of fish which

support the northern tribes are also abundant here, and are taken

substantially by the same methods, namely, by the net, hook, spear, and

rake; but fisheries seem to be carried on somewhat less systematically,

and I find no account of the extensive and complicated embankments and

traps mentioned by travelers in British Columbia. To the salmon,

sturgeon, herring, rock-cod, and candle-fish, abundant in the inlets of

the sound, the Classets, by venturing out to sea, add a supply of

whale-blubber and otter-meat, obtained with spears, lines, and floats.

At certain points on the shore tall poles are erected, across which nets

are spread; and against these nets large numbers of wild fowl, dazzled

by torch-lights at night, dash themselves and fall stunned to the

ground, where the natives stand ready to gather in the feathery harvest.

Vancouver noticed many of these poles in different localities, but could

not divine their use. Deer and elk in the forests are also hunted by

night, and brought within arrow-shot by the spell of torches. For

preservation, fish are dried in the sun or dried and smoked by the

domestic hearth, and sometimes pounded fine, as are roots of various

kinds; clams are dried on strings and hung up in the houses, or

occasionally worn round the neck, ministering to the native love of

ornament until the stronger instinct of hunger impairs the beauty of the

necklace. In the better class of houses, supplies are neatly stored in

baskets at the sides. The people are extremely improvident, and,

notwithstanding their abundant natural supplies in ocean, stream, and

forest, are often in great want. Boiling in wooden vessels by means of

hot stones is the ordinary method of cooking. A visitor to the Nooksaks

thus describes their method of steaming elk-meat: "They first dig a hole

in the ground, then build a wood fire, placing stones on the top of it.

As it burns, the stones become hot and fall down. Moss and leaves are

then placed on the top of the hot stones, the meat on these, and another

layer of moss and leaves laid over it. Water is poured on, which is

speedily converted into steam. This is retained by mats carefully placed

over the heap. When left in this way for a night, the meat is found

tender and well cooked in the morning." Fowls were cooked in the same

manner by the Queniults.[323]

I find no mention of other weapons, offensive or defensive, than spears,

and bows and arrows. The arrows and spears were usually pointed with

bone; the bows were of yew, and though short, were of great power.

Vancouver describes a superior bow used at Puget Sound. It was from two

and a half to three feet long, made from a naturally curved piece of

yew, whose concave side became the convex of the bow, and to the whole

length of this side a strip of elastic hide or serpent-skin was attached

so firmly by a kind of cement as to become almost a part of the wood.

This lining added greatly to the strength of the bow, and was not

affected by moisture. The bow-string was made of sinew.[324] The tribes

were continually at war with each other, and with northern nations,

generally losing many of their people in battle. Sticking the heads of

the slain enemy on poles in front of their dwellings, is a common way of

demonstrating their joy over a victory. The Indians at Port Discovery

spoke to Wilkes of scalping among their warlike exploits, but according

to Kane the Classets do not practice that usage.[325] Vancouver, finding

sepulchres at Penn Cove, in which were large quantities of human bones

but no limb-bones of adults, suspected that the latter were used by the

Indians for pointing their arrows, and in the manufacture of other

implements.[326]

[Sidenote: MANUFACTURES OF PUGET SOUND.]

The Sound manufactures include only the weapons and utensils used by the

natives. Their articles were made with the simplest tools of bone or

shell. Blankets were made of dog's hair,--large numbers of dogs being

raised for the purpose,--the wool of mountain sheep, or wild goats,

found on the mountain slopes, the down of wild-fowl, cedar bark-fibre,

ravellings of foreign blankets, or more commonly of a mixture of several

of these materials. The fibre is twisted into yarn between the hand and

thigh, and the strands arranged in perpendicular frames for weaving

purposes. Willow and other twigs supply material for baskets of various

forms, often neatly made and colored. Oil, both for domestic use and for

barter, is extracted by boiling, except in the case of the candle-fish,

when hanging in the hot sun suffices; it is preserved in bladders and

skin-bottles.[327]

Canoes are made by the Sound Indians in the same manner as by the

Nootkas already described; being always dug out, formerly by fire, from

a single cedar trunk, and the form improved afterwards by stretching

when soaked in hot water. Of the most elegant proportions, they are

modeled by the builder with no guide but the eye, and with most

imperfect tools; three months' work is sufficient to produce a

medium-sized boat. The form varies among different nations according as

the canoe is intended for ocean, sound, or river navigation; being found

with bow or stern, or both, in various forms, pointed, round,

shovel-nosed, raised or level. The raised stern, head-piece, and

stern-post are usually formed of separate pieces. Like the Nootkas, they

char and polish the outside and paint the interior with red. The largest

and finest specimen seen by Mr. Swan was forty-six feet long and six

feet wide, and crossed the bar into Shoalwater Bay with thirty Queniult

Indians from the north. The paddle used in deep water has a crutch-like

handle and a sharp-pointed blade.[328]

[Sidenote: TRADE AND GOVERNMENT OF THE SOUND INDIANS.]

In their barter between the different tribes, and in estimating their

wealth, the blanket is generally the unit of value, and the _hiaqua_, a

long white shell obtained off Cape Flattery at a considerable depth, is

also extensively used for money, its value increasing with its length. A

kind of annual fair for trading purposes and festivities is held by the

tribes of Puget Sound at Bajada Point, and here and in their other

feasts they are fond of showing their wealth and liberality by disposing

of their surplus property in gifts.[329]

The system of government seems to be of the simplest nature, each

individual being entirely independent and master of his own actions.

There is a nominal chief in each tribe, who sometimes acquires great

influence and privileges by his wealth or personal prowess, but he has

no authority, and only directs the movements of his band in warlike

incursions. I find no evidence of hereditary rank or caste except as

wealth is sometimes inherited.[330] Slaves are held by all the tribes,

and are treated very much like their dogs, being looked upon as

property, and not within the category of humanity. For a master to kill

half a dozen slaves is no wrong or cruelty; it only tends to illustrate

the owner's noble disposition in so freely sacrificing his property.

Slaves are obtained by war and kidnapping, and are sold in large numbers

to northern tribes. According to Sproat, the Classets, a rich and

powerful tribe, encourage the slave-hunting incursions of the Nootkas

against their weaker neighbors.[331]

Wives are bought by presents, and some performances or ceremonies,

representative of hunting or fishing scenes, not particularly described

by any visitor, take place at the wedding. Women have all the work to do

except hunting and fishing, while their lords spend their time in

idleness and gambling. Still the females are not ill-treated; they

acquire great influence in the tribe, and are always consulted in

matters of trade before a bargain is closed. They are not overburdened

with modesty, nor are husbands noted for jealousy. Hiring out their

women, chiefly however slaves, for prostitution, has been a prominent

source of tribal revenue since the country was partially settled by

whites. Women are not prolific, three or four being ordinarily the limit

of their offspring. Infants, properly bound up with the necessary

apparatus for head-flattening, are tied to their cradle or to a piece of

bark, and hung by a cord to the end of a springy pole kept in motion by a

string attached to the mother's great toe. Affection for children is by

no means rare, but in few tribes can they resist the temptation to sell

or gamble them away.[332]

[Sidenote: AMUSEMENTS OF THE SOUND INDIANS.]

Feasting, gambling, and smoking are the favorite amusements; all their

property, slaves, children, and even their own freedom in some cases are

risked in their games. Several plants are used as substitutes for

tobacco when that article is not obtainable. If any important

differences exist between their ceremonies, dances, songs and feasts,

and those of Vancouver Island, such variations have not been recorded.

In fact, many authors describe the manners and customs of 'North-west

America' as if occupied by one people.[333] There is no evidence of

cannibalism; indeed, during Vancouver's visit at Puget Sound, some meat

offered to the natives was refused, because it was suspected to be human

flesh. Since their acquaintance with the whites they have acquired a

habit of assuming great names, as Duke of York, or Jenny Lind, and

highly prize scraps of paper with writing purporting to substantiate

their claims to such distinctions. Their superstitions are many, and

they are continually on the watch in all the commonest acts of life

against the swarm of evil influences, from which they may escape only by

the greatest care.[334]

[Sidenote: CHARACTER OF THE SOUND INDIANS.]

Disorders of the throat and lungs, rheumatism and intermittent fevers,

are among the most prevalent forms of disease, and in their methods of

cure, as usual, the absurd ceremonies, exorcisms, and gesticulations of

the medicine-men play the principal part; but hot and cold baths are

also often resorted to without regard to the nature or stage of the

malady.[335] The bodies of such as succumb to their diseases, or to the

means employed for cure, are disposed of in different ways according to

locality, tribe, rank, or age. Skeletons are found by travelers buried

in the ground or deposited in a sitting posture on its surface; in

canoes or in boxes supported by posts, or, more commonly, suspended from

the branches of trees. Corpses are wrapped in cloth or matting, and more

or less richly decorated according to the wealth of the deceased.

Several bodies are often put in one canoe or box, and the bodies of

young children are found suspended in baskets. Property and implements,

the latter always broken, are deposited with or near the remains, and

these last resting-places of their people are religiously cared for and

guarded from intrusion by all the tribes.[336] All the peculiarities and

inconsistencies of the Nootka character perhaps have been noted by

travelers among the Indians of the Sound, but none of these

peculiarities are so clearly marked in the latter people. In their

character, as in other respects, they have little individuality, and

both their virtues and vices are but faint reflections of the same

qualities in the great families north and south of their territory. The

Cape Flattery tribes are at once the most intelligent, bold, and

treacherous of all, while some of the tribes east and north-east of the

Sound proper have perhaps the best reputation. Since the partial

settlement of their territory by the whites, the natives here as

elsewhere have lost many of their original characteristics, chiefly the

better ones. The remnants now for the most part are collected on

government reservations, or live in the vicinity of towns, by begging

and prostitution. Some tribes, especially in the region of Bellingham

Bay, have been nominally converted to Christianity, have abandoned

polygamy, slavery, head-flattening, gambling, and superstitious

ceremonies, and pay considerable attention to a somewhat mixed version

of church doctrine and ceremonies.[337]