Chun Fa's Funeral.--Alameda.--Gophers and Lizards.--Poison
Oak.--Sturdy Trees.--Baby Lizards.--Old Alameda.--Emperor
Norton.--California Generosity.--The Dead
Newsboy.--Anniversary of the Goddess Kum Fa.--Chinese Regard
for the Moon and Flowers.--A Shin Worshipper. 242
LIFE AT PUGET SOUND.
I.
At Sea.--Mariguana Island.--Sea-Birds.--Shipwreck.--Life on
Roncador Reef.--The Rescue.--Isthmus of Panama.--Voyage to San
Francisco.--The New Baby.
ATLANTIC OCEAN, May 26, 1865.
It is a great experience to feel the loneliness of the sea,--to see the
whole circle of the heavens, and nothing under it but the rising and
falling water, from morning till night, day after day.
The first night we were out the porpoises came up at twilight, and
sported round the vessel. I saw some sea-birds that seemed to be
playing,--running and sliding on the green, glassy waves. In the wake of
the vessel were most beautiful changing colors. Little Nelly S. sat with
us to watch the phosphorescence. She said, "The stars in the sea call to
me, with little fine voices, 'Nelly, Nelly, are you alive?'"
MAY 27, 1865.
We have had our first sight of land,--Mariguana, a coral island, one of
the Bahamas. Every one stood in silence to see it, it was so beautiful.
The spray dashed so high, that, as it fell, we at first took it for
streams and cascades. It was just at sunrise; and we cast longing looks
at the soft green hills, bathed in light. Now it is gone, and we have
only the wide ocean again. But a new color has appeared in the water,--a
purplish pink, which looks very tropical; and there are blotches of
yellow seaweed. Some of it caught in the wheel, and stopped it. The
sailors drew it up, and gave it to the children to taste. It was like a
little fruit, and they say the birds eat it.
The sea is growing quite rough. I was thinking of being a little afraid,
the vessel plunged so; but Mother Cary's chickens came out, and I
thought I might as well consider myself as one of them, and not in any
more danger than they are.
CARIBBEAN SEA, May 28, 1865.
We have had a great experience of really rough weather. The spray dashed
over the deck, and only the hardiest could keep up. Any one who tried to
move was thrown off his feet. Preparations were made for divine service
by lashing two boxes together in the middle of the deck, and spreading
a flag over them. It was conducted by a Scotch Presbyterian minister. As
he began his prayer, he received quite an addition to his congregation,
in a flock of great birds, that appeared on my side of the vessel. They
wheeled round, and settled down softly together. I do not know what they
are, but suppose they are gulls of some kind. They have long, narrow
wings, brown, with a little black, and snow-white underneath. I am half
inclined to envy these wild, soulless creatures, that know no fear.
RONCADOR REEF, June 5, 1865.
On Tuesday morning, May 30, between three and four o'clock, we were
awakened by the sharp stroke of the engine-bell, a deep grinding sound,
and the sudden stopping of the vessel. We knew that we had not arrived
at our port of destination, and felt instinctively that something
extraordinary had happened. For a moment all was silence; then inquiries
arose from all sides, as to what was the matter. The engine seemed to be
in a great state of commotion; and the vessel began to writhe with a
heavy, laborious movement, as if attempting to free herself from the
grasp of some monster. We dressed hastily, and went into the cabin,
where we found a good many of the passengers, and learned that the
vessel had struck on a coral-reef. We put on life-preservers, and sat
waiting until daylight, expecting every moment the vessel would split.
As soon as it was light enough, we went upon deck, and saw the sailors
cut away the masts and smoke-stacks, which went over the side of the
ship. The water dashed over the deck, so that we were obliged to go
below. It seemed there as if we were under the ocean, with the water
breaking over our heads. Chandeliers, glasses, and other movable
articles were crashing together around us. The cabin was filled with
people, quietly sitting, ready for they knew not what. But among all the
seven hundred passengers there was no shrieking nor crying nor groaning,
except from the little children, who were disturbed by the noise and
discomfort. How well they met the expectation of death! Faces that I had
passed as most ordinary, fascinated me by their quiet, firm mouths, and
eyes so beautiful, I knew it must be the soul I saw looking through
them. Some parties of Swedish emigrants took out their little
prayer-books, and sat clasping each other's hands, and reading them. A
missionary bound for Micronesia handed out his tracts in all directions,
but no one took much notice of them. Generally, each one seemed to feel
that he could meet death alone, and in his own way.
In the afternoon a faint semblance of land was seen off on the horizon,
and a boat was sent out to explore. It was gone a long time, and as
night approached was anxiously looked for. Just about dark, it appeared
in sight. As it drew near, we saw the men in it waving their hats, and
heard them shouting, by which we knew they had succeeded in finding
land. The men on the vessel gave a hearty response, but the women could
not keep back their tears.
That night the women and children were lowered with ropes, over the side
of the vessel, into boats, and taken to a raft near by, hastily
constructed on the rocks at the surface of the water, from loose spars,
stateroom-doors, and such other available material as could be secured
from the vessel. All night long we lay there, watching the dim outline
of the ship, which still had the men on board, as she rose and fell with
each wave,--the engine-bell tolling with every shock. The lights that
hung from the side of the vessel increased the wild, funereal appearance
of every thing about us. They continually advanced and receded, and
seemed to motion us to follow them. There was a strange fascination
about them, which I could not resist; and I watched them through the
whole night.
At daylight the next morning the ship's boats began to take us over to
the island discovered the day before, which was slightly elevated above
the surface of the water, and about four miles distant from the wreck.
As we approached the shore, some new birds, unlike any I had seen
before,--indolent-looking, quiet, and amiable,--flew out, and hovered
over the boat, peering down at us, as if inquiring what strange
creatures were about to invade their home. Probably they had never seen
any human beings before. The sailors said they were "boobies;" and they
certainly appeared very unsophisticated, and quite devoid of the wit and
sprightliness of most birds.
Only a few persons could be landed at a time, and I wandered about at
first almost alone. It was two days before all the passengers were
transferred. Every thing was so new and strange, that I felt as if I had
been carried off to another planet; and it certainly was a great
experience, to walk over a portion of the globe just as it was made, and
wholly unaltered by man.
I thought of an account of a wreck on this same water I had once read,
in which the Caribbean was spoken of as the most beautiful though most
treacherous of seas, and the intensity of color was mentioned. Such
rose-color I never saw before as in the shells and mosses we find here,
nor such lovely pale and green tints as the water all about us shows.
We have been here on this bare reef six days, with the breakers all
around us, and do not know whether we shall get off or not. We amuse
ourselves every morning with looking at the pert little birds, as queer
as the boobies, though quite different from them, that sit and nod to
each other incessantly, and give each other little hits with their
bills, as if these were their morning salutations,--a rough way of
asking after each other's health.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 2, 1865.
We are safely here at last, after forty-two days' passage,--longer than
the children of Israel were in the wilderness. When we return it will be
by a wagon-train, if the Pacific Railroad is not done.
When we landed on Roncador Reef, we had no data for conjecturing where
we were, except that we remembered passing the island of Jamaica at
twilight on the evening preceding the wreck. We were afterwards
informed that the vessel was seized by a strong current, and borne far
away from her proper course. How gay we were that night, with our music
and dancing, exhilarated all the more by the swiftness of the white,
rushing water that drove us on to our fate!
The heat on the island was so intense, that our greatest necessity was
for some shelter from the sun. The only materials which the place
furnished us were rocks of coral, with which we built up walls, over
which were spread pieces of sail from the vessel. We lived in these
lodges, in little companies. We sat together in ours in the daytime, and
could not leave our shelter for a moment without feeling as if we were
sunstruck. Every night we abandoned it, and slept out on the rocks; but
the frequent little showers proved so uncomfortable that we were driven
to great extremity to devise some covering. R.'s ingenuity proved equal
to the emergency. He secured an opportunity to visit the vessel (which
held together for some days) in one of the boats which were continually
plying between her and the island, bringing over all available stores.
All the mattresses and other bedding that could be secured had been
distributed, mostly to the mothers and children. His penetrating eye
detected the materials for a coverlet in the strips of painted canvas
nailed to the deck. He managed without tools to tear off some pieces,
and, by untwisting some tarred rope, to fasten them together; thus
providing a quilt, which, if not comfortable, was at least waterproof,
and served to draw over us when a shower came on. It was no protection,
however, against the crabs, large and small, that used to crawl under
it, and eat pieces out of our clothes, and even our boots, while we were
asleep. These crabs were of the _hermit_ order. Each one, from the
minutest to the largest, had taken possession of the empty shell of some
other creature, exactly large enough for him, and walked about with it
on his back, and drew himself snugly into it when molested. Every little
crevice in the rocks had a white or speckled egg in it when we landed,
and from these we made a few good meals. The one day the women spent on
the island alone with the birds passed in the most friendly manner; but
after the men and boys came, the larger ones abandoned us.
We felt sorry not to bring away some of the beautiful shells which were
plentiful there, and more gorgeous than any thing I ever saw before.
While the living creature is in them, they are much brighter than after
it is dead; and in the length of time it takes to bring them from
tropical countries, they fade almost like flowers. Mrs. S. was so
enterprising, and, I must say, so unaesthetic, as to try to concoct a
meal from the occupants of some of the large conch-shells taken from the
beach, cooking it for a considerable length of time in a large brass
kettle, the only available utensil. Those who partook of it in our
little group had cause to repent of their rashness; but we did not like
to charge the injury to the lovely creatures which were sacrificed for
this feast, preferring to "blame it on" to the brass kettle, as the
California children would express it. The more cautious ones contented
themselves with their two sea-biscuits and fragment of beef or pork per
day, which were the regular rations served to each from the stores saved
from the ship. Some surface water, found among the rocks, was carefully
guarded, and sparingly dealt out.
After we had been four or five days on the island, two of the ship's
boats were sent out to seek assistance, manned by volunteer crews; one
headed for Aspinwall, which was thought to be about two hundred and
fifty miles distant, and the other to search for what was supposed to be
the nearest land.
Very early on the morning of the tenth day we heard the cry of "A
sail!" We started up from our rocky beds, and stood, without daring to
speak. There was a little upright shadow, about as large as a finger,
against the sky. Every eye was turned to it, but no one yet dared to
confirm it; and, even if it were a sail, those on board the vessel might
not see our island, it was so low, or our flag of distress, as we had
nothing on which to raise it very high. We stood for several minutes,
without daring to look at each other with the consciousness that we were
saved. We presently saw that there were two little schooners beating up
against the wind, directly towards us, and that they carried the red
English flag. They had been catching turtles on the Mosquito Coast. As
soon as our boat reached them, they unloaded their turtles (which
occupied them a day), with the exception of three large ones which they
reserved for us, and then started at once.
These small vessels were unequal to carrying away half the people on the
island, and they had no arrangements for the comfort of passengers. A
considerable number decided to embark on them, and commenced doing so;
while the larger part of the company remained on the spot, to take their
chance of escape in some other way, since communication with the world
was now established.
The next day we were all rejoiced by the appearance of two United States
gunboats from Aspinwall, which point was reached by our other boat,
after a rough experience; the waves having capsized her during the
passage, and swallowed up the provisions and nautical instruments.
It was then decided that all the company should be taken to Aspinwall by
the United States vessels, and their boats and ours were at once put to
service in transferring the people from the island; who, as they
gathered up such fragments of their property as had been rescued from
the wreck, and tied it up in bedquilts or blankets, shouldered their
bundles, and moved slowly down to the point of departure,--their
garments weather-stained and crab-eaten, some of them without shoes or
hats, and all with much-bronzed faces,--presented a picturesque and
beggarly appearance, in striking contrast to their aspect before the
wreck.
We were treated with the greatest kindness by every one connected with
the gunboats. They took us in their arms, and carried us into the boats,
and stood all night beside us, offering ice-water and wine. They greatly
bewailed our misfortunes, and told us, that, when they heard of our
condition, they put on every pound of steam the vessels would bear, in
order to reach us as speedily as possible, fearing that some greater
calamity might befall us,--that our supply of water might entirely fail,
or that the trade-wind might change, and a storm bring the sea over the
island. They told us, too, that we were very far off the track of
vessels; and, if our boats had failed to bring succor, in all
probability no one would ever have come there in search of us.
The two schooners decided to remain a while, and wreck the vessel. As we
steamed away from the reef, we passed her huge skeleton upon the rocks,
the bell still hanging to the iron part of the frame.
On the second day we reached Aspinwall, and disembarked. As we sat on
the wharf, in little groups, on pieces of lumber or on our bundles,
waiting for arrangements to be made for our transportation across the
Isthmus, a black man, employed there, fixed his eye upon our
dark-skinned Julia, and, approaching, asked if she "got free in the
Linkum war." I told him that she did, and asked him where he came from.
He said he was from Jamaica; and I said, "I suppose you have been free a
long time?" to which he, replied, with great energy, "Before I was
born, I was free," and repeated it again and again,--"before I was
born."
We found that Julia, to whom all things were new in the land of freedom,
thought that the island where we spent so many days was a regular
stopping-place on the way to California, and that the wreck was a
legitimate mode of stopping; as one day she inquired if that was the way
they always went to San Francisco, and said, if she had known travelling
was so hard, she would not have started. This accounted for her
equanimity, which surprised me, after the vessel struck the reef, as she
sat quietly eating her cakes, while every thing was going to destruction
around us, and the sea broke above our heads.
In crossing the Isthmus of Panama, we were delighted with the neat
appearance of the natives, whom we saw along the roadside, or sitting in
their little huts near by, which were made of the trunks of the tall
palm-trees, in columns, open at the side, and thatched with leaves.
These people were clad in clean white garments, the women with muslins
and laces drooping from their bare shoulders, and with bright flowers in
their hair.
On reaching Panama, the women there greeted us with great kindness and
sympathy. One of them threw her arms around one of the first women of
our party that she saw, and exclaimed, "Oh, we have thought so much
about you! we were afraid you would die for want of water." It seemed
strange that they should have cared so much, when a little while before
they never knew of our existence. I felt as if I had hardly had a chance
before in my life to know what mere humanity meant, apart from
individual interest, and how strong a feeling it is. We realized still
more the kindness of these "dear, dark-eyed sisters," when we opened the
trunk of clothing which they sent on board the "America," the steamer
that took us to San Francisco.
The voyage up the Pacific coast was long and wearisome. For some days we
felt seriously the ill effects of the island life and the tropic heat,
and could only endure; until, one morning, we came up on deck, and there
were the beautiful serrated hills of Old California. We had rounded Cape
St. Lucas, and had a strong, exhilarating breeze from the coast, and
began to be ourselves again.
The monotony of our sea-life was broken by one event of special
interest,--the addition of another human being to our large number. I
must mention first,--for it seems as if they brought her,--that all one
day we sailed in a cloud of beautiful gray-and-white gulls, flying
incessantly over and around us, with their pretty orange bills and
fringed wings and white fan-tails. They were very gentle and dove-like.
They staid with us only that day. The last thing that I saw at night,
far into the dark, was one flying after us; and, the next morning, we
heard of the birth of the baby. She was christened in the cabin, the day
after, by the Micronesian missionary, in the presence of a large
company. A conch-shell from the reef served as the christening-basin.
The American flag was festooned overhead; and, as far as possible, the
cabin was put into festive array. She was named "Roncadora America,"
from the reef, and the vessel on which she was born. The captain gave
her some little garments he was carrying home to his own unborn baby,
and the gold ties for her sleeves. When her name was pronounced, the
ship's gun was fired; then the captain addressed the father, who held
her, and presented him with a purse of fifty dollars from the
passengers, ending in triumph with--
"And now, my friends, see Roncadora,
With freedom's banner floating o'er her."
The father then uncovered her; she having made herself quite apparent
before by wrestling with her little fists under the counterpane, and
uttering a variety of wild and incomprehensible sounds. She proved a
handsome baby, large and red, with a profusion of soft, dark hair.
II.
Port Angeles.--Indian "Hunter" and his Wife.--Sailor's
Funeral.--Incantation.--Indian Graves.--Chief Yeomans.--Mill
Settlements.--Port Gamble Trail.--Canoe Travel.--The
_Memaloost_.--Tommy and his Mother. Olympic Range.--Ediz
Hook.--Mrs. S. and her Children.--Grand Indian Wedding.--Crows and
Indians.
PORT ANGELES, WASHINGTON TERRITORY,
July 20, 1865.
We reached here day before yesterday, very early in the morning. We were
called to the forward deck; and before us was a dark sea-wall of
mountains, with misty ravines and silver peaks,--the Olympic Range, a
fit home for the gods.
A fine blue veil hung over the water, between us and the shore; and, the
air being too heavy for the smoke of the Indian village to rise, it lay
in great curved lines, like dim, rainbow-colored serpents, over sea and
land.
I thought it was the loveliest place I had ever seen. The old Spanish
explorers must have thought so too, as they named it "Port of the
Angels."
We found that the path to our house was an Indian trail, winding about
a mile up the bluff from the beach; the trees shutting overhead, and all
about us a drooping white spirea, a most bridal-looking flower. Here and
there, on some precipitous bank, was the red Indian-flame. Every once in
a while, we came to a little opening looking down upon the sea; and the
sound of it was always in our ears. At last we reached a partially
cleared space, and there stood the house; behind it a mountain range,
with snow filling all the ravines, and, below, the fulness and prime of
summer. We are nearly at the foot of the hills, which send us down their
snow-winds night and morning, and their ice-cold water. Between us and
them are the fir-trees, two hundred and fifty and three hundred feet
high; and all around, in the burnt land, a wilderness of bloom,--the
purple fireweed, that grows taller than our heads, and in the richest
luxuriance, of the same color as the Alpine rose,--a beautiful
foreground for snowy hills.
The house is not ready for us. We are obliged at present, for want of a
chimney, to stop with our nearest neighbor. But we pay it frequent
visits. Yesterday, as we sat there, we received a call from two Indians,
in extreme undress. They walked in with perfect freedom, and sat down
on the floor. We shall endeavor to procure from Victoria a dictionary of
the Haidah, Chinook, and other Indian languages, by the aid of which we
shall be able to receive such visitors in a more satisfactory manner. At
present, we can only smile very much at them. Fortunately, on this
occasion, our carpenter was present, who told us that the man was called
"Hunter," which served as an introduction. Hunter took from the woman a
white bag, in which was a young wild bird, and put it into my hands. The
carpenter said that this Indian had done some work for him, bringing up
lumber from the beach, etc., and had come for his pay; that he would not
take a white man's word for a moment, but if, in making an agreement
with him, a white man gave him a little bit of paper with _any thing_
written on it, he was perfectly satisfied, and said, "You my _tilikum_
[relation]--I wait."
The neighbor with whom we are stopping says, that, the night before we
came, a wildcat glared in at her as she sat at her window.
It looks very wild here, the fir-trees are so shaggy. I think the bears
yet live under them. Many of the trees are dead. When the setting sun
lights up the bare, pointed trunks, the great troops of firs look like
an army with spears of gold, climbing the hills.
JULY 30, 1865.
To-day, as we were descending by the trail from the bluff to the beach,
we saw a funeral procession slowly ascending the wagon-road. It came
from the Sailors' Hospital. We waited until it passed. The cart
containing the coffin was drawn by oxen, and followed by a little white
dog and a few decrepit sailors. There was no sign of mourning, but a
reverent look in their faces. The body had been wrapped in a flag by
brotherly hands. The deep music of the surf followed them, and the dark
fir-branches met overhead.
In California, the poorest of people, by the competition of undertakers,
are furnished, at low rates, with the use of silver-mounted hearses and
nodding plumes, a shrouding of crape, and a long line of carriages. Even
those who have really loved the one who is gone seem, in some
incomprehensible way, to find a solace in these manifestations, and
would have considered this sailor's solitary funeral the extreme of
desolation. But Nature took him gently to her bosom; the soft sky and
the fragrant earth seemed to be calling him home.
We found by inquiry that it was the funeral of an entirely unknown
sailor, who had not even any distant friends to whom he wished messages
sent. His few possessions he left for the use of the children of the
place, and quietly closed his eyes among strangers, returning peacefully
to the unknown country whence he came.
AUGUST 2, 1865.
We went this morning to an Indian _Tamahnous_ (incantation), to drive
away the evil spirits from a sick man. He lay on a mat, surrounded by
women, who beat on instruments made by stretching deer-skin over a
frame, and accompanied the noise thus produced by a monotonous wail.
Once in a while it became quite stirring, and the sick man seemed to be
improved by it. Then an old man crept in stealthily, on all-fours, and,
stealing up to him, put his mouth to the flesh, here and there,
apparently sucking out the disease.
AUGUST 17, 1865.
Hunter stopped to rest to-day on our door-steps. He had a haunch of
elk-meat on his back, one end resting on his head, with a cushion of
green fern-leaves. He called me "_Closhe tum-tum_" (Good Heart), and
gave me a great many beautiful smiles.
We find that there are a number of canoes suspended in the large
fir-trees on some of our land, with the mummies of Indians in them.
These are probably the bodies of chiefs, or persons of high rank. There
is also a graveyard on the beach, which is gay with bright blankets,
raised like flags, or spread out and nailed upon the roofs over the
graves, and myriads of tin pans: we counted thirty on one grave. A
looking-glass is one of the choicest of the decorations. On one we
noticed an old trunk, and others were adorned with rusty guns.
Last night there came a prolonged, heavy, booming sound, different from
any thing we had heard before. In the morning we saw that there had been
a great landslide on the mountain back of us, bringing down rocks and
trees.
AUGUST 30, 1865.
Yeomans, an old Indian chief, the _Tyee_ of the Flat-heads at Port
Angeles, came to see us to-day. He pointed to himself, and said, "Me all
the same white man;" explaining that he did not paint his face, nor
drink whiskey. Mrs. S., at the light-house, said that she had frequently
invited him to dinner, and that he handled his napkin with perfect
propriety; although he is often to be seen sitting cross-legged on the
sand, eating his meal of sea-urchins.
He is very dramatic, and described to us by sounds only, without our
understanding any of the words, how wild the water was at Cape Flattery,
and how the ships were rocked about there. It was thrilling to hear the
sounds of the winds as he represented them: I felt as if I were in the
midst of a great storm.
His little tribe appear to have great respect for his authority as a
chief, and show a proper deference towards him. He is a mild and gentle
ruler, and not overcome by the pride and dignity of his position. He is
always ready to assist in dragging our boat on to the beach, and does
not disdain the dime offered him in compensation for the service.
His son, a grown man, no longer young, who introduced himself to us as
"Mr. Yeomans's son," and who appears to have no other designation, is
much more of a wild Indian than the old man. Sometimes I see him at
night, going out with his _klootchman_ in their little canoe; she,
crouched in her scarlet blanket at one end, holding the dark sail, and
the great yellow moon shining on them.
I used to wonder, when we first came here, what their interests were,
and what they were thinking about all the time. Little by little we find
out. To-night he came in to tell us that there was going to be a great
_potlach_ at the coal-mines, where a large quantity of _iktas_ would be
given away,--tin pans, guns, blankets, canoes, and money. How his eyes
glistened as he described it! It seems that any one who aspires to be a
chief must first give a _potlach_ to his tribe, at which he dispenses
among them all his possessions.
This afternoon, as I sat at my window, my attention was attracted by a
little noise. I looked up; and there was a beautiful young Indian girl,
holding up a basket of fruit, of the same color as her lips and cheeks.
It was a delicious wild berry that grows here, known as the red
huckleberry. Mrs. S. knew her, and told me that she was the daughter of
the old chief, lately betrothed to a Cape Flattery Indian.
SEPTEMBER 20, 1865.
Everywhere about Puget Sound and the adjoining waters are little arms of
the sea running up into the land, like the fiords of Northern Europe.
Many of them have large sawmills at the head. We have been travelling
about, stopping here and there at the little settlements around the
mills. We were everywhere most hospitably received. All strangers are
welcomed as guests. Every thing seems so comfortable, and on such a
liberal scale, that we never think of the people as poor, although the
richest here have only bare wooden walls, and a few articles of
furniture, often home-made. It seems, rather, as if we had moved two or
three generations back, when no one had any thing better; or, as if we
might perhaps be living in feudal times, these great mill-owners have
such authority in the settlements. Some of them possess very large
tracts of land, have hundreds of men in their employ, own steamboats and
hotels, and have large stores of general merchandise, in connection with
their mill-business. They sometimes provide amusements for the men,
little dramatic entertainments, etc.,--to keep them from resorting to
drink; and encourage them to send for their families, and to make
gardens around their houses.
The house where we stopped at Port Madison was very attractive. The
maple-trees had been cut down to build it; but life is so vigorous here,
that they grew up under the porch, and then, as they became taller, came
outside, and curved up around it, so that it was a perfect nest. The
maple here is not just like the Eastern tree, but has a larger, darker
leaf. Inside, the rooms were large and low, with great fireplaces filled
with flaming logs, that illuminated them brilliantly.
We began our expedition round the Sound in a plunger,--the most
atrocious little craft ever constructed. Its character is well expressed
by its name. These boats are dangerous enough in steady hands; but, as
they are exceedingly likely to be becalmed, the danger is very much
increased from the temptation to drink that seems always to assail the
captain and men in these wearisome delays.
To avoid waiting two or three days at Port Madison for the steamer, we
determined to cross to the next port by an Indian trail through the
woods; though we were told that it was very rough travelling, and that
no white woman had ever crossed there, and, also, that we might have to
take circuitous routes to avoid fires. We started early in the morning,
allowing the whole day for the journey. We passed through one of the
burnt regions, where the trees were still standing, so gray and spectral
that it was like a strange dream. Farther along we heard a prolonged,
mournful sound, that we could not account for; but, in a little while,
we came to where the bright flames were darting from the trunks and
branches, and curling around them. The poor old trees were creaking and
groaning, preparatory to falling. We were obliged, occasionally, to
abandon the trail; or, rather, it abandoned us, being burnt through.
Off the path, the underbrush was almost impassable; the vine-maple, with
crooked stems and tangled branches, with coarse briers and vines, knit
every thing together. It seemed more like a tropical than a northern
forest, there were so many glossy evergreen leaves. We recognized among
them the holly-leaf barberry (known also as the Oregon grape), one of
the most beautiful of shrubs. Its pretty clusters of yellow flowers were
withered, and its fruit not yet ripe. We found also the sallal,--the
Indian's berry,--the salmon-colored raspberry, and the coral-red
huckleberry. Occasionally we heard the scream of a hawk, or the whirring
of great wings above our heads; but, for the most part, we tramped on in
perfect silence. The woods were too dark and dense for small birds.
It was curious to notice how much some of the little noises sounded like
whispers, or like footsteps. There was hardly a chance that there could
be any other human beings there besides ourselves. It recalled to me the
Indian's dread of _skookums_ (spirits) in the deep woods. To him, the
mere flutter of a leaf had a meaning; the sighing of the wind was
intelligible language. So many generations of Indians had crossed that
trail, and so few white people, I felt as if some subtile aroma of
Indian spirit must linger still about the place, and steal into our
thoughts. Occasionally an owl stirred in the thicket beside us, or we
caught a glimpse of the mottled beauty of a snake gliding across our
path. The great boom and crash of the falling trees startled us, until
we were used to it, and understood it.
Whenever we left the trail, we felt some doubt lest we might not find it
again, or might happen upon an impassable stream that would cut us off
from farther progress; not feeling quite equal to navigating with a pole
on a snag, after the fashion of the Indians.
Near sunset, when the woods began to grow darker around us, we saw a
bird, about as large as a robin, with a black crescent on his breast.
His song was very different from that of the robin, and consisted of
five or six notes, regularly descending in minor key. It thrilled me to
hear it in the solitary woods: it was like the wail of an Indian spirit.
It began to be quite a serious question to us, what we were to do for
the night; as how near or how far Port Gamble might be, we could not
tell. There was no possibility of our climbing the straight fir-trees,
with branches high overhead; and to stop on the ground was not to be
thought of, for fear of wild beasts. We hastened on, but the trail
became almost undistinguishable before the lights of Port Gamble
appeared below us. As we descended to the settlement, we were met with
almost as much excitement on the part of the mill people, who had never
crossed the trail, as if we had risen from the water, or floated down
from the sky, among them.
We take great satisfaction in the recollection of this one day of pure
Indian life.
The next day we decided to try a canoe. We should not have ventured to
go alone with the Indians, not understanding their talk; but another
passenger was to go with us, who represented that he had learned the
only word it would be necessary to use. He explained to us, after we
started, that the word was "_hyac_," which meant "hurry up;" the only
danger being that we should not reach Port Townsend before dark, as they
were apt to proceed in so leisurely a way when left to themselves. After
a while, the bronze paddlers--two _siwashes_ (men) and two _klootchmen_
(women)--began to show some abatement of zeal in their work, and our
fellow-passenger pronounced the talismanic word, with some emphasis;
whereat they laughed him to scorn, and made some sarcastic remarks,
half Chinook and half English, from which we gathered that they advised
him, if he wanted to reach Port Townsend before dark, to tell the sun to
stop, and not tell them to hurry up. We could only look on, and admire
their magnificent indifference. They stopped whenever they liked, and
laughed, and told stories. The sky darkened in a very threatening way,
and a heavy shower came on; but it made not the slightest difference to
them. After it was over, there was a splendid rainbow, like the great
gate of heaven. This animated the Indians, and their spirits rose, so
that they began to sing; and we drifted along with them, catching enough
of their careless, joyous mood, not to worry about Port Townsend,
although we did not reach the wharf till two or three hours after dark.
A day or two after, we found, rather to our regret, that we should be
obliged to take a canoe again, from Port Discovery. The intoxicated
"Duke of Wellington"--an Indian with a wide gold band round his hat, and
a dilapidated naval uniform--came down, and invited us to go in his
sloop. We politely declined the offer, and selected Tommy, the only
Indian, we were told, who did not drink. With the aid of some of the
bystanders, we asked his views of the weather. He said there would
undoubtedly be plenty of wind, and plenty of rain, but it would not make
any difference: he had mats enough, and we could stop in the woods. But,
as we had other ideas of comfort, we waited two days; and, as the
weather was still unsettled, we took the precaution, before starting, to
give him his directions for the trip: "_Halo_ wind, Port Angeles; _hyiu_
wind, Dungeness," meaning that we were to have the privilege of stopping
at Dungeness if it should prove too stormy to go on. So he and his
little _klootchman_, about as big as a child of ten, took us off. When
we reached the portage over which they had to carry the canoe, he
pointed out the place of the _memaloost_ (the dead). I see the Indians
often bury them between two bodies of water, and have wondered if this
had any significance to them. I have noticed, too, that their
burial-places have always wild and beautiful surroundings. At this
place, the blue blankets over the graves waved in the wind, like the
wings of some great bird. A chief was buried here; and some enormous
wooden figures, rudely carved, stood to guard him. They looked old and
worn. They had long, narrow eyes, high cheek-bones, and long upper lips,
like true Indians, with these features somewhat exaggerated.
We tried to talk with Tommy a little about the _memaloost_. He said it
was all the same with an Indian, whether he was _memaloost_, or on the
_illahie_ (the earth); meaning that he was equally alive. We were told
at the store, that Tommy still bought sugar and biscuits for his child
who had died.
When we reached the other side of the portage, the surf roared so loud,
it seemed frightful to launch the canoe in it; but Tommy praised R. as
_skookum_ (very strong) in helping to conduct it over. He seemed much
more good-natured than the Indians we had travelled with before. He
smiled at the loon floating past us, and spoke to it.
When we reached Dungeness, he represented that it would be very rough
outside, in the straits. So he took us to a farmhouse. I began to
suspect his motive, when I saw that there was a large Indian encampment
there, and he pointed to some one he said was all the same as his mamma.
It was the exact representation of a sphinx,--an old gray creature lying
on the sand, with the upper part of her body raised, and her lower limbs
concealed by her blanket. I expected to see Tommy run and embrace her:
but he walked coolly by, without giving her any greeting whatever; and
she remained perfectly imperturbable, never stirred, and her expression
did not change in the least. I was horror-stricken, but afterwards
altered my views of her, and came to the conclusion that she was a good,
kind mother, only that it was their way to refrain from all appearance
of emotion. When we started the next morning, she came down to the canoe
with the little _klootchman_, loaded with presents, which she carried in
a basket on her back, supported by a broad band round her
head,--smoking-hot venison, and a looking-glass for the child's grave,
among them. The old lady waded into the water, and pushed us off with
great energy and strong ejaculations.
As we approached Port Angeles, we had a fine view of the Olympic Range
of mountains,--shining peaks of silver in clear outline; later, only
dark points emerging from seas of yellow light. Little clouds were drawn
towards them, and seemed like birds hovering over them, sometimes
lighting, or sailing slowly off.
EDIZ HOOK LIGHT, September 23, 1865.
This light-house is at the end of a long, narrow sand-spit, known by the
unpoetical name of Ediz Hook, which runs out for three miles into the
Straits of Fuca, in a graceful curve, forming the bay of Port Angeles.
Outside are the roaring surf and heavy swell of the sea; inside that
slender arm, a safe shelter.
In a desolate little house near by, lives Mrs. S., whose husband was
recently lost at sea. She is a woman who awakens my deepest wonder, from
her being so able to dispense with all that most women depend on. She
prefers still to live here (her husband's father keeps the light), and
finds her company in her great organ. One of the last things her husband
did was to order it for her, and it arrived after his death. I think the
sailors must hear it as they pass the light, and wonder where the
beautiful music comes from. There is something very soft and sweet in
her voice and touch.
Sometimes I see the four children out in the boat. The little girls are
only four and six years old, yet they handle the oars with ease. As I
look at their bare bright heads in the sunshine, they seem as pretty as
pond-lilies. I feel as if they were as safe, they are so used to the
water.
PORT ANGELES, October 1, 1865.
Port Angeles has been the scene of a grand ceremony,--the marriage of
Yeomans's daughter to the son of a Makah chief. Many of the Makah tribe
attended it. They came in a fleet of fifty canoes,--large, handsome
boats, their high pointed beaks painted and carved, and decorated with
gay colors. The chiefs had eagle-feathers on their heads, great
feather-fans in their hands, and were dressed in black bear-skins. Our
Flat-heads in their blankets looked quite tame in contrast with them.
They approached the shore slowly, standing in the canoes. When they
reached the landing in front of Yeomans's ranch, the congratulations
began, with wild gesticulations, leapings, and contortions. They were
tall, savage-looking men. Some of them had rings in their noses; and all
had a much more primitive, uncivilized look, than our Indians on the
Sound. I could hardly believe that the gentlemanly old Yeomans would
deliver up his pretty daughter to the barbarians that came to claim her,
and looked to see some one step forward and forbid the banns; but the
ceremony proceeded as if every thing were satisfactory. There may be
more of the true old Indian in him than I imagined; or perhaps this is a
political movement to consolidate the friendship of the tribes. When
they landed, they formed a procession, bearing a hundred new blankets,
red and white, as a _potlach_ to the tribe. They brought also some of
the much-prized blue blankets, reserved for special ceremonies and the
use of chiefs.
What occurred inside the lodge, we could not tell; but were quite
touched at seeing Yeomans's son take the flag from his dead sister's
grave, and plant it on the beach at high-water mark, as if it were a
kind of participation, on the part of the dead girl, in the joy of the
occasion.
OCTOBER 5, 1865.
Flocks of crows hover continually about the Indian villages. The most
proverbially suspicious of all birds is here familiar and confiding. The
Indian exercises superstitious care over them, but whether from love or
fear we could never discover. It is very difficult to find out what an
Indian believes. We have sometimes heard that they consider the crows
their ancestors. It is a curious fact, that the Indians, in talking,
make so much use of the palate,--_kl_ and other guttural sounds
occurring so often,--and that the crow, in his deep "caw, caw," uses the
same organ. It may be significant of some psychological relationship
between them.
III.
Indian Chief Seattle.--Frogs and Indians.--Spring Flowers and
Birds.--The Red _Tamahnous_.--The little Pend d'Oreille.--Indian
Legend.--From Seattle to Fort Colville.--Crossing the Columbia
River Bar.--The River and its Surroundings.--Its Former
Magnitude.--The Grande Coulee.--Early Explorers, Heceta, Meares,
Vancouver, Grey.--Curious Burial-Place.--Chinese
Miners.--Umatilla.--Walla Walla.--Sage-Brush and
Bunch-Grass.--Flowers in the Desert.--"Stick"
Indians.--Klickatats.--Spokane Indian.--Snakes.--Dead Chiefs.--A
Kamas-Field.--Basaltic Rocks.
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY,
November 5, 1865.
We saw here a very dignified Indian, old and poor, but with something
about him that led us to suspect that he was a chief. We found, upon
inquiry, that it was Seattle, the old chief for whom the town was named,
and the head of all the tribes on the Sound. He had with him a little
brown sprite, that seemed an embodiment of the wind,--such a swift,
elastic little creature,--his great-grandson, with no clothes about him,
though it was a cold November day. To him, motion seemed as natural as
rest.
Here we first saw Mount Rainier. It was called by the Indians _Tacoma_
(The nourishing breast). It is also claimed that the true Indian name is
_Tahoma_ (Almost to heaven). It stands alone, nearly as high as Mont
Blanc, triple-pointed, and covered with snow, most grand and
inaccessible-looking.
We have a great laurel-tree beside our house. It looks so Southern, it
is strange to see it among the firs. It has a dark outer bark, and a
soft inner skin; both of which are stripped away by the tree in growing,
and the trunk and branches are left bare and flesh-colored. It has
glossy evergreen leaves, and bright red berries, that look very cheerful
in contrast with the snow.
APRIL 6, 1866.
The frogs have begun to sing in the marsh, and the Indians in their
camps. How well their voices chime together! All the bright autumn days,
we used to listen to the Indians at sunset; but after that, we heard no
sound of them for several months. They sympathize too much with Nature
to sing in the winter. Now the warm, soft air inspires them anew. All
through the cold and rainy months, as I looked out from my window, there
was always the little black figure in the canoe, as free and as
unembarrassed by any superfluities as the birds that circled around it.
It seemed a mistake, when the most severe weather came, for them to have
made no preparation whatever to meet it. It drove the women into our
houses, with their little bundles of "fire-sticks" (pitch-wood) to sell.
I offered one of them a pair of shoes; but she pointed to the snow, and
said it was "hot," and that it would make her feet too cold to wear
shoes.
We were told, before we came here, that this climate was like that of
Asia; and now an Asian flower has come to confirm it. The marshes are
all gay with it: it is the golden club. The botany calls it the
Orontium, because it grows on the banks of the Orontes; and it is very
Asian-looking. It has a great wrapper, like the rich yellow silk in
which the Japanese brought their presents to President Lincoln. It is a
relation to the calla-lily, but is larger.
The very last day of winter, as if they could not possibly wait a day
longer, great flocks of meadow-larks came, and settled down on the field
next to us. They are about as large as robins, and have a braided work
of black-and-gold to trim off their wings, and a broad black collar on
their orange breasts. They appear to have a very agreeable consciousness
of being in the finest possible condition. The dear old robins look
rather faded beside them. With them came the crimson-headed linnets. In
trying to identify these little birds from our books, I found that great
confusion had prevailed in regard to them, because their nuptial plumage
differs so much from their ordinary dress. These darlings blushed all
over with life and joy, which told me their secret.
APRIL 30, 1866.
In the winter we were told, that, when the spring came fully on, the
Indians would have the "_Red Tamahnous_," which means "love." A little,
gray old woman appeared yesterday morning at our door, with her cheeks
all aglow, as if her young blood had returned. Besides the vermilion
lavishly displayed on her face, the crease at the parting of her hair
was painted the same color. Every article of clothing she had on was
bright and new. I looked out, and saw that no Indian had on any thing
but red. Even old blind Charley, whom we had never seen in any thing but
a black blanket, appeared in a new one of scarlet. But I was most
touched by the change in this woman, because she is, I suppose, the
oldest creature that I ever looked at. Nothing but a primeval rock ever
seemed to me so old; and when we had seen her before, she was like a
mummy generally in her clothing. These most ancient creatures have their
little stiff legs covered with a kind of blue cloth, sewed close round
them, just like the mummy-wrappings I have seen at Barnum's Museum. She
has more vivacity and animation than any one else I ever saw. If anybody
has a right to bright cheeks, she has. I like the Indians' painting
themselves, for in them it is quite a different thing from what it is in
fashionable ladies. They do it to show how they feel, not commonly
expressing their emotions in words.
This woman, who is a Pend d'Oreille, has the most extraordinary power of
modulation in her voice. The Indians, by prolonging the sound of words,
add to their force, and vary their meaning; so that the same word
signifies more or less, according as it is spoken quickly or slowly. She
has such a searching voice, especially when she is attempting to convict
me of any subterfuge or evasion, that I have to yield to her at once.
The Indians have no word, as far as I can learn, for "busy." So, when I
cannot entertain her, I have to make the nearest approach I can to the
truth, and tell her I am sick, or something of that kind; but nothing
avails, with her, short of the absolute truth. She is so very fantastic
and entertaining, that I should cultivate her acquaintance more, if it
were not for this deficiency in the language, which makes it impossible
to convey the idea to her when I want to get rid of her. As old as she
is, she still carries home the great sacks of flour--a hundred
pounds--on her back, superintends the salmon-fishery for the family,
takes care of the _tenas men_ (children), and looks after affairs in
general.
MAY 10, 1866.
We walked out to Lake Union, and found an Indian and his wife living in
a tree. The most primitive of the Indians, the old gray ones, who look
the most interesting, do not commonly speak the Chinook at all, or have
any intercourse with the whites. On the way there, we found the peculiar
rose that grows only on the borders of the fir-forest, the wild white
honeysuckle, and the glossy _kinni-kinnick_--the Indian tobacco.
We saw a nest built on the edge of the lake, rising and falling with the
water, but kept in place by the stalks of shrubs about it. A great brown
bird, with spotted breast, rose from it. I recognized it as the
dabchick. The Indians say that this bird was once a human being, wife to
an Indian with whom she quarrelled. He was transformed to the great
blue heron, and stalks about the marshes. With the remnant of her
woman's skill, she makes these curious nests, in sheltered nooks, on the
edges of lakes. She dived below the water, and we peeped in at her
babies. Their floating nest was overhung by white spirea. They had
silver breasts, and pale blue bills. I wondered that their little
bleating cry did not call her back; but, though below the water, she
seemed to know that we were near, and as long as we lingered about she
would not return.
We are going on a long journey to the north, part of it over a desert
table-land, where for four days there will be no house,--a part of the
country frequented by the Snake River Indians and the Nez Perces, who
are inclined to be hostile. It is near the territory of the Pend
d'Oreilles. I have seen one of them, with a pretty, graceful ornament in
her ear.
FORT COLVILLE, WASHINGTON TERRITORY,
June 8, 1866.
We travelled by steamer from Seattle to Portland, thence by a succession
of steamers as far as Wallulla. We then took the stage for Walla Walla,
at which point public accommodation for travel ceases. We stopped there
two or three days, seeking a conveyance across the country to this
point; and finally secured a wagoner, who agreed to transport us and our
luggage for a hundred dollars, the distance being two hundred miles.
The most interesting part of the journey was the passage of the
Columbia. The bar at the mouth of the river is a great hinderance to its
free navigation; and vessels are often detained for days, and even
weeks, waiting for a favorable opportunity to cross. We waited five days
outside in the fog, hearing all the time the deep, solemn warning of the
breakers, to keep off. Our steadfast captain, as long as he could see
nothing, refused to go on, knowing well the risk, though he sent the
ship's boats out at times to try to get his bearings. In all that time,
the fog never once lifted so that he could get the horizon-line. At the
end of the fifth day, he entered in triumph, with a clear view of the
river, the grandest sight I have ever seen. The passengers seemed hardly
to dare to breathe till we were over the bar. Some of them had witnessed
a frightful wreck there a few years before, when, after a similar
waiting in the fog for nearly a week, a vessel attempted to enter the
river, and struck on the bar. She was seen for two days from Astoria,
but the water was so rough that no life-boat could reach her. The
passengers embarked on rafts, but were swept off by the sea.
As we passed into the river, I sat on deck, looking about. All at once I
felt a heavy thump on my back, and a wave broke over my head,--a pretty
rough greeting from the sea. It seems that we slightly grounded, but
were off in an instant.
I had long looked forward to the wonderful experience of seeing this
immense river, seven miles broad, rolling seaward, and the great line of
breakers at the bar; but no one can realize, without actually seeing it,
how much its grandeur is enhanced by the surroundings of interminable
forest, and the magnificence of its snow-mountains. The character of the
river itself is in accordance with every thing about it, especially
where it breaks through the Cascade Mountains in four miles of rapids;
and still higher up, shut between basaltic walls, rushes with deafening
roar through the narrow passage of the Dalles, where it is compressed
into one-eighth of its width. For a long time I could not receive any
other sensation, nor admit any other thought, but of its terrific
strength. The Indians say that in former times the river flowed smoothly
where are now the whirling rapids of the Cascades, but that a landslide
from the banks dammed up the stream, and produced this great change. How
many generations have repeated the account of this wonderful occurrence,
from one to another, to bring it down to our times! This is now accepted
by scientific men as undoubtedly the fact.
It is hard to conceive the idea of the geologists, that this is only the
remnant of a vastly greater Columbia, that formerly occupied not only
its present bed, but other channels, now abandoned, including the Grande
Coulee, between whose immense walls it poured a current ten miles broad
at the mouth; and that the water was at some time one or two thousand
feet above the present level of the river, as shown by the terraces
along its banks, and fragments of drift caught in fissures of the rock.
The Grande Coulee is like an immense roofless ruin, extending north and
south for fifty miles. Strange forms of rock are scattered over the
great bare plain. To the Indians, it is the home of evil spirits. They
say there are rumblings in the earth, and that the rocks are hot, and
smoke. Thunder and lightning, so rare elsewhere on the western coast,
are here more common. The evidences of volcanic action are everywhere
apparent,--in the huge masses and curious columns of basaltic and
trap-rock, the lava-beds through which the rivers have found their way,
and the powdery alkaline soil. The marks of glaciers are also as
distinct in the bowlders, and the scooping-out of the beds of lakes. The
gravelly prairies between the Columbia and Puget Sound, and the
Snoqualmie, Steilaguamish, and other flats, show that the Sound was
formerly of much more extensive proportions than at present.
The Columbia was first discovered on the 15th of August, 1775, by Bruno
Heceta, a Spanish explorer, who found an opening in the coast, from
which rushed so strong a current as to prevent his entering. He
concluded that it was the mouth of some great river, or possibly the
Straits of Fuca, which might have been erroneously marked on his chart.
As this was the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, he
named the opening _Ensenada de Asuncion_ (Assumption Inlet); and it was
afterwards called, in the charts published in Mexico, _Ensenada de
Heceta_, and _Rio de San Roque_. He gave to the point on the north side
the name of Cape _San Roque_; and, to that on the south, Cape _Frondoso_
(Leafy Cape).
Meares, in 1788, gave the name of Cape Disappointment to the northern
point, owing to his not being able to make the entrance of the river,
and the mouth he called Deception Bay, and asserted that there was no
such river as the St. Roc, as laid down in the Spanish charts.
Vancouver also, when exploring the Pacific coast in 1792, passed by this
great stream, without suspecting that there was a river of any
importance there. He noticed the line of breakers, and concluded, that,
if there was any river, it must be unnavigable, from shoals and reefs.
He had made up his mind, that all the streams flowing into the Pacific
between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels of latitude were mere
brooks, insufficient for vessels to navigate, and not worthy his
attention.
Capt. Grey, who reached the place shortly after, with keener observation
and deeper in-sight, saw the indications of a great river there, and
after lying outside for nine days, waiting a favorable opportunity to
enter, succeeded in doing so on the 11th of May, 1792, being the first
to accomplish that feat, and explored the lower portion of it. He gave
to the river and to the southern point the names they now bear.
Vancouver failed in the same way to discover the Fraser, the great river
of British Columbia, although he actually entered the delta of the
river, and sailed about among the sand-banks, naming one of them
Sturgeon Bank; while the Spanish explorers, who were there about the
same time, recognized the fact of its existence far out at sea, in the
irregular currents, the sand-banks, the drift of trees and logs, and
also in the depression in the Cascade Mountains, which marks its
channel.
In 1805 Lewis and Clarke, who reached the mouth of the Columbia that
year, found that the Indians called the river "_Shocatilcum_" (friendly
water).
Tourists have not yet discovered what a wonderful country this is for
sight-seeing, fortunately for us. On our passage up the Columbia, after
leaving Portland, we sat for two or three days, almost alone, on the
deck of the steamer, with nothing to break the silence but the deep
breathing of the boat, which seemed like its own appreciation of it; and
sailed past the great promontories, some of them a thousand feet high,
and watched the slender silver streams that fall from the rocks, and
felt that we were in a new world,--new to us, but older and grander than
any thing we had ever seen.
We were shown a high, isolated rock, rising far above the water, on
which was a scaffolding, where, for many generations, the Indians had
deposited their dead. They were wrapped in skins, tied with cords of
grass and bark, and laid on mats. Their most precious possessions were
placed beside them, first made unserviceable for the living, to secure
their remaining undisturbed. The bodies were always laid with the head
toward the west, because the _memaloose illahie_ (land of the dead) lay
that way.
In the instincts of children and of uncivilized people, there seems
something to trust. This idea of Heaven's lying toward the west appears
to have been held by the New-England Indians also, and is expressed in
Whittier's lines,--
"O mighty Sowanna!
Thy gateways unfold,
From thy wigwam of sunset
Lift curtains of gold!
Take home the poor spirit whose journey is o'er--
_Mat wonck kunna-monee!_ We see thee no more!"
The Chinese have also the "peaceful land in the west," lying far beyond
the visible universe.
Farther up the river, we passed some abandoned diggings, where little
colonies of patient, toilsome Chinamen had established themselves, and
were washing and sifting the earth discarded by previous miners; making,
we were told, on the average, two or three cents to the pan. The
Chinaman regularly pays, as a foreigner (and is almost the only
foreigner who does so), his mining-license tax to the State. He never
seeks to interfere with rich claims, and patiently submits to being
driven away from any neglected spot he may have chosen if a white man
takes a fancy to it.
We stopped one night at Umatilla City, a cheerless little settlement at
the junction of the Umatilla River with the Columbia, in the midst of a
bleak, dreary waste of sand and sage-brush, without a sign of a tree in
any direction, a perfect whirlwind blowing all the time. What could
induce people to live there, I could not imagine.
We stopped a day or two at Walla Walla, where one of the early forts was
established; the post having been transferred from Wallula, where it was
called Fort "Nez Perces," from the Indians in that vicinity, who wore in
their noses a small white shell, like the fluke of an anchor.
The journey from Walla Walla to Fort Colville occupied eleven days and
nights, during which time we did not take a meal in a house, nor sleep
in a bed. It was cold, rainy, and windy, a good deal of the time, but we
enjoyed it notwithstanding. To wake up in the clear air, with the
bright sky above us, when it was pleasant; and to reach at night the
little oases of willows and birches and running streams where we
camped,--was enough to repay us for a good deal of discomfort. At one of
the camping-grounds,--Cow Creek,--a beautiful bird sang all night; it
sounded like bubbling water.
For several days we saw only great sleepy-looking hills, stretching in
endless succession, as far as the horizon extended, from morning till
night, as if a billowy ocean had been suddenly transfixed in the midst
of its motion. They have only thin vegetation on them,--not enough to
disturb or conceal the beautiful forms, the curves which the waves leave
on the hills they deposit. Their colors are very subdued,--pale salmon
from the dead grass, or light green like a thin veil, with the red earth
showing dimly through. There is no change in looking at them, but from
light to shadow, as the clouds move over them.
We travelled, for a long distance, over sage-brush and alkali plains. In
this part of the country, sage-brush is a synonym for any thing that is
worthless. We found the little woody twigs of it available for our
camping-fires; but its amazing toughness reminded me of a story told by
Mr. Boller, in his book "Among the Indians." He was taking a band of
mustang half-breeds from California to Montana, when, to his surprise,
one of the mares presented him with a foal. Supposing it would be
impossible for it to keep up with the party, he took out his revolver to
shoot it. Twice he raised it, but the little fellow trotted along so
cheerily that his heart failed him, and he returned it to the holster.
The colt swam creeks breast-high for the horses, and travelled on with
sublime indifference to every thing but the gratification of its keen
little appetite. He resolved to take it through, thinking it would never
do to destroy an animal of so much pluck, and named it "Sage-brush." It
swam every stream, flinched from nothing, and arrived in good order in
Montana, a distance of three hundred miles, having travelled every day
from the time it was half an hour old. Its name was most appropriate, as
an illustration of the character of the plant.
Intermixed with the wastes of sage-brush were patches of bunch-grass.
The horses sniffed it with delight as luxuriant pasturage. It is curious
to see how nature here acts in the interest of civilization. The old
settlers told us that many acres formerly covered with sage-brush were
now all bunch-grass. It is a peculiarity of the sage-brush, that fire
will not spread in it. The bush which is fired will burn to the ground,
but the next will not catch from it. The grass steals in among the
sage-brush; and, when that is burned, it carries the fire from one bush
to another. Although the grass itself is consumed, the roots strike
deep; and it springs up anew, overrunning the dead sage-brush.
Then we came to the most barren country I ever saw,--nothing but broken,
rusty, worm-eaten looking rocks, where the rattlesnakes live. But here
grew the most beautiful flower, peach-blossom color. It just thrust its
head out of the earth, and the long pink buds stretched themselves out
over the dingy bits of rock; and that was all there was of it. We took
some of the roots, which are bulbous, and shall try to furnish them with
sufficient hardships to make them grow.
One night, while in this region, we camped on a hill where the cayotes
came up and cried round us, which made it seem quite wild.
Wherever there was any soil, there was another little plant that was
very pretty to notice, both for itself, and because of its adaptation to
the climate in the dry season. It was coated with a delicate fur; and
long after the hot sun was up, and when every thing else was dry, great
diamonds of dew glistened in its soft hair. We saw a great many plants
of the lupine family, in every variety of shade, from crimson, blue, and
purple, to white.
On the last days we had all the time before us dark mountains, with snow
on their summits, and troops of trees on their sides, and ravines with
sun-lighted mists travelling through them. It was like getting into an
inhabited country, to reach the trees again: they were almost like human
beings, after what we had seen. The Spokane River divides the great
treeless plain on the south from the timbered mountainous country to the
north.
During this journey, we came upon various little bands of Indians, of
different tribes. We noticed the superiority of the "stick" Indians
(those who live in the woods) over those who live by the sea. The former
have herds of horses, and hunt for their living. The Indians who live by
fishing are of tamer natures, poor and degraded, compared to those of
the interior.
We saw at Walla Walla some of the Klickatats, from the mountains. They
were very bright and animated in their appearance, and wore fringed
dresses and ornamented leggings, and moccasins of buffalo-skin. They
were mounted upon fancy-colored and spotted horses, which they prize
above all others. They presented such a striking contrast to the lazy
Clalams on the Sound,--who used to say to us in reply to our inquiries
as to their occupations and designs, "_Cultus nannitsh, cultus
mitlight_" (look about and do nothing), as if that were their whole
business all day long,--that I was reminded of what some of the early
explorers said, that no two nations of Europe differed more widely from
each other than the different tribes of Indians.
One day we met an Spokane Indian, of very striking appearance, with a
face like Dante's, but with a happier expression. He was most becomingly
clothed in white blankets, compactly folded about him, with two or three
narrow red stripes across his bonnet of the same material, which had a
red peaked border, completely encircling the face, like an Irishwoman's
night-cap, or rather day-cap, but much more picturesque. He was scouring
the hills and plains between the Snake and Spokane Rivers, mounted on a
gay little pony, in search of stolen horses. Upon being questioned as to
his abiding-place, he informed us that he did not live anywhere.
We saw some representatives of another tribe of Indians, the Snakes.
They call themselves Shoshones, which means only "inland Indians." The
white people called them Snakes, probably because of their marvellous
power of eluding pursuit, by crawling off in the long grass, or diving
in the water. They seemed more wild and agile than any we had seen. The
Snakes were a very numerous tribe when the traders first came among
them. When questioned as to their number, by the agents of "The Great
White Chief," they said, "It is the same as the stars in the sky." They
were a proud, independent people, living mostly on the plains, hunting
the buffalo. They kept no canoes; depending only on temporary rafts of
bulrushes or willows, if not convenient to ford or swim across the
streams. They were the only Indians of this part of the country who had
any knowledge of working in clay,--their necessities obliging them to
make rude jugs in which to carry water across the bare plains. The
mountain Snakes were outlaws, enemies to all other tribes. They lived in
bands, in rocky caverns; and were said to have a wonderful power of
imitating all sounds of nature, from the singing of birds to the howling
of wolves,--by this means diverting attention from themselves, and
escaping detection in their roving, predatory expeditions.
When we reached the ferry on the Snake River, we saw some Indians
swimming their horses across. They were a bunting-party of Spokanes and
Nez Perces. Strapped on to one of the horses, with a roll of blankets,
was a Nez Perces baby. This infant, though apparently not over a year
and a half old, sat erect, grasping the reins, with as spirited and
fearless a look as an old warrior's.
At one of the portages, we saw some graves of chiefs; the bodies
carefully laid in east-and-west lines, and the opening of the lodge
built over them was toward the sunrise. On a frame near the lodge were
stretched the hides of their horses, sacrificed to accompany them to
another world. The missionaries congratulate themselves that these
barbarous ceremonies are no longer observed, that the Indian is weaned
from his idea of the happy hunting-ground, and the sacrilegious thought
of ever meeting his horse again is eradicated from his mind. I thought
with satisfaction that the missionary really knows no more about the
future than the Indian, who seems ill adapted to the conventional idea
of heaven. For my part, I prefer to think of him, in the unknown future,
as retaining something of his earthly wildness and freedom, rather than
as a white-robed saint, singing psalms, and playing on a harp.
Between the Snake and the Spokane are several beautiful lakes. We met a
hunter coming from one of them, who had shot a white swan. He said he
found it circling round and round its dead mate, in so much distress
that he thought it was a kindness to kill it.
We passed two great smoking mounds, and, on alighting to investigate,
found that we were in the midst of a kamas-field, where a great many
Indian women and children were busy digging the root, and roasting it in
the earth.
Some of the old women wore the fringed skirt, made of cloth spun and
woven from the soft inner bark of the young cedar, which they used to
wear before blankets were introduced.
The Indians eat other roots beside the kamas, but that is the one on
which they chiefly depend. As soon as the snow is off the ground, they
begin to search for a little bulbous root they call the _pohpoh_. It
looks like a small onion, and has a dry, spicy taste. In May they get
the _spatlam_, or bitter-root. This is a delicate white root, that
dissolves in boiling, and forms a bitter jelly. The Bitter Root River
and Mountains get their name from this plant. In June comes the kamas.
It looks like a little hyacinth-bulb, and when roasted is as nice as a
chestnut. We have seen it in blossom, when its pale-blue flowers
covered the fields so closely that, at a little distance, we took it for
a lake. One of the women, seeing our curiosity as we watched them, drew
some of the bulbs out of the earth ovens, and handed them to us. As we
tasted them, they explained that they were not ready to eat; that it
would take two or three days to roast them sufficiently. This they live
upon for two or three months; with the salmon, it is their chief article
of food. The women stop at the kamas-grounds, while the men go to the
fishing-stations.
In August they gather the choke-berry and service-berry, to dry for the
winter. When they are reduced to great extremity for food, they
sometimes boil and eat the moss and lichens on the trees, which the deer
eats. Most of the work of digging the roots, and picking the berries,
falls upon the women. On this account, a Spokane man in marrying joins
the tribe of his wife, instead of her joining his tribe; thinking, if he
takes her away from the places where she has been accustomed to find her
roots and berries, she may not succeed, in a new place, in discovering
them.
We saw, in the vicinity of the Pelouse River, some remarkable basaltic
rocks, that looked like buildings with columns and turrets and
bastions. Some of them were like my idea of the great kings' tombs of
the Egyptians. The colors on them were often very Egyptian-like,--bright
sulphur-yellow, and brown, and sometimes orange and dark
red,--incrustations of lichen and weather-staining. We saw, also, walls
of pentagonal columns of rock, packed closely together. Where the
Pelouse enters the Snake River, are immense ledges of square blocks.
When we camped there, and I lay down beneath them at night, "Swedish
_trappa_, a stair," from the geological text-book, was always running in
my mind,--this black trap-rock made such great steps that led up towards
the sky.
We have seen here a splendid specimen of gold, which is to be sent to
the Exposition at Paris. It is granulated, and sparkles as I never saw
gold before. Some one suggests that a thin film of quartz may be
crystallized over it.
Next week we hope to go up within sight of the whirlpools of Death's
Rapids, a long distance above here, on the Columbia River. These rapids
are so named on account of the number of persons who have been lost in
attempting to navigate them. Their names are cut into the rocks at the
side of the passage; their bodies have never been found.
IV.
Two Hundred Miles on the Upper Columbia.--Steamer
"Forty-Nine."--Navigation in a Canyon.--Pend d'Oreille River and
Lake.--Rock Paintings.--Tributaries of the Upper Columbia.--Arrow
Lakes.--Kettle
Falls.--Salmon-Catching.--Salmon-Dance.--Goose-Dance.
FORT COLVILLE, July 20, 1866.
We have just returned from a trip on the Columbia River, extending two
hundred miles north into British Columbia, on the little steamer built
in this vicinity for the purpose of carrying passengers and supplies to
the Big Bend and other mines in the upper country. We did not get to the
"Rapids of the Dead." The boat, this time, did not complete her ordinary
trip. Some of the passengers came to the conclusion that the river was
never intended to be navigated in places she attempted to run through.
It is a very adventurous boat, called the "Forty-nine," being the first
to cross that parallel,--the line separating Washington Territory from
British Columbia. The more opposition she meets with, and the more
predictions there are against her success, the more resolute she is to
go through; on which account, we were kept three weeks on the way, the
ordinary length of the passage being four days. I was surprised, when we
came to the first of what was called the "bad water," to see the boat
aim directly for it. It was much better, the captain said, to go "head
on," than to run the risk of being carried in by an eddy. I never saw
any river with such a tendency to whirl and fling itself about as the
Upper Columbia has. It is all eddies, in places where there is the least
shadow of a reason for it, and even where there is not; influenced, I
suppose, by the adjoining waters. Some of these whirl-pits are ten or
fifteen feet deep, measured by the trees that are sucked down into them.
The most remarkable part of the river is where it is compressed to
one-sixth of its width, in passing through a mountain gorge
three-quarters of a mile long. The current is so strong there, that it
takes from four to six hours for the steamer to struggle up against it,
and only one minute to come down. The men who have passed down through
it, in small boats, say that it is as if they were shot from the mouth
of a cannon.
When we reached this canyon, our real difficulties began. We attempted
to enter it in the afternoon, but met with an accident which delayed us
until the next morning. Meanwhile the river began to rise. It goes up
very rapidly, fifty, sixty, I believe even seventy, feet, sometimes. We
waited twelve days in the woods for it to subside. The captain cut us a
trail with his axe; and we sat and looked at the great snow-fields up on
the mountains, so brilliant that the whitest clouds looked dark beside
them. The magnificence of the scenery made every one an artist, from the
captain to the cook, who produced a very beautiful drawing of three
snow-covered peaks, which he called "The Three Sisters."
Everybody grew very impatient; and at length, one night, the captain
said he would try it the next morning, although he had never before been
up when the water was so high. A heavy rain came on, lasting all night,
so that it seemed rather desperate to attempt going through, if the
river was too high the night before; and I could hardly believe it, when
I heard the engineer getting up the steam to start. The wildest weather
prevailed at this time, and on all important occasions. As soon as we
went on board the boat, in first starting, a violent thunder-storm came
on, lightning, hail, and rain; and a great pine-tree came crashing
down, and fell across the bow of the boat. A similar storm came again
the first time we tried to enter the canyon; and the drift it brought
down so interfered with the steering, that it led to the accident before
mentioned. On this last morning, there were most evident signs of
disapproval all about us,--the sky perfect gloom, and the river
continually replenishing its resources from the pouring rain, and
strengthening itself against us. But we steamed up to the entrance of
the canyon. Then the boat was fastened by three lines to the shore, and
the men took out a cable six hundred feet in length, which they carried
along the steep, slippery rocks, and fastened to a great tree. One of
them rolled down fifty feet into the water, but was caught by his
companions before he was whirled away. They then returned to the boat,
let on all the steam, and began to wind up the cable on the capstan.
With the utmost power of the men and steam, it was sometimes impossible
to see any progress. Finally, however, that line was wound up; and the
boat was again secured to the bank, and the cable put out the second
time. This part of the passage was still more difficult; and, after the
line was arranged, two men were left on shore with grappling-irons to
keep it off the rocks,--a great, fine-looking one, who appeared equal to
any emergency, and a little, common one, with sandy hair and a
lobster-colored face and neck. We watched them intently; and, as we drew
near, we saw that the line had caught on something beneath the surface
of the water, so that they could not extricate it. The little man toiled
vigorously at it, standing in the water nearly up to his head; but
appeared to be feebly seconded, by the big one, who remained on the
rocks. It seemed as if the line would part from the strain, or the boat
strike the next moment. The mate shouted and gesticulated to them; but
no voice could be heard above the raging water, and they either could
not understand his motions, or could not do as they were directed. The
boat bore directly down upon them. Presently it seemed evident to us
that the little man must sacrifice himself for the steamer; but I did
not know how it looked to him,--people are all so precious to
themselves. He stopped a second, then flung back his cap and pole, and
threw himself under the boiling water. Up came the rope to the surface,
but the man was gone. Instantly after, he scrambled up the bank; and the
great magnificent man did nothing but clutch him on the back when he
was safely out.
We had then wound up about two-thirds of the cable. Immediately after,
this remarkable occurrence took place: The great heavy line came wholly
up out of the water. A bolt flew out of the capstan, which was a signal
for the men who were at work on it to spring out of the way. The captain
shouted, "Cut the rope!" but that instant the iron capstan was torn out
of the deck, and jumped overboard, with the cable attached to it. I felt
thankful for it, for I knew it was the only thing that could put an end
to our presumptuous attempt. I had felt that this rope would be a great
snare to us in case of accident. Three of our four rudders were broken;
but the remaining one enabled us to get into an eddy that carried us to
a little cove, where we stopped to repair damages sufficiently to come
down the river.
All day, the rain had never ceased; and the river had seemed to me like
some of those Greek streams that Homer tells of, which had so much
personal feeling against individuals. I felt as if we were going to be
punished for an audacious attempt, instead of rewarded for what might
otherwise have been considered a brave one. When the capstan
disappeared, it was just as if some great river-god, with a whiff of
his breath, or a snap of his fingers, had tossed it contemptuously
aside. So we turned back defeated. But there was a great deal to enjoy,
when we came to think of it afterwards, and were safely out of it. We
had seen nothing so bold and rugged before. An old Scotchman, who knows
more about it than any one else here, had said to us before we started,
"That British Columbia is such a terrible country, very little can ever
be known of it." But there was a great deal that was beautiful too. I
was particularly struck with the manner in which the Pend d'Oreille
springs into the Columbia. Glen Ellis Fall, gliding down in its
swiftness, always seemed to me more beautiful than almost any thing else
I ever saw. But this river is more demonstrative. It springs up, and
falls again in showers of spray, and comes with great leaps out of the
canyon, in a way that I cannot describe. There is in it more freedom and
strength and delight than in any thing else I ever saw. Far to the
south-east, this stream widens into Lake Pend d'Oreille. On this lake
are the wonderful painted rocks, rising far above the water, upon which,
at the height of several hundred feet, are the figures of men and
animals, which the Indians say are the work of a race that preceded
them. They are afraid to approach the rocks, lest the waters should rise
in anger, and ingulf them. There are also hieroglyphic figures far up on
the rocks of Lake Chelan, which is supposed to have once been an arm of
the Columbia. These paintings or picture-writings must have been made
when the water was so high in the lakes that they could be done by men
in boats.
Most of the tributaries of the Upper Columbia are similar in character
to the main stream,--wild, unnavigable rivers, flowing through deep
canyons, and full of torrents and rapids. With Nature so vigorous and
unsubdued about us, all conventionalities seemed swept away; and
something fresh and strong awoke in us, as if it had long slumbered
until the presence of its kindred in these mountain streams called it to
consciousness,--something of the force and freedom of these wild,
tireless Titans, that poured down their white floods to the sea.
Most of these streams rise in lakes, and in some part of their course
spread again into one or more lakes; as, the Arrow Lakes of the
Columbia, the Flat-head, Kootenay, Pend d'Oreille, and Coeur d'Alene,
and the beautiful string of lakes of the Okinakane, and many others.
As we passed through the Upper Arrow Lake and Lower Arrow Lake, which
lie in British Columbia, we had some splendid views of mountain scenery.
The Upper Lake is thirty-three miles long, and three in width,
crystalline water, surrounded by snow-covered peaks and precipices, and
forests of pine and cedar. The second is sixteen miles below the first,
forty-two miles in length, and two and a half wide. Innumerable arrows
were sticking in the crevices of the rocks. Formerly every Indian who
passed deposited an arrow,--intended probably as an offering to the
spirit that rules over the chase, just as the Indian medicine-man, when
he gathers his roots, makes an offering to the earth.
The Catholic missionaries were much surprised to find crosses erected
sometimes in lonely places, and at first supposed some other priests
must have preceded them; but learned that they were set up by the
Indians, in honor of the moon, to induce her to favor their nightly
expeditions for robbery or the chase.
JULY 22, 1866.
We have been on an excursion to Kettle Falls on the Columbia, where the
river dashes over the huge rocks in a most picturesque way. These falls
were called _La Chaudiere_ by the Canadian _voyageurs_, because the
pool below looks like a great boiling caldron. We noticed that limestone
there replaced the black basalt, of which we had seen so much, the water
falling over a tabular bed of white marble.
There we saw some Indians engaged in spearing salmon, as the fish were
attempting to leap the falls, in their passage up the stream to their
breeding-places. They do not always succeed in passing the falls at
their first leap, sometimes falling back two or three times. Many of
them are dashed on the rocks at the Cascades, and at other points where
the river presents obstacles to their progress. An immense number become
victims to the nets of the fishermen, and the traps and spears of the
Indians; and those that escape these dangers, and reach the upper
waters, are very much bruised and battered,--"spent salmon" they are
called. After their long journey of six or seven hundred miles from the
sea, it seems as if they would be filled with despair at the sight of
these boiling cataracts. They refuse bait on the way, apparently never
stopping for food, from the time they leave the salt water. Often with
fins and tails so worn down as to be almost useless, their noses worn to
the bone, their eyes sunken, sometimes wholly extinguished, they
struggle on to the last gasp, to ascend the streams to their sources. In
calm weather they swim near the surface, and close to the shore, to
avoid the strong current; and they are so possessed with this one
purpose, and so regardless of every thing about them, that the Indians
catch hundreds of them by merely slipping the gaff-hook under their
bodies, and lifting them out of the water,--selecting the best to
preserve for food, and throwing aside those that they consider as
worthless. These pale, emaciated creatures, I looked at with the
greatest interest. How strong is the impulse that carries them through,
in spite of these almost insurmountable obstacles! It is beyond our
knowledge, why, in coming in from the sea, they pass certain streams to
enter others; but this they are known to do, so perfectly do they
understand the mysterious direction given them.
The early explorers witnessed many ceremonies among the Indians not now
observed by them; as, the salmon-dance, to celebrate the taking of the
first salmon in the river. When the earliest spring salmon was caught in
the Columbia, the Indians were extremely particular in their dealings
with it. No white man could obtain it at any price, lest, by opening it
with a knife instead of a stone, he should drive all following salmon
from the river. Certain parts must be eaten with the rising, and others
with the falling, tide; and many other minute regulations carefully
observed. After the salmon-berry ripened, they relaxed their vigilance,
feeling that by that time the influx was secure.
The Gros Ventres celebrated the goose-dance, to remind the wild geese,
as they left in the autumn, that they had had good food all summer, and
must come back in the spring. This dance was performed by women, each
one carrying a bunch of long seed-grass, the favorite food of the wild
goose. They danced to the sound of the drum, circling about with
shuffling steps.
V.
Old Fort Colville.--Angus McDonald and his Indian Family.--Canadian
_Voyageurs_.--Father Joseph.--Hardships of the Early
Missionaries.--The Coeurs d'Alene and their Superstitions.--The
Catholic Ladder.--Sisters of Notre Dame.--Skill of the Missionaries
in instructing the Indians.--Father de Smet and the Blackfeet.--A
Native Dance.--Spokanes.--Exclusiveness of the Coeurs
d'Alene.--Battle of Four Lakes.--The Yakima Chief and the
Road-Makers.
FORT COLVILLE, July 25, 1866.
We have been making a little visit to Old Fort Colville, one of the
Hudson Bay stations, kept by Angus McDonald, an old Scotchman, who has
been there for a great many years. He is an educated gentleman, of a
great deal of character and intelligence; and his wife is an Indian
woman, who cannot live more than half the year in the house, and has to
wander about, the rest of it, with her _tilicums_ (relations and
friends).
It was interesting to see how this cultivated man, accustomed to the
world as he had been, had adapted himself to life in this solitary spot
on the frontier, with his Indian children for his only companions. He
has about ten. In some of them the Scotch blood predominated, but in
most the Indian blood was more apparent. The oldest son, a grown man,
was a very dark Indian, decorated with wampum. Christine, the oldest
daughter, resembled her father most. She kept house for him, because, as
she explained to us, her mother could not be much in-doors. She spoke,
too, of disliking to be confined. I asked her where she liked best to
be; and she said, with the Blackfeet Indians, because they had the
prettiest dances, and could do such beautiful bead-work; and described
their working on the softened skins of elk, deer, and antelope, making
dresses for chiefs and warriors. We had a sumptuous meal of
Rocky-Mountain trout, buffalo-tongues, and pemmican. Although Christine
was, in some respects, quite a civilized young lady, she occasionally
betrayed her innocence of conventionalities, as when she came and
whispered to me, before the meal was announced, what the chief dishes
were to be. She mentioned, as one of the delicacies of the Blackfeet,
berries boiled in buffalo-blood.
Mr. McDonald told us many stories about the Canadian _voyageurs_
employed by the Hudson Bay Company, illustrating their power of
endurance and their elastic temperament. One of their men, he said, was
lost for thirty-five days in the woods, and finally discovered by the
Indians, crawling on his hands and feet towards a brook, nearly
exhausted, but still keeping up his courage. He asked us if we could
conjecture how he had kept alive all that time, with no means whatever,
outside of himself, to procure food. He had actually succeeded in making
a fine net from his own hair, with which he caught small fishes,
devouring them raw, accompanied by a little grass or moss; not daring to
eat any roots or berries, lest they might be poisonous, as the country
was new to him. These Canadians are as brown as Indians, from their
constant exposure to the sun and wind, and have adapted themselves
completely to Indian ways, wearing a blanket _capote_, leather trousers,
moccasins, and a fur cap, with a bright sash or girdle to hold a knife
and a tobacco-pouch. Their half-breed children are generally excellent
canoe-men and hunters, with the vivacity of the father, and the
endurance of the mother's race. Marcel Bernier, one of these French
Canadians, was one of the early settlers in the Cowlitz Valley; and we
have travelled with him between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, and
once stopped at his house over night. It was quite different from the
common Indian houses; having pillow-cases trimmed with ruffles and lace,
and great bear-skin mats on the door. The baby slept in a little hammock
swung from the ceiling. The family were devoted Catholics, and sung
matins and vespers, and had pictures and images of saints about the
room. We were quite impressed by the advance in civilization which the
little admixture of French blood had brought.
Christine took us to see an ancient Indian woman, who remembers the
country when there were no white people in it. She has the fifth
generation of her children about her. She is wholly blind, her eyes
mostly closed, only little bloodshot traces of them left. She sat
serenely in the sunshine, hollowing out a little canoe of pine-bark for
the youngest, two little girls who swam in the arm of the river before
the tent-door.
We went with Christine also up on the bluff to see Father Joseph, a
Catholic priest, who represented to me a new class of men, whom I had
known before only in books. His eyes were as clear blue as Emerson's
ideal ones, that tell the truth; and I knew he meant it, when he
answered a question I asked him, in a way that surprised me, and which I
should have taken, in some men, for cant. I asked him if it was not
ever solitary there; and he said, "It is enough like my own home
[Switzerland] for that, but all countries are alike to me. We have no
home here below." For twenty-five years he has lived on the top of that
hill, with only miserable Indians around him, who could repay him very
little for all his efforts. In the Indian war, he was supposed to be so
strongly on the side of the Indians, that the government agent, as I
find by the printed report, recommended his removal; although he
admitted that it was hard to say any thing against a man who had made
such unbounded sacrifices for what he considered the good of the
Indians. He had books in all languages on his shelves, and was very
intelligent and courteous.
He described the condition of the country when the first little band of
Jesuits, of whom he was one, entered upon the Oregon mission,--Oregon
then extending east as far as the Rocky Mountains. They had often to
travel through dark forests, into which the daylight never entered, and,
axe in hand, make their own paths through the wilderness, sometimes
crawling on all-fours through labyrinths of fallen trees, fording rivers
where the water reached to their shoulders, travelling afterwards in
their wet clothes, with swollen limbs, and moccasins soaked in blood
from laceration of their feet by the thorns of the prickly pear, and
lying down at night on their beds of brushwood, wrapped in their
buffalo-robes. The Indians were full of curiosity to know what they were
in search of, and listened with great interest when they attempted to
talk with them. The first group that Father Joseph gathered about him
sat all night to hear him, although they had come from hard labor of
hunting and fishing, and digging roots. He said, that, however degraded
they were, they were all eager to find some power superior to man.
The tribe among whom he first established himself--the Coeurs
d'Alene--were renowned among all the tribes for their belief in sorcery;
and he experienced great difficulty in making an impression upon them,
from the opposition of the medicine-men (jugglers). Among this tribe he
found two relics held in great esteem, of which the Indians gave him
this account:--
They said that the first white man they ever saw wore a spotted-calico
shirt--which to them appeared like the small-pox--and a great white
comforter. They thought the spotted shirt was the Great Manitou himself,
the master of the alarming disease that swept them off in such vast
numbers, and that the white comforter was the Manitou of the snow; that,
if they could only secure and worship them, the small-pox would be
banished, and abundant snows would drive the buffalo down from the
mountains. The white man agreed to give them up, receiving in exchange
several of their best horses; and for many years these two Manitous were
carried in solemn procession to a hill consecrated to superstitious
rites, laid reverently on the grass, and the great medicine-pipe (which
is offered to the earth, the sun, and the water) was presented to them;
the whole band singing, dancing, and howling around them.
Father Joseph treated the Indians altogether as children, and devised a
system of object-teaching, making little images representing what they
were to shun, and what to seek, to which he pointed in instructing them.
He considered it a miracle, that they yielded their hearts to his
teaching; but it seemed to me, that if the good priest's gentle ways and
entire devotion to their welfare had produced no effect, it would have
been as contradictory to all the laws of nature as any miracle could be.
While instructing some savages from Puget Sound, he said the idea came
into the mind of one of the priests, to represent by a ladder, which he
made on paper, the various truths and mysteries of religion, in their
chronological order. This proved vastly beneficial in instructing them.
It was called the "Catholic ladder," and disseminated widely among the
Indians; their progress in religion being measured by their knowledge of
this ladder. At the same time that he sent the ladder among them, he
sent also roots and seeds and agricultural tools. I could hardly repress
a smile at seeing that he spoke with the same enthusiasm of their
success with the beans and potatoes, as with the ladder. The truth is,
that he had deeply at heart the good of these, his "wild children of the
forest," as he always called them. It was quite touching to him, he
said, to see how ready they were to believe that God took charge of
earthly things as well as of heavenly.
One of his associates in the early missions was a Belgian priest, whose
journal he showed us. He brought over, to aid in the work, six sisters
of Notre Dame, in 1844. The vessel which brought them to the Pacific
coast stopped at Valparaiso and Lima, to inquire how to enter the
Columbia River. Not receiving any satisfactory information, they sailed
north till they reached the forty-sixth degree of latitude. Then they
explored for several days, and at length saw a sail coming out of what
appeared to be the mouth of a river. They immediately sent an officer to
find out from this vessel how to enter; but, as he did not return, they
were obliged to approach alone the "vast and fearful mouth of the
river," and soon found themselves in the terrible southern channel, into
which, they were assured afterwards, no vessel had ever sailed before.
The commander of the fort at Astoria had endeavored, by hoisting flags,
by great signal-fires, and guns, to warn them of their danger. They saw
the signals, but did not suspect their intention. They sailed two miles
amidst fearful breakers. When at length they reached stiller water, a
canoe approached them, containing an American man and some Clatsop
Indians. The white man told them he would have come sooner to their aid,
but the Indians refused to brave the danger; and said that he expected
every moment to see the vessel dashed into a thousand pieces. The
Indians, seeing it ride triumphantly over the dreadful bar, considered
it under the special guidance of the Great Spirit, and greeted it with
wild screams of delight. This was the introduction of the serene sisters
to their field of labor. My idea of the sisters generally had been of
pale, sad beings, whose most appropriate place was by the side of
death-beds. These sisters of Notre Dame were brisk, energetic women, of
lively temperaments. Finding the building which was preparing for them
not yet provided with doors and windows, from the scarcity of mechanics,
they themselves set about planing, glazing, and painting, to make every
thing neat and comfortable. Wilkes, in his account of his exploring
expedition, speaks regretfully of the poor appearance the Protestant
missions presented, when compared with those of the Catholics; there
being among the former an unthrifty, dilapidated look, and the Indians
he saw there appeared to be employed only as servants.
The Catholics took pains to make all their ceremonies as imposing as
circumstances would permit; making free use of musketry, bright colors,
and singing,--things most attractive to an Indian,--remarking often,
"Noise is essential to the Indian's enjoyment," and, "Without singing,
the best instruction is of little value." They showed the Indians that
they regarded the comfort and good of their bodies, as well as of their
souls; giving them at Easter a great feast of potatoes, parsneps,
turnips, beets, beans, and pease, to impress upon them the advantages of
civilization, and taking pains that the requirements of religion should
not interfere with the fishery or the chase. All the good customs and
practices already established among them, they confirmed and approved,
and found much to sympathize with in the Indians. The suavity and
dignified simplicity of the chiefs particularly pleased them, and the
relation of the chief to the people,--they consulting him in regard to
every public or private undertaking, as when about to take a journey, or
when entering upon marriage; he regulating the gathering of roots and
berries, the hunting and fishing, and the division of spoils. The
priests said of the chief, "He speaks calmly, but never in vain." They
admired the self-control of the Indians, who never showed any impatience
when misfortunes befell them; and said, that, the farther they
penetrated into the wilderness, the better Indians they found. They were
especially pleased with those about the sources of the Columbia, and
said of their converts in that region, "If it be true that the prayer of
him who possesses the innocence, the simplicity, and the faith of a
child, pierces the clouds, then will the prayers of these dear children
of the forest reach the ear of Heaven." They were interested in the
different views of the future life held by the different tribes. To
those who lived by woods and waters, heaven was a country of lakes,
streams, and forests; but the Blackfoot heaven was of great sandhills,
stretching far and wide, abounding in game.
They devoted themselves with great zeal to reconciling hostile tribes,
particularly the Blackfeet and Flat-heads. All the tribes feared the
Blackfeet, especially that terrible sub-tribe called the "Blood
Indians." The Snakes, too, were a common enemy to all the river-tribes.
Father De Smet, the Belgian priest, with great intrepidity started for
the Blackfoot country, although receiving numerous warnings of the risk
he incurred. He encamped in the heart of their country. One of their
chiefs sought him out, and took a fancy to the fearless old man at
sight, embracing him in savage fashion, "rough but cordial." This chief
was ornamented from head to foot with eagle-feathers, and dressed in
blue as a mark of distinction. With this powerful friend, he immediately
gained a footing among them. He conducted towards them with great wisdom
and kindness, interfering as little as possible with their old customs.
After he had made many converts among them, they asked him, on one of
the great days of the Church, if he would like to see them manifest
their joy in their own way,--by painting, singing, and dancing; to
which he gave courteous assent. The dance was performed wholly by women
and children, although in the dress of warriors. Some of them carried
arms, others only green boughs. All took part in it, from the toddling
infant to the ancient grandam whose feeble limbs required the aid of a
staff. They carried caskets of plumes, which nodded in harmony with
their movements, and increased the graceful effect. There was also
jingling of bells, and drums beaten by the men who surrounded them, and
joined in the songs. To break the monotony, occasionally a sudden
piercing scream was added. If the dance languished, haranguers and those
most skilful in grimaces came to its aid. The movement consisted of a
little jump, more or less lively according to the beat of the drum. It
was danced on a beautiful green plain, under a cluster of pines. All the
Indians climbed the trees, or sat round on their horses, to see it.
The missionaries secured some of their readiest converts among the
Spokanes (children of the sun), who lived mostly on a great open plain.
Instead of being crafty and reserved, like most of the tribes about
them, they were free and genial. They welcomed the earliest explorers,
and lived on friendly terms with the settlers. They were more
susceptible to civilization and improvement than most of the other
Indians.