THE SIWASH CHARACTERISTICS
The history of the Siwash is tradition, as it is with all aborigines.
The early tales of the Norsemen, the Gaul, the Celt, are mere matters
of history, perhaps distorted, but withal, history. The lower the order
of the race, the lower its mental capacities, the more truth there is
in the lore—the tales of its past. The incidents of their lives which
collectively become their history, are handed down from father to son,
from generation to generation, plain and unembellished. The Siwash, a
race to whom instinct is superior to thought, are perhaps the strongest
example of a people whose history is least faulty. What grandsire has
told to father is retold to son in a language whose vocabulary is so
limited as not to permit of changing of the original subject matter.
True, the same deficiency of mental power blots out the distant past.
Three generations represent the era of their history; beyond that the
grandsire’s memory closes; but as the incidents which are here chronicled
are within the memory of many natives living at this time, and from
whom they were gathered and related without variation it can be truly
accepted as authentic. It has been practically accepted as a historic
fact that Vancouver first penetrated into Puget Sound with his vessel the
Discoveror. Juan de Fuca preceded him on the straits, but to Vancouver
belongs the glory of having first penetrated to the upper Sound and
pointed out a way for the sturdy pioneers that were to follow him. The
first vessel of which the Indians, on the upper Sound at least, had any
memory at the time the whites began to flock among them was certainly
Vancouver’s.
[Illustration: TYPICAL SIWASH FACE]
The Siwash of Puget Sound (a general term applied to males of all the
tribes) and the Indians of the entire North Pacific coast, like every
native of every country possessing significant features of topography,
flora, and most of all climate, is bent to his surroundings. The Siwash
is the creature of the circumstances of climate in a very great degree,
and he could never escape it—never will till the last of his race is
lost in oblivion. His mode of life, the almost continual living in a
squatting, cramped position in his canim from generation to generation,
shows in his broken, ungraceful proportions today; and it cannot
be doubted but that in the humid atmosphere of Puget Sound and the
abbreviated territory in which he has lived are to be found the potent
factors that have united to make him at this day the essence of ugliness
in human mould.
No matter where the Siwash came from, his past is so remote it will never
be known.
A favorite way some have and a plausible excuse for saying anything at
all, is to speculate on the Asiatic origin of the Indians of this part
of America. Captain Maryatt tries to locate the Shoshones, whom he gives
very wide latitude and longitude on the Pacific coast, among ruined
cities and an extinct civilization and fauna, in distant Tartary; the
Hydias are ascribed to Japan; the Kanacka resembles the Japanese, etc.
As well assume the Siwash of Puget Sound are descendants of the Dakotahs
or of some of the tribes east of the great Father of Waters, because
the Thunderbird myth is traced from east to west with slightly varying
antecedents and forms from one tribe to another. The Indian origin is a
theme for speculation only.
[Illustration: A KLOOTCHMAN]
The Siwash is indubitably the result of hundreds of years residence on
the forest-fringed shores of his Whulge. He probably could not endure for
a generation elsewhere. He is completely moulded to his surroundings and
is more nearly able to resist the deleterious results of the superior
civilization than 99 out of 100 of the tribes in the broad interior of
the American continent. Years and years ago, when the renowned old Chief
Sealth was at the head of the allied tribes around Sdze-Sdze-la-lich and
Squ-ducks (Seattle and West Seattle, or Elliott bay and Alki point), it
is said that his legions numbered not more than 750 or 800 Indians. Who
today will say that there is not now nearly that number of Indians almost
within the same confines? In the face of the most aggressive development
and civilization of the last ten years, robbed of every favorite haunt
for hunting and fishing, with paddle wheels never ceasing to disturb the
quiet waters of his ancient rivers and bays where the salmon was wont to
sport, and with new population that had encroached upon every foot of
land where his klootchman might have raised a little patch of potatoes,
as she did a score of years ago, he has withstood it all and continues
to hold on. No one ever hears of a Siwash dying unless occasionally on
the reservations. A papoose dies once in a while during a change from
the ordinary modes of life brought about by annual migrations to the hop
fields.
[Illustration: LA BELLE KLOOTCHMAN]
The Siwash is the very reverse of a Nomad. He is studious only in his
stolidity and inactivity. He never travels within the meaning of the
word, and there’s probably not a dozen of the full-blooded Indians who
have been fifty miles from salt water. It was not infrequent for the
plains’ Indians beyond the great coast range of mountains to descend to
the sea, but that the Siwash should ascend to and beyond the summit of
those lofty and snow-clad hills—never.
Out of his canoe he is a fish out of water, a sloth away from his natural
surroundings. He is like a seal on shore, a duck on dry land, ungainly
and awkward. He never, probably, was brave, never quarrelsome in that he
went out in search of war. Not infrequently he was the object of forays
by his kinsmen from the far north or the east. Then he defended himself
and family as best he could and got into the brush with all possible
haste, where he was as safe from pursuit as if in a citadel. Not in the
museums anywhere in the country is there at this time, it is believed,
a single genuine implement of war of the early Indians who lived on
the shores of Puget Sound. The Atlantic seaboard and the interior were
deluged with centuries, it may be said, of savage warfare. One short war,
a mere uprising on Puget Sound in early days, and that instigated by
natives living beyond the edges of the Puget Sound forest, and all was
over. Ever after the Siwash was an indifferent, uncomplaining creature.
He drew one or two short annuities and government aid was practically
withdrawn, and that, too, after his heritage of woods and waters had been
taken from him. But one hears no plaint of disturbed and unmanageable
Indians. He is content to live on so long as there is space for his cedar
canoe to glide on the water and an open beach whereon he may erect a
temporary tent.