THEIR DAILY EXISTENCE
The illustrations of the Puget Sound Indian accompanying are very
characteristic of the race. In the main the general characteristics are
such that they cannot be mistaken. The infusion of white and foreign
blood during the last 30 years or so has had a marked effect upon the
later generation and to a great extent changed the current of Indian
life. Leaving out of the question the general features of color and
vigorousness of form they are readily distinguishable from the pure
bloods about them. Half-breeds more readily fall into and adopt the
customs and practices of the whites and to a considerable extent are not
averse to manual labor. Hence they are found in the mills and forests of
the country sharing the burdens of civilized life.
But work for a genuine Siwash is no more palatable than it is to a
Patagonian. He sticks to his “canim” like a leech to the epidermis.
Laziness is a cultivated characteristic of the old-time Indian, is
grafted into his being as indelibly as the tattooing on the arm of an
East India man and he will never work so long as the sands on his native
beach contain a live clam or the hills above a huckleberry bush from
which his klootchman can dig a bivalve or pick a wicker basket of blue
berries. He will not even deign to assist in these simple labors, and
in this he does not surpass his kinsman who are reared in the interior.
These are the drudgery of his klootchman and night or day, sun or rain,
she may always be found on the beach rustling up the next meal. He will
sometimes accompany her and when there are two baskets to “tote” he may
even consent to carry one, but it is much more to his nature to trudge
along at the rear empty handed. This characteristic is more apparent in
the cities when, having more of one or the other than the family larder
requires for the time being, they seek the towns to dispose of it for a
trifling sum, which is to be expended in knick knacks, gew gaws, etc.,
etc., that are the fancy of the Indian mind.
[Illustration: BUILDING SIWASH CANIM]
The one thing only which the old-time Siwash thinks it not beneath his
dignity to indulge in is fishing, and this is his particular special
privilege which he never permits any interference with. True, his dame
has the privilege of fishing for cod and dogfish and the commoner
species, but the taking of the lordly salmon is never relegated to her.
If he is one of the old-time Indians wrapped still in the superstitious
beliefs of his ancestors, not only is she not permitted the pleasure
of the chase for salmon, but she is never permitted to put her foot
inside the salmon canim, nor is she ever allowed to touch the salmon
line or hook. That would forever spoil either canoe or line from use by
the imperious head of the household. These practices, while still in
vogue among the more isolated villages, is not so strictly adhered to
by Indians who almost daily come in contact with the whites, nor are
these remnants of a superstitious race very widely known among their
enlightened and civilized neighbors. A trip to any of the favorite
fishing grounds about the Sound and a study of the life of the village
will convince any one that were they suddenly removed from all influence
of civilized life, the Indian of today is just as he was when the
first white man’s boat ploughed the gentle waters of the Sound. The
thoroughbred Siwash will not even countenance the pretty gearing of the
modern fisherman, but clings tenaciously to those articles fashioned by
his own hand. He, however, will use the spoon in trolling, but it is one
he has made himself from the metal and polished in his own way, swung
from a bit of wire crooked and fashioned in his own odd fashion. His is
an invention unprotected, yet he will never trouble himself about letters
patent, for no white man can ever imitate his work successfully. There
is something about it that seems to have a most unusual attraction for
the finest and best, for a Siwash is seldom met with winter or summer,
on a fishing expedition without one or more of the best fish the water
contains.
They know just the hour, just the spot and place when and where to fish
and seldom are seen trolling any other time. Trout a Siwash has no
love for and never attempts to take. He may have his camp on a stream
alive with the finest of the trout species, but he never molests them.
A polluted dog salmon lying dead upon the sand bank is more preferable
in his eyes and he will pick up one and walk away with the same grim
satisfaction that he will after having speared or hooked a monster silver
side, the king of the genus.
The klootchman is no less characteristic in appearance and features than
the Siwash himself. They are decrepit in looks, bowed in form from the
constant life-long use of the canim, prematurely old and unsociable as
a black bear. There is if possible more superstition, more mystery to
the klootchman than to her lordly partner. She never talks to the whites
unless it is to offer for sale the fruit from the forest, the catch from
the salt water or when around on begging expeditions, and of the latter
there is little. The Siwash will stoop to outright begging, especially
if he is a chief or has become debauched by associates with evil-minded
whites, but his wife scarcely ever.
La belle klootchman is both the pride of the family and the belle of the
village, and on her is lavished all the fashion and vermillion of the
sweet society of the natives. She dotes on loud colors and is noticeably
proud of whatever she wears as long as it is bright and showy. She
ages, however, like an autumn leaf and once past sweet sixteen she is
relegated to the shades of ugliness and forgotten. Of all things, Indian,
the hardest to determine would be the age of the pure blood Siwash or
klootchman. They may be about 30 or may be 75, they all look alike after
reaching the usual majority in years.
Outside the supplying of daily wants the only other task of the
pure-blood Siwash is the building of his cedar canoes. Seldom is it
that the whites get an opportunity of seeing this work in progress. It
is most always done on or near the beach in out-of-the-way places and
the old-fashioned Indian-made hand adz is as religiously adhered to
as it ever was. The interior of the cedar log was originally cleared
by burning, but occasionally they will now condescend to the use of a
heavier instrument secured from the whites to get rid of the core. In
trimming down, fashioning and finishing up the canoe the little bit of
sharpened steel is, however, always used.
Early Indians, and for that matter all of the present day, entertained
a righteous dread of photography. Electricity, the galvanic battery and
the telegraph wires were things as dreadful to them as their imaginary
Skal-lal-la-toot, that ranged the woods about their villages. They
believe that these things are spirits of some kind that have been through
the influence of the white man’s Ta-mahn-a-wis or big medicines enslaved
to the fellow who happens to possess the electrical appliance.
When the old trader, William Deshaw, who has been frequently mentioned
in connection with Port Madison Indians, first came to Agate pass to
look after the Indians there he took with him an old-fashioned galvanic
battery. This mysterious instrument probably invested him, in the eyes
of the simple savages, who had never before heard of such things, with
greater power than anything else he could possibly have taken among them.
It promoted him at once to the position of a great white Ta-mahn-a-wis,
whose influence was never afterwards disputed. Soon after his appearance
there and acquaintance with the Old-Man-House tribes the construction
of the old Puget Sound Telegraph & Cable company’s line was carried
past their village and it became a thing of dreadful consequence to the
Indians. They avoided it and feared it as they did the “evil eye.” It
was quite an impossible thing to ever get an Indian to lend a hand at
replacing the wires in position when they happened to become broken down
during the winter storms. Touch an electric wire? They would sooner have
suffered the loss of a hand under a chopping block.
The old trader tells of many amusing spectacles with the use of the
old galvanic battery on some of the Indians. As before stated the
practices of their severe superstitious rites often caused many of the
Ta-mahn-a-wis men to fall into trance-like and comatose conditions,
from which it was impossible, by any known Indian agency to arouse
them. The old trader tells of one that occurred at Old-Man-House in
which the efficacy of the old galvanic battery was proved to the Indians
satisfaction with a vengeance. One of these old medicine men had after
several days of unusual exertion and privation fallen into a comatose
condition. Every art known to the other’s Ta-mahn-a-wis had been exerted
to no purpose and as a last resort the Indians had sent for the white
Ta-mahn-a-wis living across the narrow pass.“So he’s dead, is he?”
inquired the trader of the Indians who went after him.
“Yes, he’s dead. Indian Ta-mahn-a-wis no good for him,” returned the
couriers.
“Umph! yes, well white man’s Ta-mahn-a-wis fetch him,” said the trader
and he went after the old battery. Going across he found the Indian lying
on the floor of a hut upon the inevitable rush mat and to all intents and
purposes dead as a mackerel, with a howling, prancing mob of his brethren
about him.
The trader felt of him, but he was cold and bloodless without apparent
pulse or life. He cleared a space about him and arranged his battery. The
Indians becoming subdued watched the process with incredulity and stoical
silence. The poles of the instrument were placed so that the full effect
of the electric current would be most keenly felt, and then the operator
turned it on with force enough to have broken up the nerve system of a
dozen ordinary men. With a bound and a shriek the prostrate form was on
his feet in an instant and so sudden was the transformation that half the
onlookers were knocked down by the terrified and quickened medicine man
by his wild leap into the air. He bolted for the door and took for the
woods amidst the greatest consternation of his mourning friends. He did
not return for some days, but the evil spirit that had been supposed to
have taken possession of him was effectually squelched. After that there
was no more incredulous smiles and looks when the galvanic battery was
around.
This trader, who knew Seattle’s famous old chief almost as a brother,
says they had a great time trying to secure a photograph of him in the
early days. There was but one small photograph gallery in Seattle at that
time. Many days and weeks passed before the old settler could induce
the chief even to go near the place. By degrees they got him in the
building, but when he would see the muzzle of the camera pointed at him,
he would invariably break away. One day the settlers went all the way to
Fort Steilacoom and bought a new suit of soldiers clothes for him to be
photographed in. The old chief was greatly pleased at such a compliment,
but when he found there was to be a string to the proposition, a
consideration in the way of submitting to be photographed, the settlers
could do nothing further with him. In the language of the old trader,
“That put a squibosh on the whole business.”
At the next attempt to get the old fellow photographed somebody got
him to “swilling” a little and managed to get the old fellow into the
gallery. He was too much under the influence of the liquid to know what
was being done, and the photographer got a shot at him. When the old
chief came to his senses he was dreadfully outraged in feeling and said
that he “didn’t want any more shots at him.” After that when looking
through a picture book the old chief was very careful. The Indian’s
superstition led him to believe that men in a picture took the evil
genius of the photograph, or the electric wire lurked to pounce out and
enslave him.
[Illustration: SYMBOLIC DRAWING—Northern Indians]