THE EXTINCT SHILSHOH TRIBE
Of the Shilshohs, a tribe once inhabiting the country about Salmon bay
and in ante-civilized times all the country from Smith’s cove and Lake
Union north to the Snohomish river, there is not at this time a single
known representative living, the tribe is extinct. Of these Indians
little is known. Dr. H. A. Smith, of Smith’s cove, who settled among them
about the time of the first settlement of Seattle, probably has the best
general knowledge of these bygone people. He furnished the author the
following particulars:
When I settled here in 1853 about a dozen Indian families of the Shilshoh
tribe were still living on Salmon bay and I learned from them that within
the recollection of their old men they numbered between 500 and 600
including children, and according to tradition their numbers once ran up
into the thousands and that they occupied the entire country from Smith’s
cove and Lake Union to the Snohomish river. They claimed that the cause
of their rapid decline was owing to frequent raids made upon them by the
Northern or Stickeen Indians, who visited the Sound every year for the
purpose of plunder; that they were a very cruel people who delighted in
murder and never spared prisoners except for the purpose of enslaving
them. That they lived in constant dread of their northern and warlike
foes is evident from a circumstance that came under my own observation in
the fall of 1853.
Desiring to reload a revolver that had become somewhat rusty, I stepped
out into the yard and fired five or six shots in rapid succession about 8
o’clock in the evening.
Three days after one of the Shilshohs came to my house in a very agitated
frame of mind to inquire if I had seen anything of the Stickeens. He said
his folks heard rapid firing in the direction of my house three nights
before and thought I had been attacked by the Northern Indians, perhaps
killed, and, to save themselves his people had all taken to the woods,
where they were still in hiding. He had skulked around by Lake Union and
along near Salmon bay and up to my house to learn if possible whether
the Stickeens had left Salmon bay. Although I assured him that I had
been the innocent cause of their alarm it was several days before they
ventured back.
The few families that were here when I first came to live in the Cove
melted away like a morning frost. Gambling is a ruling passion among
nearly all Indians and I attribute their rapid extinction largely to that
vice.
After the “Bostons,” as they called Americans to distinguish them from
the Hudsons bay traders, came among them they soon began to live better.
They bought flour, beans, rice, clothes, blankets, and many of the more
enterprising among them lived quite comfortably until a gambling mania
would seize them when they would frequently gamble off everything they
owned, even their clothes, and then sleep on the bare ground or some
newly gathered ferns or moss and so nearly naked. The result of course
would be colds ending in pneumonia or consumption.
Dr. Jim, a genuine herb doctor, who was quite renowned for his many
astonishing cures among the sable sons of the forest, was the last of
the Shilshohs. He was really a superior Siwash, manly, fine looking and
intelligent, and during the last years of his chequered life he spoke the
English language fluently. About fifteen years ago he grew weary of this
world and left it by hanging himself to a rafter in his own house at the
mouth of the Shilshoh bay one morning while his old wife was preparing
breakfast.
Never having been blessed with offspring and his last wife being a lake
Indian, his death struggles ended the cares of a man-cursed tribe, once
famed for its manly men and comely maidens. Of course they were not
comely viewed from the standpoint of a cultured American esthete, but the
maidens with fine features and red cheeks were as beautiful to the tawny
hunter tribes as a Hebe would be to a Bostonian.
Of their life and legends Dr. Smith never fully acquainted himself. Here
is one tribe of native people at least who will pass into oblivion with
scarcely a line left to the history-loving and history-writing people
who have taken their places. One legend alone and that the pioneer has
reduced to verse has been preserved. The legend, as it appears, was
written 40 years ago merely for the pleasure of it by the old pioneer and
never was offered for publication. It is tinged with romance and relates
to an Indian maiden whose betrothed was killed during a raid by the
Northern or Stickeen Indians to Shilshoh bay. The Indian maiden’s grief
was so great that she became deranged and on several occasions started
alone in search of the absent lover in a canoe imagining she could sail
to the happy hunting grounds and into the sunshine of his happy presence.
One morning she was missing and as her lover’s canoe was gone and as her
tracks proved that she had taken it her friends easily guessed her fate:
GAZELLE, THE FOREST MAIDEN.
The birds and the beasts had retired to rest,
The sun’s lingering rays from the mountains had fled,
And angels had folded away from the west
The wind-woven curtains of purple and red.
The moon’s silver morning had mantled the hills,
Inviting the world’s weary millions to lay
Their sorrows aside for the beauty that thrills
And soothes into silence the cares of the day.
When, lured by the luster of mountain and lea,
A maniac-maiden stole out of her tent
To wander and weep by the sorrowing sea
And sadden the night with her mournful lament.
A sibylline song to her lover she sang,
As she sat in the moonlight alone by his grave,
And a more mournful strain on the night never rang
Or saddened the soul of a guardian brave.
“How oft have I seen him when only a child,
His forehead with feathery fetishes crownded,
Arrest with his arrow the deer in the wild,
Or bring the gray swan from the sky to the ground.
“How oft have I seen a strange light in his eyes
As over the white foaming billows we whirled
And watched the red lightnings dart down from the skies
To pilot the hurricane over the world.
“No more by the tempest tossed sea will he stroll,
No more will he worship the wilderness here,
For his spirit has gone to the home of the soul
Where bison and elk are abundant as deer.
“O that the Great Spirit would answer my plea
And bear me away on the wings of the waves
To that lovelier land that lies over the sea,
Where winds never moan over moss-covered graves.”
While singing, her eyes by fatality strayed
To a little canoe, that she loved as her life,
In which they had sailed from a flowery glade
The morning he promised to make her his wife.
Soon a wild fancy seized her, she paused not to ask
A moment its meaning, her only desire
Was strength to perform the congenial task
Her _genius loci_ saw fit to inspire.
A brief minute more and the bark was untied,
With a fluttering heart and a tremulous hand,
And launched on the waters, so lonely and wide,
That rapidly hurried away from the land.
“I’ll find him! I’ll find him!” she shouted in glee,
“His tent must be pitched in some flowery dell
In the land of the sachems beyond the blue sea
Where now he is waiting to welcome Gazelle.”
The full moon was nearing the noonday of night,
The waves sang the songs she had loved when a child,
And her young, happy heart was elate with delight
As they bore her away from her dear native wild.
And as onward she sped at the tide’s rapid pace,
Alone with her heart and the heavens above,
The silent stars looked on her young, sinless face,
Too full of faith’s pathos, with pity and love.
For, far to the westward the winds were at war,
And soon sudden darkness spread over the world,
The waves were abroad with a hoarse, sullen roar
And nearer and colder they eddied and curled.
The moon and the stars with their stillness were gone,
Red meteors darted anon through the dark,
And fate seemed to hurry the hurricane on
Where rocked on the billows a rudderless bark.
When Neptune, near morning, the billows had bound
And stars hung in heaven like spangles of gold,
Deep down in the regions of silence profound
A form, faintly human, lay lifeless and cold.
But where, oh ye winds, is the maniac-maiden?
And what of love’s hopes that so often have lied?
Let us trust she arrived at the red hunter’s Aiden
And greeted the warrior awaiting his bride.