PLEASURE AND PROFIT IN THE MARSH
Checked by the impenetrable forests that covered all the interior of the
country bordering on Puget Sound, the native Indians found pleasure and
profit in investigating the marsh lands, tules and tide lands and beaver
dams, and chasing the festive musk rat and the industrious beaver; or
taking the numerous water fowl by simple methods now forgotten or long in
disuse.
Nature for ages had been in process of forming vast tide marshes at
the deltas and mouths of the numerous streams, the Duwamish, the
Stillaguamish, the Skagit and Nooksack, Puyallup, Skokomish and others.
Around the mouths of these rivers many of the largest Indian settlements
were to be found. How long these rivers have been silently at work day
and night tearing down the mountains and carrying the fragments away to
the sea is a question no man can answer. For ages this work has been
going on, with results perceptible in the acres of marsh where the rivers
meet the tide. If diked and tilled this tide land is the richest and most
productive of the whole state for certain kinds of crops.
All hunters know that snipe, ducks and migratory water fowl galore are
temporary tenants of these marshy depths every fall and that good sport
comes in with the tide at the right season of the year.
At flood tide the “flats” are full of life, for then the little channels
that penetrate the tules like a labyrinth are peopled with thousands of
gull, ducks, snipe, heron and other water birds, feeding on the crawfish,
crabs and other crustacea that dwell in the slimy mud and only come forth
when the waters cover the myriads of holes that constitute their homes.
Muskrats paddle about towing bits of dead wood or tule in a streaming
wake as they take advantage of the tide for water transportation to bring
their winter bed to their burrow. Quaint little fellows they are, with
beady black eyes that see everything, and a shining coat of brown fur
which they oil and comb every time they can find a warm sunny nook where
the wind doesn’t blow too brisk. They are not very shy if left alone
and can often be seen swimming about or perched on some snag smoothing
their coat with a little black paw or huddled up until they look like a
brown ball of fur as big as your two fists. They have a tireless enemy in
the person of the farmer who owns diked land, for they are the bane of
his existence. Dikes seem to be a favorite place for them to dig their
burrows in, presumably because it affords them an elevation above water
level, consequently a dry home in the otherwise slimy expanse of marsh
that forms their habitat.
Muskrats are not the only inhabitants of these lonesome, wind-swept
deposits. Gulls wing their circling flight along the borders in quest of
food left by the last tide, and croaking herons rise on heavy, uncertain
wing, as they adjust their lank proportions to the conditions of aerial
navigation. The crows are there always; high tide, low tide or no tide,
the crows are about. At low water they pick up the clams and cockles
left on top of the sand, take out the meat of such as they are able, and
have a way of their own of opening those that persist in keeping their
shells tightly closed. On finding one of this kind they take hold of it
with their beak, give a preliminary croak or so, and rise in the air for
several yards, then they drop the clam and follow it like a black plumb
bob to the beach. The clam shell is cracked and mashed by the fall and
the crow has everything his own way by his sharp practices. They clean up
about everything considered eatable in the crow bill of fare that is left
on the beach by the tide and what they miss the gulls get, so that the
mud flats constitute a kind of a short order restaurant for the bird-folk
that inhabit our bay shores.
[Illustration: INDIAN DUCK HUNTING]
The stoical Siwash stalks, barefooted, over the broad expanse of sand,
gathering clams at low tide, or with silent paddle urges his cedar canoe
among the canals of the tule patches, looking for a “pot shot” at ducks
with his old Hudsons bay company musket. He never wastes any powder on a
single duck or risks a wing shot. There must be a whole patch of ducks
and they must be close and sitting still on the water before he turns
his old gas-pipe fusee loose in their direction. He don’t go for sport,
or sportsmanship, this aborigine, so he nearly always gets ducks and
generally several of them every time he chucks a double handful of slugs
among them.
He is silent as a shadow and piles branches and grass all over his canoe
to enable him to do just the right kind of a “sneak” on his unsuspecting
victims.
Mrs. Siwash paddles along the canals too, but she is on a peaceful
mission and only takes the tules and rushes that grow thick on the
tide-flat marshes for no other purpose, in her estimation, than for
making mats for her dwelling on the other side of the bay. She knows all
the devious windings of every little channel, though some of them are
only about wide enough to float her light craft and are hung so close
with grass and rushes that you would hardly suspect an open waterway.
She knows that this or that blind canal opens out and gives access to a
particularly fine patch of rushes a little further on and urges her boat
ahead with lazy stroke that makes it glide along even if there is no
water to be seen from your point of view.
[Illustration: KLOOTCHMAN GATHERING RUSHES]
These little waterways lead everywhere, and in walking about you find
yourself unexpectedly confronted by a ditch a little too wide to jump
over and a trifle to deep to wade, when you stop to consider that the
bottom mud may be any depth you take a notion to imagine it, but at best
deep enough to let the water in over the tops of your waders.
In the deeper ones crabs scurry away in a misfit, sideways fashion,
peculiarly their own, and flounders fan their shingle shaped bulk down
in the friendly slime and there lie buried as the roil drifts away,
conforming so closely with the color of the bottom as to be invisible to
any one but a Siwash. They can’t fool a Siwash a little bit for he just
picks up a spear from his canoe, makes a jab at the muddy spot and eats
flounder when he gets hungry.