In the morning I got up early to look for Douglass Bill, thinking and
hoping he might have landed during the night, but no one had seen him
and there was no strange canoe in the harbor. After breakfast, in order
to kill time, I climbed the mountain east of the hotel to a height of
about a thousand feet. It is heavily timbered, and I found plenty of
fresh deer-signs within plain sound of the hammers wielded by the
carpenters at work on the hotel, but failed to get a shot. I returned at
eleven o'clock, but Bill had not yet shown up. Three other Indians were
there, however, with three deer in their canoe, which they had killed on
the opposite side of the lake the day before. I now concluded that Mr.
Major's confidence in Bill was misplaced; that he was not going to keep
his contract, and was, in short, as treacherous, as unreliable, and as
consummate a liar as other Indians; so I entered into negotiations with
these three Indians to get one or two of them to go with me. But they
had planned a trip to New Westminster, to sell their venison, and I
could not induce any one of them to go, though I offered big wages, and
a premium on each head of game I might kill, besides. They said that if
I wished they would take me to their village--which is five miles down
the river--and that there were several good goat hunters there whom I
could get. I accepted their offer of transportation, stepped into the
canoe, and we pulled out. As we entered the shoal water in the river I
asked for a pole, and impelled by it and the three paddles we sped down
the stream at a rapid rate.
There was a cold, disagreeable rain falling and a chilly north wind
blowing. This storm had brought clouds of ducks into the river, among
them several flocks of canvas backs. The Indians, who were using
smooth-bore muskets, killed several of these toothsome fowls. One flock
rose ahead of us and started directly down the river, but by some kind
of native intuition the Indians seemed to know that they would come back
up the opposite shore. They dropped their guns, caught up the paddles
and plied them with such force that every stroke fairly lifted the light
cedar canoe out of the water, and we shot across the river with the
speed of a deer. Sure enough, after flying a hundred yards down stream
the ducks turned and, hugging the shore, undertook to pass up the river
on the other side, but we cut them off, so that they had to pass over
our heads. At this juncture the two muskets carried by the two young men
cracked and three canvas backs dropped, limp and lifeless, into the
water within a few feet of us.
We arrived at the hut occupied by this family at noon. It stands on the
bank of the river, half a mile above the village of Chehalis, and as we
pulled up, two old and two young squaws and nine small Indians, some of
them mere papooses in arms (but not in long clothes--in fact, not in
any clothes worth mentioning), came swarming out to meet us. Their abode
was a shanty about twelve feet square, made by setting four corner posts
into the ground, nailing cross-ribs on, and over these clapboards riven
from the native cedars, and the roof was of the same material. The adult
members of this social alliance had been engaged in catching and drying
salmon during the recent run; the heads, entrails and backbones of which
had been dumped into the river at their very door. There being no
current near the shore they had sunk in barely enough water to cover
them, and lay there rotting and poluting the water used by the family
for drinking and cooking. Cart-loads of this offal were also lying about
the dooryard, and had been trampled into and mixed up with the mud until
the whole outfit stunk like a tanyard.
Within was a picture of filth and squalor that beggars description. The
floor of the hut was of mother earth. A couple of logs with two
clapboards laid across them formed the only seats. On one side was a
pile of brush, hay, and dirty, filthy blankets, indiscriminately mixed,
on which the entire three families slept, presumably in the same
fashion. Near the centre of the hut a small fire struggled for
existence, and that portion of the smoke that was not absorbed by the
people, the drying fish and other objects in the room, escaped through a
hole in the centre of the roof. The children, barefooted and half-naked,
came in out of the rain, mud, and fish carrion, in which they had been
tramping about, and sat or lay on the ground about the fire, looking as
happy as a litter of pigs in a mud hole. On poles, attached by cedar
withes to the rafters, were hung several hundred salmon, absorbing
smoke, carbonic acid gas from the lungs of the human beings beneath, and
steam from the cooking that was going on. It is understood that after
this process has been prolonged for some weeks these once noble fishes
will be fit for the winter food of the Siwash.
Some of the houses in Chehalis are neat frame cottages; in fact, it is a
better-built town, on the whole, than the village of Harrison River
already described; but these better houses all stand back about a
quarter of a mile from the river, and the inhabitants have left them and
gone into the "fish-houses," the clapboard structures, on the immediate
river bank. Some of these shanties are much larger than the one
mentioned above, and in some cases four, five, or even six families hole
up in one of these filthy dens during the fish-curing season.
As a matter of fact, there are salmon of one variety or another in these
larger rivers nearly all the year, but sometimes the weather is too
cold, too wet, or otherwise too disagreable in winter for the noble red
man to fish with comfort, and hence all these preparations for a rainy
day. After the fishes are cured they are hung up in big out-houses set
on posts, or in some cases built high up in the branches of trees, in
order to be entirely out of the reach of rats, minks, or other vermin,
and the members of the commune draw from the stock at will. The coast
Indians live almost wholly on fish, and seem perfectly happy without
flesh, vegetables, or bread, if such be not at hand, though they can eat
plenty of all these when set before them. If one of them kills a deer he
seldom or never eats more of it than the liver, heart, lungs, etc. He
sells the carcass, if within a three days' voyage of a white man who
will buy venison.
[Illustration: SALMON BOXES IN TREES.]
One of the young men already mentioned went with me down to one of the
big fish-houses and called out Pean, a man about fifty years of age, who
he said was a good goat hunter and a good guide. They held a hurried
conversation in their native tongue, at the close of which the young
man said Pean would go with me for two dollars a day. I asked Pean if he
could talk English, and he said "yes," but this proved, in after
experience, to be about the only English word he could speak. He rushed
into the hut, and in about three or four minutes returned with his gun,
powder-horn, bullet-pouch, pipe, and a small roll of blankets, and was
ready for a journey into the mountains of, he knew not how many days.
His canoe was on the river bank near us, and as we were stepping into it
I asked him a few questions which he tried to answer in English, but
made a poor stagger at it, and slid off into Chinook.
Just then another old Indian came up with a canoe-load of wood. I asked
him if he could speak English--"wah-wah King George"; and he said "Yes."
I then told him I had hired this other man to go hunting with me and
asked him if he knew him.
"Oh, yes," he said; "me chief here. All dese house my house. All dese
people my people. No other chief here." I said I was delighted to know
him, shook hands with him, gave him a cigar, and inquired his name.
"Captain George," he said; "me chief here."
"Is he a good hunter?" pointing to Pean.
"Yes, Pean good hunter; good man. He kill plenty sheep, deer, bear."
With this additional certificate of efficiency and good character I felt
more confidence in Pean, and stepping into the canoe was once more _en
route_ to the mountains.
Still, I felt some misgivings, for my past experience with the fish
eaters had taught me not to place implicit faith in their statements or
pretensions, and the sequel will show how well grounded these fears
were.