TRAILS THROUGH
WESTERN WOODS
[Illustration: LAKE ANGUS McDONALD]
TRAILS THROUGH
WESTERN WOODS
By
HELEN FITZGERALD SANDERS
_Illustrations from Photographs
by the Author_
NEW YORK & SEATTLE
THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY
THE ALICE HARRIMAN COMPANY
_Published, July 1, 1910_
THE PREMIER PRESS
NEW YORK
_DEDICATION_
_To the West that is passing; to the days
that are no more and to the brave,
free life of the Wilderness that
lives only in the memory of
those who mourn its loss_
PREFACE
The writing of this book has been primarily a labour of love, undertaken
in the hope that through the harmonious mingling of Indian tradition and
descriptions of the region--too little known--where the lessening tribes
still dwell, there may be a fuller understanding both of the Indians and
of the poetical West.
A wealth of folk-lore will pass with the passing of the Flathead
Reservation, therefore it is well to stop and listen before the light
is quite vanished from the hill-tops, while still the streams sing the
songs of old and the trees murmur regretfully of things lost forever and
a time that will come no more. We of the workaday world are too prone
to believe that our own country is lacking in myth and tradition, in
hero-tale and romance; yet here in our midst is a legended region where
every landmark is a symbol in the great, natural record book of a folk
whose day is done and whose song is but an echo.
It would not be fitting to close these few introductory words without
grateful acknowledgment to those who have aided me toward the
accomplishment of my purpose. Indeed, every page brings a pleasant
recollection of a friendly spirit and a helping hand. Mr. Duncan
McDonald, son of Angus, and Mr. Henri Matt, my Indian friends, have
told me by word of mouth, many of the myths and chronicles set forth
in the following chapters. Mr. Edward Morgan, the faithful and just
agent at the Flathead Reservation, has given me priceless information
which I could never have obtained save through his kindly interest. He
secured for me the legend of the Flint, the last tale told by Charlot
and rendered into English by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter who
has served in that capacity for thirty years. Chief Charlot died after
this book was finished and he lies in the land of his exile, out of the
home of his fathers where he had hoped to rest. From Mr. Morgan also I
received the account of Charlot's meeting with Joseph at the LoLo Pass,
the facts of which were given him by the little white boy since grown
to manhood, Mr. David Whaley, who rode with Charlot and his band to the
hostile camp.
The late Charles Aubrey, pioneer and plainsman, furnished me valuable
data concerning the buffalo.
Madame Leonie De Mers and her hospitable relatives, the De Mers of
Arlee, were instrumental in winning for me the confidence of the Selish
people.
Mrs. L. Mabel Hight, the artist, who has caught the spirit of the
mountains with her brush, has added to this book by making the peaks
live again in their colours.
In conclusion I would express my everlasting gratitude to Mr. Thomas
H. Scott, of Lake McDonald, soldier, mountain-lover and woodsman, who,
with unfailing courage and patience, has guided me safely over many and
difficult trails.
For the benefit of students I must add that the authorities I have
followed in my historical references are: Long's (James') "_Expedition
to the Rocky Mountains, 1819-20_," Maximilian's "_Travels in North
America_," Father De Smet's "_Oregon Missions_," Major Ronan's "_History
of the Flathead Indians_," Bradbury's "_Travels_," Father L. B.
Palladino's "_Indian and White in the Northwest_," and the _Reports_ of
the Bureau of Ethnology.
HELEN FITZGERALD SANDERS.
_Butte, Montana,
April 5, 1910._
CONTENTS
I. The Gentle Selish 15
II. Enchanted Waters 77
III. Lake Angus McDonald 89
IV. Some Indian Missions of the Northwest 97
V. The People of the Leaves 155
VI. The Passing Buffalo 169
VII. Lake McDonald and Its Trails 229
VIII. Above the Clouds 245
IX. The Little St. Mary's 271
X. The Track of the Avalanche 281
XI. Indian Summer 297
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Lake Angus McDonald _Frontispiece_
Facing Page
Joe La Mousse 50
Abraham Isaac and Michel Kaiser 66
Lake McDonald from McDonald Creek 90
Francois 154
Glacier Camp 234
Gem Lake 266
On the Trail to Mt. Lincoln 290
_THE GENTLE SELISH_
TRAILS THROUGH WESTERN WOODS
CHAPTER I
THE GENTLE SELISH
I
When Lewis and Clark took their way through the Western wilderness
in 1805, they came upon a fair valley, watered by pleasant streams,
bounded by snowy mountain crests, and starred, in the Springtime, by a
strangely beautiful flower with silvery-rose fringed petals called the
Bitter Root, whence the valley took its name. In the mild enclosure of
this land lived a gentle folk differing as much from the hostile people
around them as the place of their nativity differed from the stern,
mountainous country of long winters and lofty altitudes surrounding it.
These early adventurers, confusing this tribe with the nations dwelling
about the mouth of the Columbia River, spoke of them as the Flatheads.
It is one of those curious historical anomalies that the Chinooks who
flattened the heads of their children, should never have been designated
as Flatheads, while the Selish, among whom the practice was unknown,
have borne the undeserved title until their own proper and euphonious
name is unused and all but forgotten.
The Selish proper, living in the Bitter Root Valley, were one branch of
a group composed of several nations collectively known as the Selish
family. These kindred tribes were the Selish, or Flatheads, the Pend
d'Oreilles, the Coeur d'Alenes, the Colvilles, the Spokanes and the
Pisquouse. The Nez Percés of the Clearwater were also counted as tribal
kin through inter-marriage.
Lewis and Clark were received with great kindness and much wonder by
the Selish. There was current among them a story of a hunting party that
came back after a long absence East of the Rocky Mountains, bearing
strange tidings of a pale-faced race whom they had met,--probably the
adventurous Sieur de La Vérendrye and his cavaliers who set out from
Montreal to find a highway to the Pacific Sea. But it was only a memory
with a few, a curious legend to the many, and these men of white skin
and blue eyes came to them as a revelation.
The traders who followed in the footsteps of the first trail-blazers
found the natives at their pursuits of hunting, roving over the
Bitter Root Valley and into the contested region east of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains, where both they, and their enemies, the
Blackfeet, claimed hereditary right to hunt the buffalo. They were at
all times friendly to the white men who came among them, and these
visitors described them as simple, straight-forward people, the women
distinguished for their virtue, and the men for their bravery in the
battle and the chase. They were cleanly in their habits and honorable
in their dealings with each other. If a man lost his horse, his bow or
other valuable, the one who found it delivered it to the Chief, or Great
Father, and he caused it to be hung in a place where it might be seen by
all. Then when the owner came seeking his goods, the Chief restored it
to him. They were also charitable. If a man were hungry no one said him
nay and he was welcome even at the board of the head men to share the
best of their fare. This spirit of kindliness they extended to all save
their foes and the prisoners taken in war whom they tortured after the
manner of more hostile tribes. In appearance they were "comparatively
very fair and their complexions a shade lighter than the palest new
copper after being freshly rubbed." They were well formed, lithe and
tall, a characteristic that still prevails with the pure bloods, as does
something of the detail of their ancient dress. They preserve the custom
of handing down by word of mouth, from generation to generation, their
myths, traditions and history. Some of these chronicles celebrate events
which are estimated to have happened two hundred years or more ago.
Of the origin of the Selish nothing is known save the legend of their
coming out of the mountains; and perhaps we are none the poorer, for no
bald historical record of dates and migrations could be as suggestively
charming as this story of the people, themselves, colored by their own
fancy and reflecting their inner life. Indeed, a nation's history and
tradition bear much the same relation to each other as the conventional
public existence of a man compared with that intangible part of him
which we call imagination, but which is in reality the sum-total of his
mental inheritance: the hidden treasure of his spiritual wealth. Let us
look then, through the medium of the Indian's poetic imagery, into a
past rose-hued with the sunrise of the new day.
Coyote, the hero of this legend, figures in many of the myths of the
Selish; but they do not profess to know if he were a great brave bearing
that name or if he were the animal itself, living in the legendary age
when beasts and birds spoke the tongue of man. Likely he was a dual
personality such as the white buffalo of numerous fables, who was at
will a beautiful maiden or one among the vast herds of the plains.
Possibly there was, indeed, such a mighty warrior in ages gone by about
whose glorified memory has gathered the half-chimerical hero-tales which
are the first step toward the ancestor-worship of primitive peoples.
In all of the myths given here in which his name is mentioned, except
that one of Coyote and the Flint, we shall consider him as an Ideal
embodying the Indians' highest conception of valor and achievement.
Long, long ago the Jocko was inhabited by a man-eating monster who lured
the tribes from the hills into his domain and then sucked their blood.
Coyote determined to deliver the people, so he challenged the monster
to a mortal combat. The monster accepted the challenge, and Coyote went
into the mountains and got the poison spider from the rocks and bade him
sting his enemy, but even the venom of the spider could not penetrate
the monster's hide.
Coyote took counsel of the Fox, his friend, and prepared himself for the
fray. He got a stout leather thong and bound it around his body, then
tied it fast to a huge pine tree. The monster appeared with dripping
fangs and gaping jaws, approached Coyote, who retreated farther and
farther away, until the thong stretched taut and the pine curved like
a bow. Suddenly, the tree, strained to its utmost limit, sprang back,
felling the monster with a mortal stroke. Coyote was triumphant and the
Woodpecker of the forest cut the pine and sharpened its trunk to a point
which Coyote drove through the dead monster's breast, impaling it to the
earth. Thus, the Jocko was rid of the man-eater, and the Selish, fearing
him no more, came down from the hills into the valley where they lived
in plenty and content.
The following story of Coyote and the Flint is of exceptional interest
because it is from the lips of the dying Charlot--Charlot the unbending,
the silent Chieftain. No word of English ever profaned his tongue, so
this myth, told in the impressive Selish language, was translated word
for word by Michel Rivais, the blind interpreter at the Flathead Agency,
who has served faithfully and well for a period of thirty years.
"In the old times the animals had tribes just like the Indians. The
Coyote had his tipi. He was hungry and had nothing to eat. He had bark
to shoot his arrow with and the arrow did not go through the deer. He
was that way a long time when he heard there was Flint coming on the
road that gave a piece of flint to the Fox and he could shoot a deer and
kill it, but the Coyote did not know that and used the bark. They did
not give the Coyote anything. They only gave some to the Fox. Next day
the Fox put a piece of meat on the end of a stick and took it to the
fire. The Fox had the piece of meat cooking there and the Coyote was
looking at the meat and when it was cooked the Coyote jumped and got the
piece of meat and took a bite and in it was the flint, and he bit the
flint and asked why they did not tell him how to kill a deer with flint.
"'Why didn't you tell me?' the Coyote asked his friend, the Fox. 'When
did the Flint go by here?'
"The Fox said three days it went by here.
"The Coyote took his blanket and his things and started after the Flint
and kept on his track all day and evening and said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped,' and he stayed there all night himself, and next day he
travelled to where the Flint camped, and he said, 'Here is where the
Flint camped last night,' and he stayed there, and the next day he went
farther and found where the Flint camped and he said, 'The Flint started
from here this morning.' He followed the track next morning and went not
very far, and he saw the Flint going on the road, and he went 'way out
that way and went ahead of the Flint and stayed there for the Flint to
come. When the Flint met him there the Coyote told him:
"'Come here. Now, I want to have a fight with you to-day.'
"And the Flint said:
"'Come on. We will fight.'
"The Flint went to him and the Coyote took the thing he had in his hand
and struck him three or four times and the Flint broke all to pieces and
the Coyote had his blanket there and put the pieces in the blanket and
after they were through fighting and he had the pieces of flint in his
blanket he packed the flint on his back and went to all the tribes and
gave them some flint and said:
"'Here is some flint for you to kill deer and things with.'
"And he went to another tribe and did the same thing and to other tribes
and did the same until he came to Flint Creek and then from that time
they used the flint to put in their arrows and kill deer and elk.
"That is the story of the Flint."
* * * * *
Coyote was the chosen one to whom the Great Spirit revealed the disaster
which reduced the Selish from goodly multitudes of warriors to a handful
of wretched, plague-stricken invalids. Old women are still fond of
relating the story which they received from their mothers and their
mothers' mothers even to the third and fourth generation.
Coyote laid down to rest and dreamed that the Voice of the Great Spirit
sounded in his ears, saying that unless the daughter of the Chief became
his bride a scourge would fall upon the people. When morning broke he
sought out the Chief and told him of the words of the Voice, but the
Chief, who was a haughty man, would not heed Coyote and coldly denied
him the hand of his daughter in marriage.
Coyote returned to his lodge and soon there resounded through the
forests the piercing cry of one in distress. Coyote rushed forth and
beheld a man covered with sores across the river. This man related to
Coyote how he was the last survivor of a war party that had come upon
a village once occupied by the enemy whom they sought, but as they
approached they saw no smoke arising from the tipis and no sign of life.
They came forward very cautiously, but all was silent and deserted. From
lodge to lodge they passed, and finally they came upon an old woman,
pitted and scabbed, lying alone and dying. With her last breath she told
them of a scourge which had fallen upon the village, consuming brave and
child alike, until she, of all the lodges, was left to mourn the rest.
Then one by one the war party which had ridden so gallantly to conquest
and glory, felt an awful heat as of fire run through their veins.
Burning and distraught they leaped into the cold waters of a river and
died.
Such was the story of the man whom Coyote met in the woods. He alone
remained, disfigured, diseased, doomed. So Coyote brought him into the
village and quenched his thirst that he might pass more easily to the
Happy Hunting Ground. But as the Great Spirit had revealed to Coyote
while he slept, the scourge fell upon the people and laid them low,
scarcely enough grief-stricken survivors remaining to weep for their
lost dead.
* * * * *
Besides this legendary narrative of the visitation of smallpox there
are other authenticated instances of the plague wreaking its vengeance
upon the Selish and depleting their villages to desolation. In this wise
the tribe was thinned again and again and as early as 1813, Mr. Cox
of the Northwest Fur Company, told in his "Adventures" that once the
Selish were more powerful by far in number than in the day of his coming
amongst them.
There was also another cause for the nation's decline quite as
destructive as the plague;--the unequal hostility continuing generation
after generation, without capitulation or truce, with the Blackfeet.
The country of the Selish abounded in game but it was a part of the
tribal code of honour to hunt the buffalo in the fields where their
ancestors had hunted. All of the deadly animosity between the two
peoples, all of the bloodshed of their cruel wars, was for no other
purpose than to maintain the right to seek the beloved herds in the
favoured fields which they believed their forefathers had won. The
jealousy with which this privilege of the chase was guarded and
preserved even to the death explains many national peculiarities, forms,
indeed, the keynote to their life of freedom on the plains.
It is possible that the Selish would have been annihilated had not the
establishment of new trading-posts enabled them to get fire-arms which
the Blackfeet had long possessed. This means of defence gave them fresh
strength and thereafter the odds against them were not as great.
The annals of the tribe, so full of tragedy and joy, of fact and
fancy, of folk-lore and wood-lore, contain many stories of war glory
reminiscent of the days of struggle. Even now there stands, near
Ravalli in the Jocko, a rock resembling a man, called by the Indians
the Stone Sentinel, which touchingly attests the fidelity and bravery
of a nameless hero. The story is that one of the runners who had gone
in advance of a war-party after the Indian custom, was surprised while
keeping watch and killed by the Blackfeet. The body remained erect and
was turned to stone, a monument of devotion to duty so strong that not
even death could break his everlasting vigil.
Notwithstanding their love of glory on the war-path and hunting-field,
they were a peaceable people. The most beautiful of their traditions
are based upon religious themes out of which grew a poetical symbolism,
half devotional, half fantastic. And even to-day, in spite of their
profession of Christianity, there lives in the heart of the Indian the
old paganism, not unlike that of the Greeks, which spiritualizes every
object of the woods and waters.
They thought that in the Beginning the good Spirit came up out of the
East and the Evil Spirit out of the West, and then began the struggle,
typified by light and darkness, which has gone on ever since. From this
central idea they have drawn the rainbow Spirit-fancy which arches their
dream-sky from horizon to horizon. They consider some trees and rocks
sacred; again they hold a lake or stream in superstitious dread and shun
it as a habitation of the evil one.
Thus, a cave in the neighbouring hills where rattlesnakes sleep in
Winter, they avoided in the past, not on account of the common snakes,
but because within the damp, dark recesses of that subterranean den, the
King of Snakes, a huge, horned reptile dwelt, appearing occasionally in
all his venomous, scaled beauty, striking terror wherever he was seen.
A clear spring bubbled near the cave but not even the cold purity of
the water could tempt the Indians to that accursed vicinity until by
some revelation they learned that the King Snake had migrated to other
fastnesses. He is still seen, so they say, gliding stealthily amongst
deserted wastes, his crest reared evily, and death in his poison tail.
In contrast to this cave of darkness is the spiritual legend of the
Sacred Pine. Upon those same gentle hills of the Jocko it grows, lifting
its lessening cone of green toward heaven. It has been there past the
memory of the great-grand-fathers of the present generation and from
time immemorial it has been held sacred by the Selish tribe. High upon
its venerable branches hangs the horn of a Bighorn Sheep, fixed there so
firmly by an unknown hand, before even the tradition of the Selish had
shaped its ghostly form out of the mists of the past, that the blizzard
has not been strong enough to wrench it from its place, nor the frost
to gnaw it away. No one knows whence the ram's horn came nor what it
signifies, but the tree is considered holy and the Indians believe that
it possesses supernatural powers. Hence, offerings are made to it of
moccasins, beads, weasel skins, and such little treasures of wearing
apparel or handiwork as they most esteem, and at certain seasons,
beneath the cool, sweet shadow of its generous boughs the devoted
worshippers, going back through the little superficialities of recent
civilization to the magnetic pole of their own true blood and beliefs,
assemble to dance with religious fervor around its base upon the green.
The missionary fathers discourage such idolatrous practices; but the
poor children of the woods play truant, nevertheless, and wander back
through the cycle of the centuries to do honour to the old, sweet object
of their devotion in the primitive, pagan way. And surely the Great
Spirit who watches over white and red man impartially, can scarcely be
jealous of this tribute of love to a tree,--the instinctive, race-old
festival of a woodland tribe.
There is another pine near Ravalli revered because it recalls the days
of the chase. It stands upon the face of a mountain somewhat apart from
its brethren of the forest, and there the Bighorn Sheep used to take
refuge when pursued. If driven to bay, the leader, followed by his band,
leaped to death from this eminence. It is known as the Pine of the
Bighorn Sheep.
Thus, it will be seen there lives among the Selish a symbolism, making
objects which they love chapters in the great unwritten book, wherein
is celebrated the heroic past. He who has the key to that volume of
tribe-lore, may learn lessons of valour and achievement, of patience and
sacrifice. And colouring the whole story, making beautiful its least
phase, is the sentiment of the people, even as the haze is the poetry
of the hills.
II
As heroic or disastrous events are celebrated in verbal chronicles
it follows that the home of the Selish is storied ground. Before the
pressure of civilization, encroaching in ever-narrowing circles upon
the hunting-ground of the Indians, cramping and crowding them within
a smaller space, driving them inch by inch to the confinement which
is their death, the Selish wandered at will over a stretch of country
beautiful alike in the reality of its landscape and in the richness
of myth and legend which hang over every peak and transfigure every
lake and stream. To know this country and the people it has sheltered
through past centuries one must first glean something of that ephemeral
story-charm which records in crag, in mist, in singing stream and
spreading tree the dreams made almost real by the thousands of souls
who have treasured them, and given them, lip to lip, from old to young,
since the forests were first green upon the hills.
The land of the Selish extended eastward to that portion of the Main
Range of the Rocky Mountains known to them as _Sin-yal-min_, or the
"Mountains of the Surrounded," from the fact that once a hunting party
surrounded and killed a herd of elk by a stream upon those heights;
another time a war-party surrounded and slew a company of Blackfeet
within the woods upon the mountain side. Though this range marked the
eastern boundary of their territory, they hunted buffalo, as we have
seen, still east of its mighty peaks,--a region made bloody by battles
between the Selish and the Blackfeet tribes. Westward, they wandered
over the fertile valley of Sin-yal-min, where they, in common with the
Pend d'Oreilles, Kootanais and Nez Percés enjoyed its fruits and fields
of grain. This valley is bounded to the north by the great Flathead
Lake, a body of water vast in its sweep, winding through narrow channels
among wooded shores ever unfolding new and unexposed vistas as one
traverses it. On a calm summer day, when the sun's rays are softened
by gossamer veils of haze, the water, the mountain-peaks and sky are
faintly traced in shades of grey and faded rose as in mother-of-pearl.
And on such days as this, at rare intervals, a strange phenomenon
occurs,--_the reflection of a reflection_. Looking over the rail of a
steamer within the semi-circular curve of the swell at its stern, one
may see, first the reflection of the shore line, the mountains and trees
appearing upside down, then a second shore line perfectly wrought in
the mirroring waters right side up, pine-crest touching pine-crest,
peak poised against peak. This lake was the Selish's conception of
the greatest of waters, for their wandering never took them to the
Atlantic or Pacific Seas, and in such small craft as they used to
travel over the forty miles of water among serpentining shores, the
distance must have seemed immense. Many islands rise from the lake,
the largest of them, Wild Horse Island, is timbered and mountainous,
and so big as to appear like an arm of the main land. This Wild Horse
Island, where in olden days bands of wild horses were found, possesses
a peculiar interest. Upon its steep cliffs are hieroglyphics traced
in pigments unknown to-day, telling the forgotten story of a lost
race. The same strange figures appear upon the sheer escarpments of
the mainland shore. These rock-walls are moss-grown and colored by the
lichen, chrome yellow, burnt orange, russet-brown and varying shades
of bronze-green like Autumn leaves, and upon them broods a shadow as
darkly impenetrable as the mystery which they hold. Still, it is easy to
distinguish upon the heroic tablets of stone, crude figures of horses
and some incomprehensible marks. These writings have been variously
interpreted or guessed at. Some declare them to be ancient war signals
of the Selish, others suggest that they were records of hunting parties
left behind for the guidance and information of the tribe; but they,
themselves, deny all knowledge of them, saying that to them as to us,
the pictured rocks are a wonder and a riddle, the silent evidence of
foot-falls so remote that not even an echo has come down to us through
the centuries.
Such are the valley of Sin-yal-min and the Lake of the Flathead where
the Selish hunted. But their real home, the seat of their fathers,
was the Bitter Root Valley, where one branch of the tribe, headed by
Charlot, the son of Victor, lived until the recent exodus. Therefore,
the Bitter Root Valley was particularly dear to the hearts of these
Indians. It was there the bond between the kindred tribes, the Nez
Percés and the Selish, was broken; there the pioneer Fathers came to
build the first Mission and plant the first Cross among these docile
children of the wood. It was there they clung together like frightened
sheep until they were driven forth to seek new homes in the Valley of
the Jocko, which was to be merely a station in their enforced retreat.
Eastward and southward from the Bitter Root, the Jocko and the range
of Sin-yal-min in the contested country, is a cañon called the Hell
Gate, because within its narrow limits, the Blackfeet wreaked vengeance
upon their less warlike foes. Flowing through the cañon is a river,
_In-mis-sou-let-ka_, corrupted into Missoula, which bears one of the
most beautiful of the Selish legends.
* * * * *
Coyote was taking his way through a pass in the mountains during the
ancient days, when there came to him, out of the closed lip of silence,
the echo of a sound. He stopped to listen, in doubt if it were the
singing of waters or human voices that he heard, and as he listened the
echo grew into a reality and the strains of wondrous, weirdly sweet
music greeted his ear. He followed the illusive melody, attracted as by
magic, and at last he saw upon the flower-sown green a circle of young
women, dancing around and around, hand clasped in hand, forming a chain
and singing as they danced. They beckoned to Coyote and called unto him,
saying:
"Thou art beautiful, O Warrior! and strong as is the sun. Come dance
with us and we will sing to thee."
Coyote, like one who walks in his sleep, obeyed them and joined the
enchanted circle. Then he perceived that as they danced and sang they
drew him closer and closer to a great river that lashed itself into a
blind, white fury of foam upon the rocks. Coyote became afraid like a
woman. He noted with dread the water-weed in the maidens' hair and the
evil beauty of their eyes. He strove to break away but he was powerless
to resist them and he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer the roaring
torrent, until at last the waters closed over him in whirlpools and he
knew no more.
* * * * *
The Fox, who was wise and crafty, passed along the shore and there he
found, among the water-weeds and grasses the lifeless body of Coyote
which had been cast up by the waters, even as they had engulfed him.
The Fox was grieved for he loved Coyote, so he bent over the corpse and
brought it back to life. Coyote opened his eyes and saw his friend, but
the chill of the water was in his blood and he was numb. Then above the
roar of the river, echoed the magical measure of a weird-sweet song
and through a green glade came the dancers who had lured Coyote to his
death. He rose at the sound of the bewitching melody and strained
forward to listen.
"It was they who led me to the river," he cried.
"Aye, truly. They are the water Sirens and thou must destroy them,"
replied the Fox.
At those words Coyote's heart became inflamed with ire; he grew strong
with purpose and crept forward, noiseless as a snake, unobserved by the
water-maidens.
They were dancing like a flock of white butterflies upon a stretch of
grass yellowed and seared by the heat of the sun. Swiftly and silently
Coyote set fire to the grass, imprisoning them in a ring of flame. They
saw the wall of fire leap up around them and their singing was changed
to cries. They turned hither and thither and sought to fly to the water
but the way was barred by the hot red-gold embrace of the fire.
When the flames had passed, Coyote went to the spot where the Sirens
had danced, and there upon the blackened ground he found a heap of
great, white shells. He took these, the remains of the water-maidens,
and cast them into the river, saying as he did so:
"I call thee _In-mis-sou-let-ka_ and thou shalt forever bear that name!"
Thus it was that the river flowing through the Hell Gate came by the
title of In-mis-sou-let-ka, which men render into English by the
inadequate words of "_The River of Awe_."
* * * * *
Through the length and breadth of the country are story-bearing
land-marks. There is a rock in the Jocko, small of size but of weight so
mighty that no Indian, however strong, can move it; there is a mountain
which roars and growls like an angry monster; there is a cliff where a
brave of the legendary age of heroes battled hand to hand with a grizzly
bear, and a thousand other spots, each hallowed by a memory. So, through
peak and lowland, rivers and forests one can find the faery-spell of
romance, lending the commonest stone individuality and interest. And the
most prosaic pilgrim wandering along haunted streams, cooling in the
shadow of storied woods and upon the shores of enchanted lakes, must
feel the spell of poesy upon him; must look with altered vision upon the
whispering trees, listen with quickened hearing to the articulate murmur
of the rivers, knowing for a time at least, the subtle fellowship with
the woodland which is in the heart of the Indian.
Such is the legended land of the Selish, a land fit for gentle, poetic
folk to dwell in, a land worthy for brave and devoted men to lay down
their lives to save.
III
Within the Bitter Root Valley dwelt Charlot, _Slem-Hak-Kah_, "Little
Claw of a Grizzly Bear," son of the great chief Victor, "The Lodge
Pole," and therefore by hereditary right Head Chief of the Selish tribe.
That valley is perhaps the most favoured land of the region. The snow
melts earlier within its mountain-bound heart, the blizzard drives less
fiercely over its slopes and the Spring comes there sooner, sprinkling
the grass with the rose stars of the Bitter Root. Under the guidance
of the missionary fathers the Indians learned to till the soil and the
bounty of their toil was sufficient, for the rich earth yielded fine
crops of grain and fruit. The Indians who sowed and plowed their small
garden-spots, and the kindly fathers who watched over their prosperity,
little dreamed that in the free gift of the earth and the mild beauty of
the land lay the cause which should wreak the red man's ruin. This land
was dear to the hearts of the people. Victor, their brave guardian, had
saved it for them at the treaty of the Hell Gate when they were called
upon to give up part of their territory to the increasing demands of
the whites. Those of the dominant race kept coming into the Bitter Root
and they were welcomed by the Indians. Thus, bit by bit the valley was
taken up, its fame spread and it became a region so desirable that the
government determined to move the Selish tribe out of the land of their
fathers.
Charlot was a courageous and honest man, a leader worthy of his trust.
It was he who met the Nez Percés as they descended into the Bitter Root,
headed by Chief Joseph, hot with the lust for the white man's scalp.
There are few more dramatic incidents in western history than Charlot's
visit to Chief Joseph on the LoLo trail and the ultimatum which he
delivered to the leader of the Nez Percé hosts.
He rode forth accompanied by Joe La Mousse and a small war-party,
carrying with him a little white boy. About his arm he had tied a snowy
handkerchief in token of the peaceful character of his errand. When the
two Chiefs, Charlot and Joseph faced each other, Charlot spoke these
words, slowly, defiantly as one who has made a great decision:
"Joseph, I have something to say to you. It will be in a few words.
"You know I am not afraid of you.
"You know I can whip you.
"If you are going through the valley you must not hurt any of the
whites. If you do you will have me and my people to fight.
"You may camp at my place to-night but to-morrow you must pass on."
And it was as Charlot decreed. Joseph the brave, intractable warrior who
did battle with the army of the United States and kept the cleverest
of our generals guessing at his strategies, bent to the iron will of
Charlot. The Nez Percés passed peacefully through the valley and never a
soul was harmed.
In the long, cruel struggle that followed, when Chief Joseph and his
braves struck terror to the settlers, leaving death and ruin in their
path, Charlot remained staunch and true. Indeed, the boast of the Selish
is that they, as a nation, were never guilty of taking a white man's
life.
Meantime, while they lived in peace and plenty, the fates had sealed
their doom. There is no use reiterating the long, painful story of the
treaty between the Selish and the government, ceding to the latter the
land where the tribal ancestors lived and died. Charlot declared he did
not sign away the birth-right of his people and he was an honourable
man. He and his friends went farther and said that his mark was forged.
On the other hand some of those who were witnesses for the United
States maintain that the name Charlot was written like that of Arlee
and others, with a blank space left for the mark, or signature of each
Chief. They further state that Charlot never affixed his mark to the
document nor was it forged as he asserted to the end. This is at best
mere evasion. One of two things happened: a fraudulent signature was
put upon the face of the treaty to deceive the government, or Charlot,
as Head Chief, was overridden and ignored. Whatever the means employed
the outcome was the same. It was an unhappy day for the Indians. They
had no recourse but to submit, so most of them headed by Arlee, the War
Chief, struck their tipis, abandoned the toil-won fields where they had
laboured so long and so patiently, left the shadow of the Cross where
they were baptized, and went forth into the Jocko to begin again the
struggle which should never be more than a beginning.
[Illustration: JOE LA MOUSSE]
But Charlot the royal-blooded, son of a long line of fighting chiefs,
was not to be moved by the master-hand like a pawn in a game of chess.
He haughtily refused to leave the Bitter Root Valley, telling his
people that those of them who wished to go should follow Arlee, but he
with a few of the faithful, would lie down to his repose in the land
of his fathers beneath peaks that mingle with the sky. With impassive
dignity he and a party of his loyal band went to Washington at the
bidding of the Great Father to listen to the justice of the white man's
claim. Charlot proudly declined to accept pension and authority bought
at the price of his exile. He wished only the "poor privilege" of
dwelling in the valley where his fathers had dwelt; of resting at last,
where they had lain so long. He wanted neither money nor land,--simply
permission to live in the home of his childhood, his manhood and
old age. He added that he would never be taken alive to the Jocko
Reservation. The Powers saw no merit in the sentiment of the old Chief.
He had dared to oppose their will and they determined to break his
spirit. He might remain in the Bitter Root the All-Wise decreed, but in
remaining he relinquished every right. More crushing to him than poverty
and exile was the final blow to his pride. In a sense he was King of
his tribe. The title of Great Chief descended from father to son, even
as the crowns of empires are handed down. The War Chiefs, on the other
hand, were elected to command the warriors for a year and at the end of
their service they became simple braves again. The government, ignoring
the canons of the Selish, put Charlot aside, and Arlee, the Red Night,
last of the War Chiefs, took precedence over him and became Head Chief
of his nation. Charlot was stripped of his title, his honours, his
privileges of land grant and pension; in other words, he was reduced
from Great Chief to pauper.
Thus Charlot, who with his braves had defied his kinsfolk, the Nez
Percés, to protect the weak colony of settlers in their Bitter Root home
was driven forth by these same strangers within his gates, and he, the
bravest and best of his kind, shorn of the dignities his forebears and
he, himself, had won;--robbed, cast out, was held up to contumely as an
unruly savage and spurned by the people his mercy had spared.
From the Bitter Root, the poor wanderers took their way into the Jocko,
a region also fair, where some of their tribe already dwelt, and made
for themselves new homes. They accepted the change uncomplainingly and
set to work to sow and reap in this adopted land.
Charlot and his band of nearly two hundred lingered in the Bitter Root
until 1891, when driven by hunger and suffering they followed their
tribesmen into the Jocko. He had said he would never be _taken alive_
to the new reservation, nor was he. Clad in his war dress, mounted on
his best horse, surrounded by his young men in full war regalia, he rode
into exile, proud, unbending as a triumphant Chief entering dominions
won by conquest. No expression of pain crossed his bronze-stern face;
no hint of humility or subjection softened the majesty of his mien. He
and his braves were met by the Selish who had gone before, with great
ostentation and ceremony. Charlot never forgot nor forgave. He had been
cast out, betrayed, but not conquered.
The Selish have learned to love the soft, yellow-green of the Jocko
hills, the free sweep of its prairies, where sun flowers flow in a sea
of gold beneath the rushing tide of the summer wind, and the prettily
boisterous little Jocko River laughs and plays over its rocky bed
between a veritable jungle of trees and vines and flowers. In these
woods bordering the stream, the most luscious wild gooseberries,
strawberries and bright scarlet brew berries grow--this last, dear to
the Indian, is picked by the squaws and made into a sparkling draught.
There the trees are hung with dense tapestries of blossoming vines,
thick moss deadens the footstep and birds call shrilly from the
twilight of the trees. But the Jocko and Sin-yal-min are beautiful and
fertile, and wherever there is beauty and fertility there comes the
Master saying:
"_This is mine by right of might! Go forth again O Indian! There are
lean hills and deserts left for thee!_"
And the Indian, grown used to such things, folds his tipi and takes his
way into the charity of the lessening wilderness.
Not long ago a strange thing came to pass. One evening the sun set
in a passion of red and gold. The tide of light pulsed through the
skies, the air throbbed and shimmered with it, and every lake and pool
reflected its ruddy splendour until they seemed to be filled with
blood. The Indians gazed at the spectacle in silent awe. Groups of them
on horseback, dark figures silhouetted against the bright sky, stared
curiously at the awful glory of the heavens and earth, whispered in
low tones together and were afraid. Was the Great Spirit revealing
something to his children? Some there were who thought that the crimson
banners in the West foretold a disaster and verily it was true. The end
was near. The sun was setting forever upon their freedom. Once more the
children of the old time would be driven to another camping ground where
they might halt for a little space and rest their weary heads before
they take up the march upon their endless retreat.
IV
During the Summer at the time when the sun reached his greatest
strength, according to the ancient custom, the Selish gathered together
to dance. In this celebration is embodied the spirit of the people,
their pride, their hates and loves. But this dance had a peculiar
significance. It was, perhaps, the last that the tribe will celebrate.
Another year the white man will occupy the land, and the free, roving
life and its habits will be gone. It was a scene never to be forgotten.
Overhead a sky deeply azure at its zenith which mellowed toward the West
into a tide of ruddy gold flowing between the blue heavens and the green
earth; far, far away, dim, amethyst mountains dreaming in the haze;
and through that rose-gold flood of light, sharply outlined against
the intense blue above and the tender green below, silent figures on
horseback, gay with blankets, beads and buckskins, rode out of the filmy
distance into the splendour of the setting sun, and noiselessly took
their places around the musicians on the grass.
There were among them the most distinguished men of the tribe. Joe La
Mousse, once a warrior of fame, grown to an honored old age, watched
the younger generation with the simple dignity which becomes one of his
years and rank. He possessed the richest war dress of all, strung with
elks' teeth and resplendent with the feathers of the war-eagle. It was
he, who with Charlot, met the Nez Percés and repudiated their bloody
campaign; he, whose valiant ancestor, Ignace La Mousse, the Iroquois,
helped to make glorious the name of his adopted people. _François_ and
_Kai-Kai-She_, the judge, both honoured patriarchs, and Chief Antoine
Moise, _Callup-Squal-She_, "Crane with a ring around his neck," who
followed Charlot to Washington on his mission of protest, moved and
mingled in the bright patchwork of groups upon the green. There was
none more imbued with the spirit of festivity than old François with
white hair falling to his bowed shoulders. These and many more there
were whose prime had known happier days. Chief Moise's wife, a handsome
squaw, rode in with her lord, and conspicuous among the women was a
slim wisp of a girl with an oval face, buckskin-colored complexion, and
great, dusky, twilight eyes. A pale gray-green blanket was wrapped
about her head and body, hanging to her moccasined feet. She was the
wife of Michel Kaiser, the young leader of the braves. But towering
above the rest of the assembly, regal to the point of austerity, was a
man aged but still erect, as though his strength of pride would never
let his shoulders stoop beneath the conquering years. He wore his
blanket folded closely around him and fanned himself with an eagle's
wing, the emblem of the warrior. One eye was hidden beneath a white film
which had shut out its sight forever, but the other, coal-black and
piercing, met the stranger gaze for gaze, never flinching, never turning
aside. It was Charlot. Though an exile, his head was still unbent, his
spirit unbroken.
Sometimes we see in the aged, the placid melancholy which comes with
the foreknowledge of death, so in the serenely sad faces of the aged
Indians, we recognize that greater melancholy which is born of the
foreshadowing of racial death. They cherish, too, a more personal grief
in that they shall live to see the passing of the old life. Patiently
they submitted to the expulsion from the Bitter Root, but now in the
darkness of gathering years once more they must strike their tipis to
make room for the invading hosts. The setting sun streamed through the
leaves and touched the venerable faces with false youth. Wagon and
pony discharged their human loads who sat passively, listening to the
admonition of the tom-tom and the chant:
"_Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!_"
After this preliminary measure had lasted hours, not an Indian professed
to know whether the people would be moved to dance or not. A race
characteristic is that impulse must quicken them to action. It was
strange how the tidings had spread. The tipis and lodges are scattered
over many miles, but the Indians kept coming as though called up by
magic from their hiding places in the hills.
Beneath a clump of cottonwood trees around the tom-tom, a drum made of
deer hide stretched over a hollowed section of green tree, sat the four
musicians beating the time of the chant with sticks bound in strips of
cloth. Of these players one was blind, another aged, and the remaining
two, in holiday attire, with painted lips and cheeks, were braves. One
of these, seated a trifle higher than his companions, leaned indolently
over the tom-tom plying his sticks with careless grace. He possessed a
peculiar magnetism which marked him a leader. Occasionally his whole
body thrilled with sudden animation, his voice rose into a strident cry,
then he relapsed into the languid posture and the bee-like drone. Of all
that gathering he was the one perfect, full-blood specimen of a brave in
the height of his prime. The dandy, Victor Vanderberg, was handsomer
perhaps, and little Jerome had the beauty of a head of Raphael, but this
Michel Kaiser was a type apart. His face and slim, nimble hands were the
colour of bronze. His nose curved sharply as a hawk's beak, his mouth
was compressed in a hard, cold line over his white teeth, his cheek
bones were high and prominent, his brows straight, sable strokes above
small, bright-black eyes that gleamed keen as arrow darts. His hair was
made into two thick braids wrapped around with brown fur, his arms were
decorated with bracelets and from his neck hung string upon string of
beads falling to his waist. It was he who with suppressed energy flung
back his head as he gave the shrill cry and quickened the beat of the
tom-tom until louder and louder, faster and faster swelled the chant:
"_Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!_"
Then out into the open on the green stepped a girl-child scarcely three
years of age, who threw herself into rhythmic motion, swaying her small
body to the time of the music and bearing in her quavering treble the
burden of the chant. The impressive faces of the spectators melted into
smiles. She was the pet of the tribe, the orphan granddaughter of Joe La
Mousse and his venerable wife. Loving hands had made for her a war dress
which she wore with the grave complaisance of one favoured above her
peers. She scorned the sedate dances of the squaws and chose the quicker
action of the war dance, and she would not yield her possession of the
field without a struggle which showed that the spirit of her fighting
fathers still lived in her.
Suddenly a brave painted grotesquely, dressed in splendid colours with
a curious contrivance fastened about his waist and standing out behind
like a tail, bounded into the ring, his hurrying feet beating to the
tintinnabulation of sleigh bells attached to his legs. Michel Kaiser and
the young man who sat beside him at the tom-tom gave up their places
to others, and after disappearing for a moment came forth freed from
encumbering blankets, transformed with paint and ornament. A fourth
dancer joined them and the awe-begetting war dance began. The movement
was one of restrained force. With bent heads and bodies inclined
forward, one arm hanging limp and the other resting easily at the back,
they tripped along until a war-whoop like an electric shock, sent them
springing into the air with faces turned upward and clenched fists
uplifted toward the sky.
It was now that Michel stood revealed in all his physical beauty. In
colour and form he was like a perfectly wrought bronze statue. He was
tall and slender. His arms and legs, metal-hard, were fleet and strong
and his every motion expressed agility and grace. He was clad in the
full war-dress of the Selish, somewhat the same as that which his
ancestors had worn before the coming of the white man. Upon his head
was a bonnet of skunk tails that quivered with the slightest motion
of his sinewy body. He wore, besides, a shirt, long, fringed buckskin
leggins and beaded moccasins. He was decorated with broad anklets and
little bells that tinkled as he moved. Of the four dancers Michel sprang
highest, swung in most perfect rhythm, spent in that wild carnival most
energy and force. Supple and lean as a panther he curvetted and darted;
light as the wind his moccasined feet skimmed over the green, scarcely
seeming to crush a spear of grass. As he went through that terrible
pantomime practiced by his fathers before they set out to kill or die,
the fire flashing in his lynx-eyes, his slim arm poised over his head,
his whole willow-lithe body swaying to the impulse of the war-lust,
it was easy to fancy how that play might become a reality and he who
danced to perpetuate an ancient form might turn relentless demon if the
intoxication of the war-path once kindled in his veins.
[Illustration: ABRAHAM ISAAC AND MICHEL KAISER]
This war dance explained many things. It was a portrayal of the glorious
deeds of the warriors, a recitation of victorious achievement, a picture
of battle, of striking the body of the fallen enemy--one of the great
tests of valor. The act of striking was considered a far more gallant
feat than the taking of a scalp. After a foe was shot and had fallen,
a brave seeking distinction, dashed forth from his own band into the
open field and under the deadly rain of the enemy's arrows, struck with
his hand the body of the dead or wounded warrior. In doing this he not
only courted the desperate danger of that present moment, but brought
upon his head the relentless vengeance of the family, the followers and
the tribe of the fallen foe,--vengeance of a kind that can wait for
years without growing cold. By such inspiring examples the young men
were stirred to emulation. The dance showed, too, how in the past
the storm-clouds of war gathered slowly until, with lightning flash
and thunder-blast, the warriors lashed themselves to the white-heat
of frenzy at which they mocked death. The whole thing seemed to be a
marshalling of the passions, a blood-fire as irresistible and sweeping
as those floods of flame which lay the forests low.
The warriors ceased their mad career. The sweat streamed from their
brows and down their cheeks as they sat beneath the shade trees in
repose. Still the tom-tom beat and the chant continued:
"_Come, O! ye people! Come and dance!_"
They needed no urging now. What did they care for vespers and sermons
when the ghostly voices of warrior-ancestors, of forest dwellers and
huntsmen came echoing from the lips of the past? Their spirit was
aroused and the festival would last until the passion was quenched and
their veins were cooled.
The next dance was started by a squaw. It was called the "choosing
dance," from the fact that either a man or a woman chose a partner for
the figure. The ceremony of invitation was simple. The one who desired
to invite another, grasped the individual's arm and said briefly:
"Dance!"
The couples formed two circles around the tom-tom, one within the other,
then slowly the two rings moved 'round and 'round, with a kind of short,
springing step, droning the never-varying chant. At the end of the
dance the one who had chosen his partner presented him with a gift. In
some cases a horse or a cow was bestowed and not infrequently blankets
and the most cherished bead-work belts and hat-bands. Custom makes the
acceptance of these favours compulsory. Even the alien visitors were
asked to take part and the Indians laughed like pleased children to
welcome them to the dance. One very old squaw, Mrs. "Nine Pipes," took
her blanket from her body and her 'kerchief from her head to give
to her white partner, and a brave, having chosen a pale-faced lady
for the figure, and being depleted in fortune by his generosity at a
former festival, borrowed fifty cents from a richer companion to bestow
upon her. It was all done in the best of faith and friendliness, with
child-like good will and pleasure in the doing.
When the next number was called, those who had been honoured with
invitations and gifts returned the compliment. After this was done,
the Master of the Dance, Michel Kaiser, stepped into the center of the
circle, saying in the deep gutturals of the Selish tongue, with all the
pomp of one who makes a proclamation, something which may be broadly
rendered into these English words:
"This brave, Jerome, chose for his partner, Mary, and gave to her a belt
of beads, and Mary chose for her partner, Jerome, and gave to him a
silken scarf."
Around the circumference of the great ring he moved, crying aloud the
names of the braves and maids who had joined together in the dance, and
holding up to view the presents they had exchanged.
The next in order was a dance of the chase by the four young men who had
performed the war dance. In this the hunter and the beast he pursued
were impersonated and the pantomime carried out every detail of the
fleeing prey and the crafty huntsmen who relentlessly drove him to earth.
The fourth measure was the scalp dance given by the squaws, a rite
anciently practiced by the female members of families whose lords had
returned victorious from battle, bearing as trophies the scalps of
enemies they had slain. It was considered an indignity and a matter of
just reproach to her husband or brother, if a squaw were unable to take
part in this dance. The scalps captured in war were first displayed
outside the lodges of the warriors whose spoil they were, and after a
time, when they began to mortify or "break down," as the Indians say,
the triumphant squaws gathered them together, threw them into the dust
and stamped on them, heaping upon them every insult and in the weird
ceremony of that ghoulish dance, consigning them to eternal darkness,
for no brave without his scalp could enter the Happy Hunting Ground. The
chant changed in this figure. The voices of the women rose in a piercing
falsetto, broken by a rapid utterance of the single syllable "la, la"
repeated an incredible length of time. The effect was singularly savage
and strange, emphasizing the barbarous joy of the vengeful women. As the
war dance was the call to battle, this was the aftermath.
In pleasing contrast to this cruel rite was the marriage dance,
celebrated by both belles and braves. The young squaws, in their gayest
attire, ornamented with the best samples of their bead work and painted
bright vermillion about the lips and cheeks, formed a chain around
the tom-tom, singing shrilly. Then a brave with a party of his friends
stepped within the circle, bearing in his hand a stick, generally a
small branch of pine or other native tree. He approached the object
of his love and laid the branch on her shoulder. If she rejected his
suit she pushed the branch aside and he, with his followers, retired
in humiliation and chagrin. It often happened that more than one youth
desired the hand of the same maiden, and the place of the rejected lover
was taken immediately by a rival who made his prayer. If the maid looked
with favor upon him she inclined her head, laying her cheek upon the
branch. This was at once the betrothal and the marriage. At the close of
the festivities the lover bore her to his lodge and they were considered
man and wife.
* * * * *
The sun set mellow rose behind the hills which swam in seas of
deepening blue. Twilight unfolded shadows that climbed from the valleys
to the peaks and touched them with deadening gray chill, until the warm
glow died in the bosom of the night. Still the tom-tom beat, the chant
rose and fell, the dancers wheeled on madly, singing as they danced. The
darkness thickened. The stars wrote midnight in the sky. Papooses had
fallen asleep and women sat mute and tired with watching. By the flare
of a camp fire, running in uneven lights over the hurrying figures,
one might see four braves leaping and swaying in the war dance. The
night wore on. A heavy silence was upon the hills which echoed back the
war cry, the tom-tom's throb and the chant. One, then another, then a
third dropped out. Still the quivering, sweat-burnished bronze body of
Michel writhed and twisted, bent and sprang. The lines of his face had
hardened, the vermillion ran down his cheeks in rivulets, as of blood,
and the corners of his mouth were drawn like the curves of a bow. The
camp fire glowed low. The gray of the dawn came up out of the East with
a little shuddering wind and the faint stars burned out. The tom-tom
pulsed slower, the chant was broken. Suddenly a wild cry thrilled
through the pallid morn. The figure of Michel darted upward like a
rocket in a final brilliant gush of life, then fell senseless upon the
ground.
The embers grayed to ashes. The last spark was dead. The dance was done.
The mists of morning rolled up from the valleys and unfurled their pale
shrouds along the peaks, and the Indians, mere shadow-shapes, like
phantoms in a dream, stole silently away and vanished with the night.
_ENCHANTED WATERS_