ARCHERY AND GAMBLING.
To gambling they are no less passionately addicted in the
interior than on the coast.--BANCROFT: _Native Races_.
The next morning came the archery games. The best marksmen of each
tribe contended together under the eyes of Multnomah, and Snoqualmie
the Cayuse won the day.
These diversions were beginning to produce the result that the politic
chief had intended they should. Better feeling was springing up. The
spirit of discontent that had been rife was disappearing. Every day
good-fellowship grew more and more between the Willamettes and their
allies. Every day Snoqualmie the Cayuse became more popular among the
tribes, and already he was second in influence to none but Multnomah
himself.
The great war-chief had triumphed over every obstacle; and he waited
now only for the last day of the council, when his daughter should be
given to Snoqualmie and the chiefs should recognize him as the future
head of the confederacy.
Knowing this, the sight of Snoqualmie's successful archery was almost
intolerable to Cecil, and he turned away from the place where the
games were held.
"I will seek the young Willamette who is sick," he said to himself.
"Then this evening I will go and visit Wallulah."
The thought sent the blood coursing warmly through his veins, but he
chided himself for it. "It is but duty, I go to her only as a
missionary," he repeated to himself over and over again.
He went to the lodge of the young Willamette and asked for him.
"He is not here," the father of the youth told him. "He is in the
sweat-house. He is sick this morning, _hieu_ sick."
And the old man emphasized the _hieu_ [much], with a prolonged
intonation and a comprehensive gesture as if the young man were very
sick indeed. To the sweat-house went Cecil forthwith. He found it to
be a little arched hut, made by sticking the ends of bent willow-wands
into the ground and covering them over with skins, leaving only a
small opening for entrance. When a sick person wished to take one of
those "sweat baths" so common among the Indians, stones were heated
red hot and put within the hut, and water was poured on them. The
invalid, stripped to the skin, entered, the opening was closed behind
him, and he was left to steam in the vapors.
When Cecil came up, the steam was pouring between the overlapping
edges of the skins, and he could hear the young Willamette inside,
chanting a low monotonous song, an endlessly repeated invocation to
his _totem_ to make him well. How he could sing or even breathe in
that stifling atmosphere was a mystery to Cecil.
By and by the Willamette raised the flap that hung over the entrance
and crawled out, hot, steaming, perspiring at every pore. He rushed
with unsteady footsteps down to the river, only a few yards away, and
plunged into the cold water. After repeatedly immersing himself, he
waded back to the shore and lay down to dry in the sun. The shock to
his nervous system of plunging from a hot steam-bath into ice-cold
water fresh from the snow peaks of the north had roused all his latent
vitality. He had recovered enough to be sullen and resentful to Cecil
when he came up; and after vainly trying to talk with or help him, the
missionary left him.
It is characteristic of the Indian, perhaps of most half-animal races,
that their moral conduct depends on physical feeling. Like the animal,
they are good-humored, even sportive, when all is well; like the
animal, they are sluggish and unreasoning in time of sickness.
Cecil went back to the camp. He found that the archery games were
over, and that a great day of gambling had begun. He was astonished at
the eagerness with which all the Indians flung themselves into it.
Multnomah alone took no part, and Tohomish, visible only at the
council, was not there. But with those two exceptions, chiefs,
warriors, all flung themselves headlong into the game.
First, some of the leading chiefs played at "hand," and each tribe
backed its chief. Furs, skins, weapons, all manner of Indian wealth
was heaped in piles behind the gamblers, constituting the stakes; and
they were divided among the tribes of the winners,--each player
representing a tribe, and his winnings going, not to himself, but to
his people. This rule applied, of course, only to the great public
games; in private games of "hand" each successful player kept his own
spoils.
Amid the monotonous chant that always accompanied gambling, the two
polished bits of bone (the winning one marked, the other not) were
passed secretly from hand to hand. The bets were made as to who held
the marked stick and in which hand, then a show of hands was made and
the game was lost and won.
From "hand" they passed to _ahikia_, a game like that of dice, played
with figured beaver teeth or disks of ivory, which were tossed up,
everything depending on the combination of figures presented in their
fall. It was played recklessly. The Indians were carried away by
excitement. They bet anything and everything they had. Wealthy chiefs
staked their all on the turn of the ivory disks, and some were
beggared, some enriched. Cecil noticed in particular Mishlah the
Cougar, chief of the Molallies. He was like a man intoxicated. His
huge bestial face was all ablaze with excitement, his eyes were
glowing like coals. He had scarcely enough intellect to understand the
game, but enough combativeness to fling himself into it body and soul.
He bet his horses and lost them; he bet his slaves and lost again; he
bet his lodges, with their rude furnishings of mat and fur, and lost
once more. Maddened, furious, like a lion in the toils, the desperate
savage staked his wives and children on the throw of the _ahikia_, and
they were swept from him into perpetual slavery.
Then he rose up and glared upon his opponents, with his tomahawk
clinched in his hand,--as if feeling dimly that he had been wronged,
thirsting for vengeance, ready to strike, yet not knowing upon whom
the blow should fall. There was death in his look, and the chiefs
shrunk from him, when his eyes met Multnomah's, who was looking on;
and the war-chief checked and awed him with his cold glance, as a
tamer of beasts might subdue a rebellious tiger. Then the Molallie
turned and went away, raging, desperate, a chief still, but a chief
without lodge or wife or slave.
The sight was painful to Cecil, and he too went away while the game
was at its height. Drawn by an influence that he could not resist, he
took the trail that led down the bank of the river to the retreat of
Wallulah.