The Indians are fast passing away, and their customs and mode of thought
are passing with them and will only linger in dim tradition. For over
fifty-five years I have been in close contact with many individuals of
the different tribes of Oregon, Washington, British Columbia and
California and I have taken considerable interest in the study of their
characteristics. I have already stated that the Indian is an impassive
stoic. If he has any human emotions, they are with the exception of
anger, never displayed in his countenance. When angry, his countenance
becomes fixed, sullen, morose and determined. He does not voice his
anger, but silently nurses his wrath to keep it warm. He has no wit, but
has a keen sense of the ludicrous, sometimes degenerating into short
pungent sarcasm. This is the exception, not the general rule. He reasons
from surface indications and has a keen perception of the absurd, or
what he considers such. I have given one illustration in the narration
of R.'s civilizing efforts. It is stated that an Indian chief said to
General Isaac I. Stevens, in one of his treaty conventions, "We and our
fathers have always possessed this country. We have no objections to the
whites coming and enjoying it with us. The country is ours. Why do the
whites always urge the Indian to go upon reservations? The Indian never
tells the whites that they must go on reservations." On my return from
Colville in 1855 I met an Indian with a fine mare. I asked him if he
would sell her to me. "Yes," he said, "you may have her for fifteen
dollars." I had with me a surplus of blankets and coarse but warm
clothing, and I offered to trade him three pair of blankets and a suit
of coarse clothing for his mare. It was a cold morning, and the grass
was stiff with hoar frost. He had nothing on him in the shape of
clothing or wraps, with the exception of a thin calico shirt. I told him
that he needed these blankets and clothes to keep him warm. I asked him
if he was not cold. He answered in the Yankee style by asking me if my
face was cold. I told him "No." "Well," says he, "I am face all over."
The most thorough and extended system of Esperanto which ever existed,
so far as my knowledge goes, was spoken on this Coast. It was an
invention of the Hudson Bay Company, and extended and was spoken by the
Indians generally from the northern portion of California through all of
Oregon and Washington and British Columbia, and north of that along the
Coast for a great distance. It was also spoken and understood by the
pioneers, settlers and trappers through all this vast region. It was
Spartan in some of its laconisms. As an illustration: I was appointed by
the Court, in the trial of a criminal case in Southern Oregon, for the
defense of three Indians on the charge of grand larceny. They were
indicted for horse-stealing. The proof against them was clear and
satisfactory. I labored to reduce the offense from grand to petit
larceny, and I succeeded, for the jury brought in a verdict of "guilty
of petit larceny." The Court sentenced them to three months'
imprisonment each, in the county jail. When their time expired, the
sheriff opened the doors and told them they might go; but, instead of
going, they went to the further end of a long, narrow hall, and two of
them squatted in the corners and the other between them against the
wall. The sheriff came to my office and said to me, "Jacobs, I want you
to go with me over to the jail. I can't make those clients of yours
understand that they may go." I went over with him and found them thus
situated. I told them in the jargon, or Esperanto, that they had paid
the debt they owed to the whites and that they were free to go to their
homes to see their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters and
friends. The center man--the oldest of the three--slowly arose and very
emphatically spoke the following: "Halo mammook, hiyu muck-a-muck, hyas
close, wake klatawa." This being interpreted means: "We have nothing to
do, we have plenty to eat, we think it very good, we will not go." We
had to drive them out of the jail and into the road on their way home. I
walked slowly back to my office meditating on the philosophy of such
punishment for an Indian.
Before I came to Puget Sound I had heard of a cultus potlatch. A
potlatch is the giving-away of all of our earthly possessions without
any hope or expectation of any return, either in kind or value. There
was an Indian on the Sound known by the whites as Indian Jim. Jim had a
wonderful ability to accumulate property; he was an Indian Morgan, or
Rockefeller. He was an expert gambler and trader, and very industrious
withal. He usually worked at the mills, where many other Indians were
employed, and he not only saved the money earned by himself, but
obtained, by his expertness in gambling, much of the money earned by the
other Indians, and much of that earned by the white laborers. This money
he invested in blankets--usually at Victoria. Some of his accumulation
of gold he had changed into fifty and twenty-five cent pieces. He also
purchased quite a quantity of calico and Indian trinkets. When he had
secured a large accumulation of such things, he gave a potlatch. The one
I attended was held on the tide-flats south of Seattle. As the time
approached, many canoes were on the Bay, headed by a joyous crowd going
to the potlatch. Jim was very anxious that I should attend the
closing-day of the potlatch. I told him that I would go. He sent a large
canoe with eight paddle-men to take me to the potlatch. So I went in
style, I witnessed the closing ceremonies and Jim had enough to give
every one in attendance, a blanket, or piece of money, or some gaudy
calico, beads or other trinkets.
He even took off a pretty good suit of clothes that he was accustomed to
wear and gave them away, substituting an old suit for them. He
accompanied me to the city on my return. I said to him, "Jim, you now
are a vagabond; you have no clothes to wear, no provisions to eat, and
no money." He said that that was all right; he would soon get some more.
He said it was all the same as that of the whites, but it was much
better than the white man's potlatch. He said that whenever he met his
friends he could see in their countenance a pleasant light. He also gave
me to understand that it made a sort of nobleman of him. But he said
when the white man died his children make a potlatch of what he left
behind him; and, being dead he could not see in their countenances that
light arising from what they had received from him. I thought possibly
that Jim's philosophy had a touch of sarcasm, and a good deal of truth
in it.