“Those who attempt to reason us out of our follies begin at the
wrong end, since the attempt naturally presupposes us capable of
reason.”--_Goldsmith._
Nature made bounteous provision for the wants of the aboriginal
inhabitants of British Columbia. The seas and rivers were teeming
with fish--salmon of several kinds, halibut, cod, and sturgeon, and
among smaller fish, herring, oolachan, smelts, and trout; the beaches
and shallows afforded large sea crabs, clams, cockles, and oysters.
The plains, valleys and mountains abounded in wild animals of many
kinds--elk, moose, cariboo, deer, mountain sheep and goats, bears of
different colors, and numerous smaller fur-bearing creatures. The
forests, the sky and the lakes and streams were alive with members of
the feathered tribe--swans, geese, ducks of several varieties, and,
besides all these, the Indians were not averse to eating eagles and
gulls, if necessity demanded.
Besides laying in large stores of dried meats and fish, the natives
gathered large quantities of wild berries, of which there were several
varieties, and dried them for their winter supplies. There were many
other kinds of food, such as the inner bark of the spruce tree, many
kinds of roots, wild potatoes, wild onions, wild rice, sea-weed, fish,
eggs or spawn, crab apples and nuts.
METHODS OF COOKING.
The people had three common ways of cooking their food: by boiling,
steaming, and broiling before the fire.
To cook a quantity of provisions in one of their big tubs or boxes--for
they had no pots in those days--they poured in water sufficient to
cook the quantity needed, and then red hot stones, lifted with a pair
of wooden tongs, were dropped in to make it boil. When salmon or other
fish were to be cooked, they usually cut off the heads and tails, and
kept up the boiling process until all was reduced to a broth, when it
was ladled out into dishes or long troughs and set before the people.
Think of seven hundred salmon cooked in this way for a single feast!
To prepare food by steaming, a large fire was first kindled on a bed of
cobble stones. When the wood had burned out, the stones being very hot,
layers of green grass or sea-weed were laid on the top of the stones
and kept damp with water. The clams, mussels, or other shell fish--if
salmon, cod, halibut or sturgeon, usually only the heads and tails
were thus prepared--whatever they wished to cook, were placed upon
the grass, a little water was poured upon the top, and the whole was
closely covered with mats, leaves, or boughs to keep in the steam. This
is much the best means of cooking clams or other shell fish. They are
delicious when cooked after this fashion.
When it was desired to broil the salmon, birds, venison or other wild
meats, a stick the size of a broom handle, about four feet long, was
split part way down, and the meat or fish was put into the split, while
little sticks were placed crossways to keep the food spread. The stick
was then tied at the split end, while the other end, already sharpened,
was driven into the ground by the hot camp-fire, the flat side being
kept towards the fire. The oil or gravy was caught in a clam shell or
other dish and poured back upon the meat while cooking. Salmon never
tastes better than when cooked in this manner. Often when travelling by
canoe have we had deer, bear or mountain-goat meat, ducks or geese, and
even porcupine, eagle or gulls, cooked in this way. The latter is quite
palatable when you are worn with travelling and the larder has become
nearly exhausted.
FEASTS.
It has been said, “It is always a feast or a famine with a native.”
Whether that is true or not, certain it is that the natives of the
Pacific Coast have a great variety of feasts. Indians, wherever you
find them, are very hospitable to strangers--the travellers and miners
of this vast country would all testify to this. They are most generous,
even reckless, with their food. If you are invited to a feast among
them the food is piled up before you, and after having satisfied your
appetite you are expected to take away all you cannot eat. If the
visitor is a chief or important person, what he has left is sent home
by messenger to his family. If he be any ordinary guest, he sweeps off
what remains--which is usually much more than he has eaten--into a
corner of his blanket or his shirt, and carries it away. If the feast
be of whale’s blubber, porpoise, fish of similar kind, or venison, bear
or mountain goat, it is cut up into slices and strung on a sharp stick,
or carried in his hand to the rest of his family.
At a big feast there are always several masters of ceremonies and a
number of waiters in attendance. These never sit down while the eating
is going on, though often a feast will last for six or seven hours,
having as many courses. There are numerous small, every-day feasts
where neighbors call upon each other in a happy, social way.
One of the greatest offences to an Indian is to refuse to accept an
invitation which he has given you to eat with him and his friends.
MUSIC AND DANCING.
With most feasting is usually associated dancing and other merriment.
The readiness with which the Indians pick up our beautiful hymn tunes
and learn to play our musical instruments has been remarked. Indeed,
these people are naturally very musical, and in their heathen state
were passionately fond of singing their own native melodies. Of songs
they had a great variety: war songs, marriage songs, songs for feasts
and public gatherings, mourning songs for the dead, songs when the fish
came, dancing songs, canoe songs, and many others. When we asked the
old dance-song maker where they got their music, he replied:
“We get it from the wind in the trees, from the waves on the sea-shore,
from the rippling stream, from the mountain side, from the birds, and
from the wild animals.”
As for musical instruments, we are all familiar with the simple Indian
drum, made by stretching a deerskin tightly over a hoop. Besides this
they used as a drum a big square box, painted in different colors, with
figures of birds and animals upon it.
When the drummer was at work crowds would, accompany him, beating time
with sticks upon boards. The sound was weird in the extreme, if heard
at the dead of night, coupled with the shouts of the heathen dancers.
Besides the drums were rattles of various shapes, used by the chiefs
and conjurers, and pipe whistles--indeed, whistles of many kinds,
imitating birds and animals--some of which were used by the hunters in
pursuit of game.
With much of their music is associated their pagan dancing. There are
professional dancers among the tribes, who as a rule are identified
with the clans of the medicine men. The heathen dances are very
fascinating to the heathen mind, and in nothing is the “backsliding” of
the Indian more noticeable than in his return to the dance.
At the dancing season certain persons become possessed, or as the
An-ko-me-nums say, “the you-an, or dance-spirit, is on them.” They
dream dreams and see visions, and move about in a hypnotic state,
unable, or at least declining, to work, and roaring out at intervals a
sort of mournful sobbing, “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.” Then they go from house to
house, hunting up every kind of food they can get hold of, and gorging
themselves many times a day. At night these dancers, all daubed and
plastered with grease and paint, would gather in the large houses,
where the people were assembled, and work themselves up into a frenzy,
prancing up and down and round about, performing numerous contortions.
Then they would break out in song, or in monotonous recitation relate
their dreams and visions and tell many weird tales. Then round and
round, and up and down again, they would prance, until they dropped
from sheer exhaustion, or fell, perhaps, into the fire, and another
took their place. All this time the onlookers watched and listened
to the chanting and the story, or screamed and pounded in frantic
accompaniment to the dancing.
The heathen dance is certainly demoralizing, and, like everything of
heathenism, is of the devil.
WHITE MAN’S DANCE VS. INDIAN DANCE.
Early in my stay at Nanaimo four or five of the leading chiefs came to
me with the proposition that if I would allow them to go on with their
potlatching and wild dancing every day in the week, they would come to
church and rest on Sunday.
“No; you had better stop all your heathenism,” was my answer.
Nothing daunted, they came back again later. Now they would all be good
on Sabbath and stand by me if they could dance. It was not very bad,
and they had to keep up a little of what their fathers told them. And
if I would not speak against it or pray against it they would all be
good soon and would have all their children go to school.
“No, I cannot have anything to do with the old way, the dance, the
potlatch, etc., it is all bad,” I said.
Then they whispered to each other, “Oh, he is like a post; you cannot
move him.”
To give an idea of the scenes witnessed on these dancing occasions: Old
Sna-kwe-multh, a man who had been taken a slave by some northern tribe,
but who had found his way home, wished to demonstrate his bravery. At a
great feast he came rushing in half naked and danced before the people.
As his frenzy increased he slashed at his thighs with some kind of
sharp instrument, and then with both hands caught up his own blood and
drank it, to prove himself a brave.
A number of white men, who had been witnesses of the shameful scene,
ran out and cried, “The devil is in the man.”
I denounced the custom and pleaded with them to give it up. Speaking
to the old Chief Squen-es-ton, I said, “You must stop it. It is of the
devil.”
“Oh,” said he, “the white man’s dance worse than the Indian’s dance.”
“How do you make that out?” I said.
“Oh, Indian man, alone, dance all round the house and sit down. And
then Indian woman she dance all round and she sit down. But white man
take another man’s wife and hug her all round the house.”
What could I say to the argument? What would you have said?
POTLATCHING.
Of the many evils of heathenism, with the exception of witchcraft, the
potlatch is the worst, and one of the most difficult to root out.
At one time its demoralizing influence was so manifest that the
Government passed a law prohibiting it, but this excellent law was
seldom properly enforced.
“Potlatch”--the word is from the Chinook and means “to give.”
Literally the idea is the giving away of everything a man possesses
to his friends. In return he gets nothing except a little flattery, a
reputation for generosity, and poverty.
“Tlaa-nuk” is the An-ko-me-num word, and it suggests something more
than “a giving,” or a feast, or an entertainment, or a ceremony, for
it is all of these and more. It is a system of tribal government which
enforces its tyrannical rule upon all, and overrides all other laws of
the nation or the individual.
Its outward manifestation of the heathen feast and dance, with the
giving of gifts to all present, is bad enough, but this is as nothing
to the unseen influence behind it all.
The potlatch relates to all the life of the people, such as the giving
of names, the raising into social position, their marriages, deaths and
burials.
A man desires, or thinks himself entitled to, some coveted position,
property or distinction, and for years, perhaps, makes preparation to
secure it. This can only be done by the law of “tlaa-nuk” (potlatch),
and so when ready he calls together from far and near his friends and
relatives, when, after much feasting and dancing and speech-making,
he gets up on a high platform and proceeds to give away all that he
possesses.
The ambition of an Indian to be thought greater, richer and more
influential than any of his neighbors leads him not only to give away
a large part of his goods--which, as a matter of fact, he expects
returned with interest on some future occasion, at another such
gathering--but wantonly to destroy very much in such a manner that it
can never be restored. For instance, think of a man taking a fine large
canoe, valued at, perhaps, one hundred and fifty dollars, and smashing
it into pieces; or of another seizing a number of beautiful new guns
or rifles and bending and breaking them so that they would be utterly
useless; or of another setting fire to piles of food and of goods. Some
few years ago, at one such gathering, the poor, foolish creatures took
rolls of new bills, the product of their summer’s work, and threw them
into the fire.
I knew a man at Nanaimo who, together with his wives and children,
worked for years saving and getting together much property; and then a
great potlatch was given, and everything went, to the last stitch of
clothing, and he and his family were left practically naked to face the
winter, without any provisions. His children nearly starved, while he
contracted a cold which led to consumption, from which he died.
Some time ago it was rumored that the law against the potlatch was to
be repealed. This drew a strong protest from several quarters, among
them from some of the Indians themselves.
About that time the following letter, which explains itself, appeared
in the local press, signed by an Indian whose identity was vouched for
by a gentleman who knew him well:
“Having heard that in the last session of the provincial parliament
a resolution was passed asking Dominion Government to reconsider the
potlatch question with a view to repealing section 114, and that there
is to be an inquiry as to the evils of the potlatch, we should like to
tell the public what the potlatch is.
“Really and truly it is destruction to life and property, as we shall
show. The first is that the women go from home to other places for
immoral purposes, to get money or blankets to give away, or potlatch,
as people call it. The second is that they sell their daughters to
other men as soon as possible, sometimes twelve or thirteen years old,
marriage they call it; the people do not care so long as they get
blankets to potlatch with. And the third is that they hate each other
so much because of their trying to get one above the other in rank, as
it is according to how many times they potlatch that they get the rank,
and keep it, too. If they could they would even poison one another.
Even now they think they kill one another by witchcraft, with intent
to kill, and they believe that they do kill. A man does not care for
any relatives when the potlatch is in question. The potlatch is their
god; they will sacrifice everything to it--life, property, relatives,
children, or anything, must go for him to be a ‘tyee’ (chief) in the
potlatch.
“A man after giving a potlatch will sit down, his children, too,
without knowing where he is going to get his food and clothes, as he
has given away everything, and he has borrowed half of it, for which he
has to pay back double. And another thing is, when they are mad with
one another they will break canoes or tear blankets or break a valuable
copper, to shame their opponent. The potlatch is one fight, with
quarrelling and hating one another.
“And another is the desecration of the dead. The hamatsa, or medicine
man, when he first comes from the woods, carries a dead body in his
arms, professing to have lived on such things when in the woods, and
as soon as the hamatsa comes in the house the other hamatsas all get
up and go and tear the body to pieces among them like dogs; besides
all this they bite the arms of one another; and the other thing is
that when a man gets ill he thinks he is witchcrafted, and then his
relatives will go and take the dead body that they think he is fixed
with: they cut and mutilate it to undo the work that they think has
been done to him. We have just heard of such a case from Kurtsis, of a
woman’s dead body having been taken out and cut, to undo the work that
they think has been done to a certain man. All these things are pure
facts, and we are prepared to prove them if need be, and could tell
other evils, but we are afraid of tiring the public.”
GAMBLING.
The Indians are passionately fond of gambling. In olden times they
gambled, not with cards, but usually with round wooden pins about three
inches long, or with shells and pebbles.
The gamblers would sit opposite each other on the grass or in the large
houses, and a great crowd would gather on both sides, making a rattling
noise with short sticks on boards, and singing to work themselves up
for luck, or “power,” as they called it. The gambling would go on night
and day, almost week in and week out, until they had not a shred of
clothes left. Money, muskets, canoes, horses, and sometimes the houses
over their heads, they would stake on a chance.
The story is told of one old man among the Kling-gets who gambled away
everything he had. Then, with the hope that he would have a lucky
day some time, he put himself down and gambled away for days, still
losing, until his wife, seeing that he was “going,” persuaded him to
stop. She had to pay two hundred blankets to buy him back.
The gambling passion still lives with them, and now some of them have
adopted the methods of their white brothers--they were always fond of
imitating him, even to their own hurt--and are going deeper and deeper
into sin.