J. A. Costello

“ The Siwash is the creature of the circumstances of climate in a very great degree, and he could never escape it—never will till the last of his race is lost in oblivion. His mode of life, the almost continual living in a squatting, cramped position in his canim from generation to generation, shows in his broken, ungraceful proportions today; and it cannot be doubted but that in the humid atmosphere of Puget Sound and the abbreviated territory in which he has lived are to be found the potent factors that have united to make him at this day the essence of ugliness in human mould. ”

“ But the truer type of the tribe, the head of the household, is also there, a living study for the enthusiast—a portrait not yet portrayed. His face and his bearing recall the Indian stoic of romance and bring to mind the heroes of the sun dance. In youth this full-blooded nomad of the water had slain three men in single-handed combat or accomplished other warlike deeds. There is some trace of thought in his countenance, and, notwithstanding the flat head he bears himself as a freeman. The eye of the man is small and oblique, well lashed, and surmounted by heavy eyebrows. ”

“ THE MAKAH TRIBE
In the extreme northwestern portion of the United States outside of Alaska, around and about the base of that sightly headland Cape Flattery, where it has been said in a spirit of half jest, but worth taking most seriously, that never a day in the year passes without rain, dwells a small nation of men and women who will go down in history, in song and story perhaps, as a happy, contented people; a people doubly fortunate in the possession of a unique territory abounding with fruits of land and sea. ”

“ The squirrel, running up and down the trees hoarding his winter stores, kept watch that the lovers did not go by him unseen. The eagle, in ever-increasing circles, soared high above the land and kept a watchful eye that the lovers did not escape him. The chief of the wolves found them, but, remembering that Wah-Wah-Hoo had saved his life when caught in a trap, he, too, commanded his followers to say nothing of the lovers. ”

“ Many years ago there was a band of Indians camped at that point on the beach. His father and family were in a canoe paddling toward the camp. It was just dusk and the ruby rays of a summer sun-set had not yet disappeared. As if by magic or ta-mahn-a-wis, a man stood out on the bluff above them. He swelled himself up and again he swelled himself up until he was recognized as the form of old S’Beow, standing there as tall as the big fir trees. Presently S’Beow kicked the bluff over onto the Indians camped on the beach and buried them all, then stepped across onto Hat island and disappeared. ”

“ On it came, and the solitary voyager in the copper canoe landed at last on the Whulge, under the crystal dome of Mount Rainier, and he shadowed among the cool firs of the headlands there the boat that flashed out the rays of sunset light.
He called together the tribes. They came in canoes from everywhere. He began to teach and preach. “I come among you as a preacher of righteousness,” he said, or thoughts like these. “All that men can possess in this world, or any other, is righteousness. If a man have that, he is rich, though he be poor, and his soul shall rise, rise, rise, and live forever. ”

“ Sometimes it illustrates some legend closely connected or referring to the owner’s totem. Some of them deal with the history of the tribe, while others are purely legendary, but refer to the totem of the owner. None but the wealthy can afford to erect these carved columns, so that one who is rich enough to own one has a prestige that is so desirable among them. As the head of a household he becomes a petty chief in the village. With the Haida, to accumulate sufficient wealth to own a totem pole and rise to the dignity of a petty chief is the leading passion of his soul. ”

“ Hop picking on bright days in the valleys of Western Washington is the delight of the native. It is for him and all his kith and kin, a joy unspeakable. He comes from near and far. He will travel hundreds of miles in his big canim with his full household and all his earthly possessions to enjoy the delightful season as much for his real love for it as for the money that he knows will always come at the close. Then the hop field is redolent of perfume and melody. The fields are alive with pickers; the air is joyous with sound. ”

“ There is a richness and coloring in the surrounding which form a perpetual delight. There is a novelty to the beholder and a rurality of scene so peculiar, that makes one feel as if they were in some enchanted country. If you have never witnessed a season of hop picking you have missed a rare old time-treat which has its equal only in the maple woods of the East during sugar making time, or in the co’n shuckin’ days of old Kentuck, “when the mast am fallin’ and the darkies am a singin’ and raccoon and possum am simmerin’ in the pot.” ”

“ Indeed, the woman is built for the work in which she so exerts herself when poling in the canoe on the rapids of her own Quinaiult river, for a long reach of their favorite stream running back into the hills the tribe holds as part of its own domain. Her features are full and round, of the usual Flathead type, and display an intelligence immediately remarked in contrast with her aged kindred. Though living in huts no better than stables or outhouses, she is contented, rather neat in attire and not unhappy. ”

“ The history of the Siwash is tradition, as it is with all aborigines. The early tales of the Norsemen, the Gaul, the Celt, are mere matters of history, perhaps distorted, but withal, history. The lower the order of the race, the lower its mental capacities, the more truth there is in the lore—the tales of its past. The incidents of their lives which collectively become their history, are handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, plain and unembellished. ”

“ Indians make the best pickers, and among the Indians the klootchman ranks supreme. She picks hops while the lazy, indolent brave plays cards or lounges in the shadow of his rakish tepee. His great delights are in card playing and pony racing. Those of the interior will travel for days across the mountains every autumn, not to pick hops but to horse race on Sunday. Sunday is their big day, a day of carousing, gambling and racing. On those days all the villages in the valley are overrun with the pickers in holiday garb of fancy colors. ”

“ At the rear is a dense background of forest that reaches far into the interior until it runs out at the timber line far up the sloping sides of the Olympics. The Quinaiult river rushes out through the tangle of forest past the village and pours its purling waters into the long stretch of bay, as if glad to escape from the imprisonment of woods and jungle. The little village is an ideal scene, one to swell the ambitions of the artist, and to please the fancy of the legend-lover or the story teller. ”

“ Siwash paddles along the canals too, but she is on a peaceful mission and only takes the tules and rushes that grow thick on the tide-flat marshes for no other purpose, in her estimation, than for making mats for her dwelling on the other side of the bay. She knows all the devious windings of every little channel, though some of them are only about wide enough to float her light craft and are hung so close with grass and rushes that you would hardly suspect an open waterway. ”

“ But work for a genuine Siwash is no more palatable than it is to a Patagonian. He sticks to his “canim” like a leech to the epidermis. Laziness is a cultivated characteristic of the old-time Indian, is grafted into his being as indelibly as the tattooing on the arm of an East India man and he will never work so long as the sands on his native beach contain a live clam or the hills above a huckleberry bush from which his klootchman can dig a bivalve or pick a wicker basket of blue berries. ”

“ With the faith of a fanatic and endurance of a mother’s love the mourner spent the night alone in the cold and rain, wrapped in no cover but a single blanket, in the belief that the evil spirit would not find her babe in the darkness. The strange faith of the woman is paralleled by the worship practiced by an old medicine man, still living, of the tribe. In a dilapidated dwelling the Indian erected a charred hemlock pole of slight dimensions, securing thereto a covering of eagle and other feathers. The idol was complete in its simplicity and exemplified a tradition of the medicine man’s power. ”

“ For days and nights he knelt beside this strange design without eating, without sleeping, but partly chanting, partly talking, with earnest gesture and uplifted face, he called up the mystery of his superstition.
The great highway of the tribe, next to the ocean itself, is the swiftly flowing Quinaiult river, up which they run their light canoes to the lake of the same name. In the summer and sometimes, too, when the snow whitens the upper lying forests, the canoe highway is relinquished and the Indian takes the trail through the woods or over the mountains. ”

“ We of today might clothe our imagination with the vision of Princess Angeline, the old chief’s daughter, then a maiden of comely, though dusky, looks, standing respectfully near and listening, possibly in eagerness, to this bartering away of her father’s domain—her own heritage—to the stranger. ”

“ People of highly civilized nations are not free from this clinging shadow of the forgotten or unknown past, and, although they laugh at the idea as being rank foolishness, they will feel a little shiver if they are the first to cross the track of a funeral, or they will stop and pick up a pin which points toward them on the sidewalk, not because they need it, but because—well, just because they want to. Civilized people call this trait an eccentricity in themselves and superstition in the savage. ”

“ Under their feet are the white sands of the ocean beach, and over them seems continually to watch a most magnanimous providence. These people are the Makah Indians, robust, ruddy, big brothers and big sisters, whose other branch of the family undoubtedly exists on the further side of the Straits of Juan de Fuca, so much do the general characteristics of the one with the other seem to run together.
The Makah Indians are many generations advanced in civilization to that of some of the Sound tribes. Why this is so is—because it is so. They have enjoyed no greater privileges than other tribes. ”

“ Here is one tribe of native people at least who will pass into oblivion with scarcely a line left to the history-loving and history-writing people who have taken their places. One legend alone and that the pioneer has reduced to verse has been preserved. The legend, as it appears, was written 40 years ago merely for the pleasure of it by the old pioneer and never was offered for publication. It is tinged with romance and relates to an Indian maiden whose betrothed was killed during a raid by the Northern or Stickeen Indians to Shilshoh bay. ”

“ The race is always a running race and the Indians mount without any reference to weight, handicap, jockey or saddle. A big Indian will be seen mounted on a diminutive wooly pony, and will sail over the course like a meteor, his long black locks streaming in the wind. Bets of ponies, lodges, blankets, saddles, knives, money and everything and anything tangible and movable will be staked on the result of a race and paid with as much nonchalance as a thousand pounds Sterling would be paid on Epsom Downs. ”

“ Worse far, all their happy hunting grounds have been curtailed by a maternal government until now but a stretch of ocean beach and a narrow breadth of mighty forest land is all that is left that they can call their own.
One street, crooked in a right angle half way in its length, serves the little village for a thoroughfare, aye, more than answers, for little use have the handful of Quinaiults who are left for street or thoroughfare other than the naked beach. The ocean shore is their highway and the cedar canoe their favored and their only equipage, and they ask for nothing better. ”

“ They know just the hour, just the spot and place when and where to fish and seldom are seen trolling any other time. Trout a Siwash has no love for and never attempts to take. He may have his camp on a stream alive with the finest of the trout species, but he never molests them. A polluted dog salmon lying dead upon the sand bank is more preferable in his eyes and he will pick up one and walk away with the same grim satisfaction that he will after having speared or hooked a monster silver side, the king of the genus. ”

“ One of the best stories known to the Indians around Puget Sound is the legend of the Ta-mahn-a-wis, or magic blanket.
Once upon a time there lived a boy with his parents on the shores of Puget Sound, who was just budding into young manhood. He had reached that point in life where boys prepare to fight life’s battles for themselves, and where the Indians in former times sought to discover their totem, or guardian spirit. This boy went alone with his bow and arrow into the woods to hunt the little birds and little squirrels, and had good success in killing the little birds and little squirrels. ”

“ Able-bodied slaves were seldom sacrificed, as they were considered of too much value, but the old and diseased were usually selected as victims. If a slave should learn of his doom and succeed in escaping or concealing himself he was allowed to live, and after the festivities were over might return to the house of his master with no fear of punishment. Chiefs often used to help favorite slaves make their escape. After death the body of a slave received no more honor than that of a dog. It was denied the right of cremation and thrown upon the beach, food for the wolves, the fish and the birds. ”

“ It was a long time ago, just after the breaking up of the great winter, that the sky opened and a terrible rain and snow deluged the world and the water kept on rising higher and higher until the great mountains were covered beneath it and ice and snow, and the bones of bear and deer and clam shells and fishbacks and logs floated on top of the water and settled on the mountain tops as the flood subsided. That is why the mountains are always covered with ice and snow. ”