Kootenai

“ Up and down these interlocking chains the Columbia and the Kootenai, with their great lakes and unexplored tributaries, seem to be playing at hide-and-seek with each other. These rivers form here one of the most singular geographical phenomena of the world, for so strangely are the parallel chains of mountains tilted that the Kootenai, rising in a small lake on the western flank of the main chain of the Canadian Rockies and flowing south, passes within a mile of the source of the Columbia at Columbia Lake, separated only by a nearly level valley. ”

“ In later years it became the much traveled road of settlers and miners and merchants from the south into the Kootenai Country . How long the first Kootanae House was maintained as a trading post is not known , but the traders of the Saskatchewan soon discovered a more direct road to and from it , by Bow River and Simpson or Vermillion Pass , to the Columbia a few miles below Lake Windermere . ”

“ MacDonald , as his avant courier among the Indians to the south , probably was the first white man to descend the Kootenai River to Lake Kootenai , and the first to traverse the trail across the bend of the river , from Bonners Ferry to Cranbrook and Fort Steele , the present route of the Canadian Pacific.10 The winter of 1808-9 MacDonald spent in a leather lodge above Kootenai Falls in Montana ( at the mouth of Rainey Creek , probably ) , and there built a log hut to protect the trading goods and furs . ”

“ The only outlet for this district is up the Kootenai Lake and River, one hundred and fifty-five miles, to Bonner's Ferry, thence south thirty miles by wagon-road to Kootenai Station or Sand Point, on the Northern Pacific, and thence sixty miles to Spokane Falls. The passage by water occupies forty-eight hours. It costs seven dollars per ton to transport the ore from Cottonwood Creek Landing to Kootenai Station. A railroad will soon be made to penetrate the Kootenai country, and reveal to the world a region well worth the attention of the business-man and the tourist. ”

“ The first one hundred miles of the Columbia have a fall of less than forty feet, to where the river flows through a gorge . Geologists offer the opinion that originally the waters of this first hun dred mile stretch of the Columbia drained southward through this Kootenai River.4 The Kootenais are an aboriginal people , separate and distinct from the larger linguistic families of the Pacific Slope , their speech unusually soft and musical . They first emerge into the view of white men during the last years of the eighteenth century . ”

“ In the region tributary to the river dwell the Kootenais, a people originally engaged in hunting for livelihood . These Indians have witnessed the coming of the explorer and fur - trader with his pack - horse , canoe and happy - go - lucky voyageur, of the early overland traveler and the pioneer emigrant to the Columbia, of the missionary o f the Cross , o f the hewer o f the boundary line , o f the excited prospector with his pick and shovel , o f the pack - train , steam boat , locomotive and automobile . ”

“ Okinagane, Colville and Kootenai.The mines of the Okinagane and Colville regions promise large results. All this mineral region, up to and including the Okinagane, lies fairly within the patronage ground of the Seattle Railway as it pursues its course to Spokane Falls. The Colville and Cœur d'Alene, to which may now be added the Kootenai, mining regions, constitute a large area lying north and east of Spokane Falls, and offer themselves as possible routes for the Manitoba [Pg 206] Railway, but chiefly as tempting fields for railroad enterprises. ”

“ Vachel explained what a squaw-man is—a white who marries an Indian girl in order to get hold of her portion of land, the Indians of to-day being almost all of them endowed with land by the Government. We found again the Kootenai, now brawling through the plains, and bathed again, and reverted in spirit to those mountains. Then we tramped from tent to tent across the green wilderness where the Indians lived. ”

“ But are not these written in the books of the chronicles , journals , documents and the printed pages of those early days , when Bonners Ferry was the gate way for trade and travel to and from this Kootenai land ? Graven on the monument we dedicate today are names of the sturdy white men , who first saw and used this an cient thoroughfare of the Indians ; names which rank high in the history of the Columbia . ”

“ Mountain Chief went outside and shouted the names of the men he wanted: a medicine [Pg 51] man; several old, wise men; some warriors of great name. They came and were given seats in his lodge, each man according to his standing in the tribe. Said the Kootenai then: ‘I have a sacred song that I want you all to learn. I will sing it over three or four times, then you sing it with me.’
“He sang the song. It was low in tone, and slow; a strange and beautiful song that gripped one’s heart. ”

“ We have found the gold ore, and I’ll stake out the claims to-night. You can afford to leave for civilization now as soon as you please, I reckon, for your work in the Kootenai country is over. Your fortune is made.”
178 CHAPTER XIV. NEW-COMERS.
Many days went by after that before more time was given to the hunting of gold in that particular valley of the Kootenai lands; for before another day broke, the squaw spoke at the door of Overton’s tent and told him the girl was sick with fever, that she talked as a little child babbles and laughs at nothing. ”

“ After their stop at the Indian camp, which Genesee explained was a berrying crowd from the Kootenai tribe, there was, of course, comment among the visitors as to the mixed specimens of humanity they had seen there.
"I don't wonder a white man is ashamed of an Indian wife," said Mrs. Houghton. "What slouchy creatures!"
"All the more reason for a white man to act the part of missionary, and marry them," remarked Rachel Hardy, "and teach them what the domestic life of a woman should be." ”

“ Many a lonely prospector while looking for his bonanza has laid his bones where other equally evasive fortune-hunters could not find them. But the bonanza found, then comes the struggle for possession, and the race is to the swift. The discoverers of this one, named Winslow Hall and William Oakes, with eleven others, organized the Kootenai Bonanza Mining Company, and made three locations, the Kootenai Bonanza, Silver King, and American Flag. The G-rizzly, Silver Queen, and Cariboo are extensions of the above named.
The richness of the Kootenai Bonanza district is extraordi
nary. ”

“ ELLIOTT packs of furs weighed a little more than two tons , and re presented the first freight shipment from Bonners Ferry east.17 This occasion naturally directs attention to this particu lar locality in the land of the Kootenai ; prominent because the ancient crossing -place for the Indians in their travels , and the northerly end of the time - worn trail leading to the neighboring tribes to the southward . That trail has now become the busy highways for the locomotive and automobile of the white men . ”

“ They've been there since dark, hedged in by the Kootenais, who are only waiting for daylight to come. Heaven help our men when it does come!"
"The Kootenais? It can't be them. They are not hostile."
"Not yesterday," she agreed bitterly, "but they are to-day. They sent a messenger of good-will to camp this morning, the grandson of Grey Eagle. He was shot down, almost in sight of camp, by one of the soldiers, and the braves he had brought, the best in the tribe, attempted a rescue. Our cavalry pursued them, and were led into that ravine. The Indians knew the ground, and our men didn't. ”

“ They are bounded on the west by the Nootkas and on the north by the Carriers, from both of which families they seem to be distinct. As national divisions of this family may be mentioned the Shushwaps proper, or Atnahs, [368] who occupy the whole northern portion of the territory; the Okanagans, [369] in the valley of the lake and river of the same name; and the Kootenais, [370] who 252 inhabit the triangle bounded by the Upper Columbia, the Rocky Mountains, and the 49th parallel, living chiefly on Flatbow river and lake. ”

“ Te Kooti, without a moment's hesitation, replied, "In India the pakeha rules justly; here the governments have not treated the Maoris fairly: one government has promised one thing and one another, and they have all broken faith."
When I stated to him that since the formation of the colony one law and one sovereign reigned from one end of New Zealand to the other, and that that applied to the King Country as well as to any other part of the island, he replied, "That may be so. But," he continued, "you have your queen, and Tawhiao is our king. Whatever Tawhiao says, we must do." ”

“ Then destiny has been kind, father, for I have never been so truly happy as at Kootenay. I would a thousand times rather work with my hands, and eat the fruit of my labour, than get the softest job a city could offer me. ”

“ The Kootenays seldom, if ever, whip their children, and one of them said that he would rather die than see a white man chastise his offspring. At one of the stores in the Upper Kootenay country a little Indian boy was playing 'hide-and-seek' with a little white girl as blithely as might be. ”

“ News travels rapidly among the Indians and later events indicate that furs must have been brought to this winter camp from the Saleesh or Flathead country to the southeast, and from the region of Pend d'Oreille Lake to the southwest. About three years later, at a point a few miles further up the Kootenay River, but on the same side (nearly opposite Jennings, Montana) , the North-West Company erected a more permanent trading post, known as Fort Kootenay, in opposition to which, in 1812, the Pacific Fur Company built another fort near by. ”

“ The followers of Te Kooti, who sat around, were mostly men of over six feet in height, powerful in build, and stern and savage-looking in countenance, and with the same air of watchfulness about them as was observable in the manner of Te Kooti, as if th [Pg 337] ey, like their chief, had been ever on the qui-vive for their lives during their long sojourn of outlawry in the fastnesses of the King Country. ”

“ Te Kooti is well known as the great Hauhau leader during the war. He is a man of singular intelligence, and still exercises a widespread influence over the tribes. He was sent as a prisoner of war, with other natives, to the Chatham Islands, and his escape from that inhospitable region with his followers, together with his massacre of the settlers at Poverty Bay, form one of the most remarkable and stirring events connected with the campaign. ”

“ Whole families, refusing to come out when called upon by Te Kooti, perished miserably in the flames of their burning houses. And not only the white settlers, but a number of friendly natives, who had accepted the inevitable, and had settled down to live, as they hoped, in peace with the conquerors, were surprised and slaughtered without mercy. Indeed, throughout his campaign, Te Kooti evinced an undying hatred towards those tribes of his countrymen that had become friendly to the British, and he never spared any of them when taken prisoners. ”

“ The Kootenays are very fond of their children, the men much more so than is commonly believed, or even supposed. To see a man carrying a little child is by no means a rare sight. Among the Lower Kootenay in Idaho, the writer saw one of the older men of the tribe playing in right human fashion with his children. ”

“ They then saw that a fatal mistake had been committed in tacitly consenting to this assumption of independent power within the confines of the colony. Ever since, this portion of New Zealand has been a sort of refugium peccatorum for Maori offenders. The present Maori King—Tawhiao—has dwelt there for years in sullen seclusion, surrounded by the surviving veteran war chiefs. Here To Kooti is somewhere concealed from the vengeance of the colonists. As long as he remains within the charmed circle of the King Country he is perfectly safe ”

“ THE Kootenay Indians, who number between five hundred and a thousand persons, inhabit a strip of country between the Rocky and the Selkirk Mountains, partly in the United States and partly in British Columbia. As a rule, their moral character and behavior are good, and they are honest, kind, and hospitable ”

“ Te Kooti himself escaped, and for the next two years he lived the life of a hunted animal, chased through the gloomy forests by the relentless Ropata. He fought many fights; his twenty Hau Hau followers were often near to death from starvation; but at length wearied out he threw himself on the mercy of the white men, was pardoned, sunk into obscurity, and died in peace.
War was not really at an end till 1871; as up to that date occasional skirmishes took place. But there never was any fear of a general rising of the Maoris after 1866. ”

“ Again, in 1811, when Te Kooti, flying from us, took refuge in the King Country, and demanded the protection of the Waikatos, this was readily granted him; and the Waikato tribes, although they had no personal esteem for him, much less love or even family ties, would have gone to war with us rather than have surrendered him, had the New Zealand Government demanded him from them.
A Maori tribe considered it most unfortunate should even an accident befall a guest while dwelling in one of their villages ”