CHAPTER IX

THE TWANA OR SKOKOMISH TRIBE

In the days and generations past, when the Indians were the only people who occupied the shores of Puget Sound, the Twana tribe, now the Skokomish, lived in the broad strip of territory bordering on the west side of Hood’s canal and extending back to the top of the Olympic mountains and reaching from the Skokomish river on the south to Quilcene, near Port Townsend, on the north. They had for neighbors on the south and east the Squaxon tribe, while near them on the north and northwest were the Clallams and Ma-kahs. On the west were the Quillayutes and Quiniaults, but as the high mountains intervened there was not much intercourse in that direction, either in peace or war. The Twanas apparently much preferred peace to war and happiness on their own hunting and fishing grounds to pillage and robbery, for there are no old-time battle grounds pointed out now as having been once the scene of great carnage among them. However, they were Indians and as remarkable for their extreme and foolish superstitions and baneful practices as any on the Sound.

They possessed a fine country, especially the beautiful valley of the Skokomish river, which today is one of the prettiest places in the state. When the government made a treaty with these Indians and took most of their land away from them it left them the best section of all their territory for a permanent home. That was the ground at the mouth of the river on the north bank. Here resides the remnant of the Twanas, which, however, is composed of the blood of three former tribes, the Skokomish proper, Quilcenes and Duhl-ay-lips, the head Indian agent for whom is stationed at the beautiful agency of Tulalip on the east side of the Sound.

There are about 200 of these mongrel Indians now living on the reservation of 5,997 acres at the mouth of the river. Twenty years ago there were but about 250 of them, so that the decrease in population has been comparatively very small. In 1880 a census taken that year showed 237 Indians. In 1890, ten years from that time, there had been 100 deaths on the reservation, but the increase in population from birth alone was such that the real decrease was not more than fifteen persons. There is little if any increase to the population from people settling there from other tribes. This showing is better than that of any Indian tribe on the Sound, and is undoubtedly due to the isolation on the west side of the canal and removal from the contaminating influence of worthless white people. One beneficial effect of late years, really for the past thirty or forty years, has been the example of a few good farmers who settled in the fine valley of the Skokomish. Then to, they have always been blessed with good Indian agents, which cannot be said to have been always the case at many other reservations. The Indians generally nowadays work well and want to work and make good lumbermen in the logging camps, earning almost as much as the white men when the camps are going.

The Indian lands are patented to him but are owned in severalty and there are many creditable places at Skokomish. There is assigned to a single Indian from 80 to 170 acres according to whether the land may be all valley or partially hills. No matter how much or how little land an Indian may possess, he seldom, if ever, gets beyond the point of a small truck farmer. If he happens to get under cultivation an area that would by a stretch of the imagination take the name of a field, he is most sure to let out the land to a white farmer on an annual cash basis. There are a few such cultivated fields at Skokomish. A farmer, whether Indian or white, whose insane desire for gambling will lead him to spend a whole night out in the woods chanting the monotonous song of the “sing-gamble” pot-latch, at harvest time is not expected to prove a howling success as a granger.

In another generation if there are any Twana Indians left they will probably rate as first-class farmers, for the government is progressing very well in the matter of training them. The children attend school ten months in the year, have good instructors chosen from the whites, and the boys have over them a special instructor whose duty it is to see that they work half of every week-day with a view of acquiring methodical and industrious habits. This is abhorrent to the tender Indian mind, but as the entire education of the Twana youth is one of the charity undertakings of the government and does not cost the old folks a cent, they seem to like it and force their youngsters to attend. The maintenance of the schools is kept up by yearly appropriations and could be cut off any time if the government cared to do so. In that case the little Twana might be permitted to spring up as unconscious of the future as the weeds that infest the door-yard and garden patch of every Indian domicile. However, among the Twanas there is already a fair standard of rudimentary education acquired, for every Indian below 30 years of age can read and write English, and all under 40 can talk the language. The true specimens of the savage ancestors are the old men and women yet living, who cannot, rather will not, admit to any knowledge of the English.

The Indian here is an obdurate, slow-moving being. He will begin a thing but complete it in a year, or ten years, or never, just as the notion takes him. At this time the residents have in mind the construction of a new church. They have gone so far in the undertaking as to have secured the lumber and floated it from the mill up the river and piled it upon the bank of the stream on the reservation.

“We got it long time ago,” said one fellow, “to build a new church, but don’t know whether we will ever build it or not.”

The vicinity of the old lumber pile now seems to be a favorite rendesvous for the inveterate “sing-gamble” players, for they ride there from all directions at night time. They light camp fires and, forming a large circle around it, go through their uncanny practices until the cocks crow for morning. All the male population of the reservation over age are voters under the constitution of the United States. They cast their first vote at the election for delegates to the state constitutional convention after the passage by Congress of the enabling act. The reservation has been set off in a precinct by itself, and by this the Indians elect their own justices of the peace and petty officers without the interference of the whites and without having anything to do themselves with the election of officers to govern the white people.

In the very nature of things the Chinook and mother tongues will, in a few years more, be unknown on the reservation. So rapidly is this coming about that at this time half the conversation of the reservation is carried on in English, even when all engaged in it are Indians. At their sing-gamble and other Indian ceremonies English is as much spoken as their own tongue. Superstition will only die out of the Indian mind when the last of the race as dead and gone. On the banks of the lovely Skokomish it would seem that superstition could have no abiding place. Yet it is there today as it probably has been in all the past thousands of years. The beneficent influence of the white man’s religion has superceded it in its outer and practical application, it is only a few years ago when the efficacy of the red and black “ta-mahn-a-wis” was thought to be greater than all the religions of the pale faces in the world.

There were four kinds of ta-mahn-a-wis, sometimes spelled ta-mahn-o-us, or spirit practices in vogue among the Twanas as there were among the great family of Selish Indians in Washington, which included most all, but not all, the tribes from the Spokane river to Cape Flattery, all understanding in part a common language. The Cape Indians and Yakimas are two of the exceptions to the above, according to some of the best informed men on the subject. The word ta-mahn-a-wis may be and was used in the sense of a noun, an adjective or a verb. As a noun it means any kind of a spirit in the spirit world from the Sahg-ha-lie Tyee, or supreme being—sahg-ha-lie meaning greatest, highest, above—to the klail ta-mahn-a-wis, or devil, literally, black spirit.

As an adjective a ta-mahn-a-wis stick, stone, person, etc., is a thing or individual with a ta-mahn-a-wis or spirit either of good or evil in it. As a verb it is used in the sense of invoking the aid of spirits, as “mah-mok ta-mahn-a-wis.”

The four kinds of ta-mahn-a-wis of the Indians of the Twana tribe at least are: The “ta-mahn-a-wis over the sick,” the incantations of the medicine men; the “red ta-mahn-a-wis,” the “black ta-mahn-a-wis,” and the “spirit land ta-mahn-a-wis.”

The sick ta-mahn-a-wis was only practiced for the healing of the sick, and was often a severe and taxing ordeal for the patient if he were really sick. This ceremony was always conducted by the ta-mahn-a-wis men assisted by the friends and relatives of the sick in an effort to drive out the spirit of one that was supposed to have taken possession of the body of the sick.

The red ta-mahn-a-wis was a winter pastime and was a common arrangement, a proceeding, so far as its being a part of a religious belief, a kind of a camp-meeting. The red, or pill ta-mahn-a-wis, was an assembling together, an invocation, in short, of the spirits for a good season the following summer. It generally lasted three or four days and consisted of singing, dancing, the beating of tom-toms, drums and the decoration of the face and limbs and body invariably with streaks and spots of red paint. From this it was given the name of the red ta-mahn-a-wis, pill meaning red.

The black, or klail ta-mahn-a-wis, was the free masonry of the Twanas and was without doubt the one great religion of all religious practices among them. It was a secret society to a very large extent, and none but the initiated were ever permitted to have anything to do with it. It was a very severe initiation that candidates had to undergo to get acquainted with it, and little was ever learned of its mysteries by the whites. It was practiced at Skokomish as late as 1876, but after that time it was never seen. At that time it was given out by the participants that it was to be dead after that. It is said that it is still slightly followed by the Clallam Indians to this day. No doubt but that among the residents of the Skokomish reservation there are many Indians who were initiated into its dreadful mysteries, but their number is probably too few to revive it. Both men and women were initiated into the practice and mysteries of the black ta-mahn-a-wis. The significance of this ceremony, from the secretiveness of the Indians, was never clearly learned by the old residents, who had most to do with the Indians, and it probably will never be understood, at least as it was believed in by the various tribes.

In the practice of it, however, the Indians invariably painted themselves very hideously with black paint, daubing and streaking the face and limbs, and while going through the ceremony of initiation were without clothing. Masks made in rude imitation of the wolf head were used, and these were called shway-at-sho-sin. The mask was adopted by the Twanas from the Clallam tribe, as was the name and hence the word is the same in both languages. The Twanas seem to have imported their masks from the Clallam country in most part, very few of their own make having ever been found, and these of a less degree of artistic appearance. To a certain extent the ceremony of the black ta-mahn-a-wis was a public one and many of the old-timers have witnessed that portion of it. The more important and probably much more severe part was the private ceremony confined to the initiated. The public ceremony was a long drawn out affair of dancing, singing, beating of drums and tom-toms, rattles, etc. During the progress of the affair the candidates for whose special benefit the ta-mahn-a-wis was given, were stripped and painted and put through all manner of gyrations and exercises, the while wearing the wolf mask, that in the least resemble the antics of the animals they were trying to imitate. While this was going on the candidates were tied about the middle with a long rope, the loose end of which was held by other Indians in order to keep the candidate from running away or from doing harm to any spectator, for he was supposed to do just like a ferocious and enraged wolf in all things. The other exercises which are supposed to put on the finishing touches to the great event, were always carried on in secret rooms made of their blankets or tents and were never permitted to be witnessed.

The practice of the spirit land ta-mahn-a-wis was associated with or founded on a very pretty myth believed in by the old Twanas to the effect that a year or two perhaps before an Indian died he or she lost his or her spirit. Spirits from other places, always from below, would visit the Indian and, quite unaware to the person would take and carry off the spirit and sail with it to their abiding place, there to hold it in captivity unless released by spirits from this life. Whenever an Indian lost his spirit in this way there would always be a little left him which would be sufficient to last him until he died, by which time every particle of it was absorbed, vanished, gone. To elaborate the fanciful theory, there were always living Indians who professed to be able to go to the spirit land, down below, and see what was going on and recognize spirits taken from Indians of his own tribe and village. These trips may be made to the spirit regions at the will of the Indians, sometimes when off in the hills hunting, or when out on the salt water chasing the whale or the seal. After a journey of such a character the Indian’s word was never doubted by his tribe’s people, when he on returning informed them that he had been on a journey below and had seen the captured spirits of this or that relative or friend. The next question was as to the recovery of the spirit, and there were always willing hands ready to assist.

There was always great ceremony, great care and at times extreme caution to be maintained in this undertaking. The Indians had to make the journey down below, cross their death river, their river Styx, and perform various other and wonderful feats, the entire ceremony lasting three or four days.

The first ceremony, accompanied by a great beating of drums, of rattles, tom-toms, dancing, singing, chanting and yelling, is that of breaking the ground to effect an entrance below. This was done by digging a little hole in the dirt floor of the house where the ceremony was taking place. This accomplished, other mythical performances were gone through with, the more important one being “cooning” across the Styx river in a long procession, where the greatest caution was observed, for the warrior who should fall off while going over was doomed to die before long. A bridge was constructed of boards in the house by having two of the boards resting obliquely against the ends of a third board, which is elevated to near the roof of the building. The army on the chase for the lost spirit “cooned it” across this improvised bridge, and were then over the river Styx into spirit land. They searched for and with great noise and hubbub found the departed spirit, took possession of it amidst a great and imaginary battle, and returned to the land of the living. They would tear about the room during this performance, rant and roar, run out of and around the house, tear the roof off in their frenzy, which was truly a genuine article, and then, after having reached the limit of their strength and exertion, would find the spirit, sometimes in the form of a rag doll or some other object just as ridiculous, and carry it in triumph to the Indian who had lost his spirit. This individual, so fortunate in recovering his spirit, and therefore a new lease of life, is overjoyed at the thought and laughs and cries alternately, and concluded the performance by a great manifestation of joy in every conceivable style.

At this ceremony the Indians had an idol which exercised a great power, in their overwrought imaginations, in the success of the undertaking. This idol was a very sacred being, and was always kept hid away in the mountains and never brought out only on such ceremonies. It was never given up to the whites, and there is probably not now one of these strange things to be found anywhere. The only one known to have been seen among the Twana tribe was about four feet long, of very rude carving, in imitation of a person without arms or feet. In place of feet the idol ended in a stick, so made that it could be fastened firmly in the ground. It was raised in the center of the room, and around it the weird and uncanny ceremony progressed. This idol the Indians named Sh-but-ta-dahk, but just what its peculiar properties were probably is not known.

Several of the more intelligent and younger men on the reservation were talked to about this idol or totem, but they did not know anything about its history or supposed properties. One of the men said that about three years ago, while going through the woods about three miles back of the reservation, he came across a cache where there were two of these idols hid away. They were time-worn and considerably decayed, and as he stated, had “been there long, long time.” He placed them under an old tree, but never returned to get them. They had men’s faces carved upon them, and were undoubtedly genuine Sh-but-ta-dahks.

There is another one about four or five feet long in the possession of a resident of Lake Cushman, which was found in the woods about ten or twelve miles back of the present reservation. Many, probably all, of the Indians of today on the reservation have faith in the Sh-but-ta-dahk and the ceremony of the spiritland, ta-mahn-a-wis. One, in telling about it, said that not many years ago a spiritland ta-mahn-a-wis was held, when one of the Indians fell while crossing the death river, and that a short time after he died, hence they knew that the spiritland ta-mahn-a-wis was true.

The theory of the medicine ta-mahn-a-wis is that when a person is sick some evil spirit has taken possession of the body, sometimes more than one evil spirit, and of different kinds. It may be that of a bird or beast, a bear, a panther, wolf, a bluejay or a weasel, or anything else having hair or feather or scale. It was always the duty of the ta-mahn-a-wis doctors to find out what kind of a spirit had entered the body, and then by incantation and ceremony to drive it out. Some dry board or rail or piece of wood was secured by the friends of the patient and placed conveniently near, and on this they would beat with sticks to make as much noise as possible, also bringing into their aid the drum and tom-toms or rattles. The medicine man would take a bowl of water by the side of the patient, who had been stretched out on a mat on the ground, and begin his examinations. He would chant in a monotonous way and perform various mysterious things about and over the sick person. Sometimes he would take hold of an arm or a leg and lift apparently with all his strength without so much as moving the member in the least. When the din and hubbub would be sufficiently distracting the medicine man generally discovered what kind of a spirit had taken possession, and was able to get hold of it. Often he would raise that part of the person in which the spirit had secured a place of lodgment, and would douse it in the bowl of water and drown it. At other times he would draw it out of the body by inhaling it in his own lungs, and would then go to the door and give a great puff and blow the evil spirit far across the mountains or water.

If, under such a course, the patient did not get well at once, there was, of course, other evil spirits in the body which must be gotten rid of, and the process would be repeated with minor variations. By and by the patient would either get well naturally or die, which ended the matter. In either case, the potent power of the doctor was never questioned. The Indians believed that while the body was in possession of the evil spirit, the Indian’s spirit may take its flight to some distant place temporarily. It was part of the duty of the medicine man to locate and bring the absent spirit back. This he did by other and mystical processes equally as absurd to civilized minds. In one account, which was written out by an educated brother of a sick boy at the Skokomish reservation, the departed spirit of the patient was discovered 15 miles distant at what the Indians called Du-hub-hub-ai, now called by the whites Humi-humi. The evil spirit always took on very curious shapes when drawn on paper by the Indians for the edification of the whites. They usually represented very vaguely images of fish, jelly-fish, imaginary beasts, etc.

That the Indians of the Skokomish tribe once engaged in war is evidenced by the existence of implements of battle now preserved on the reservation. Of their war clubs there is one about twelve inches long, which weighs three and a half pounds. It is a big wedge shaped affair, rounded, and recedes sharply to a blunt point. There is a hole drilled in the handle end by which it could be suspended from the warrior’s waist with buckskin thongs. This weapon was made, without doubt, by the Skokomish or Twana tribe.

Another war implement and one much more formidable, is a long copper club, two feet long, much in appearance like a broad sword. This club also has a hole in the heavier end, from which to suspend it to the waist. Both weapons have rude imitations of the Thunderbird on their heavier ends, and go to show how thoroughly the Thunderbird myth was believed in and how it pervaded every act and thought of Indian life.

Before the white people came into the country the Indians had to depend on their own ingenuity for all kinds of implements. Many of these are yet preserved by the Indians themselves, as well as by the whites. The Indians are careless, however, and as long as they can get an easy living, don’t seem to care much what becomes of their old tools. They have yet a few of the old war clubs, among them, ta-mahn-a-wis rattles, made out of deer hoofs, bear and beaver teeth, etc. They have a few of the old style bows and arrows, hunting bows, with quivers of arrows to be used in the chase or in war. The latter are of a superior workmanship, and must have occupied lots of extra time in their manufacture. They have few of the old style dress garments, but have not yet lost the art of manufacture, as they will for money set about and make very interesting dresses and coats out of the cedar bark, or from the cat-tail reeds that grow in the swamps or marsh lands. There is yet preserved several specimens of the dress of the nobility, made from the hair of the mountain goat, though it is not unlikely that these latter were secured in barter from the tribes occupying land on the east side of Puget Sound, as the mountain goat is not known to have flourished between Puget Sound and the Pacific ocean.

The Twanas’ and perhaps many of the other Indian tribes’ superstition as to the origin of the sun and moon is of more than passing interest. A very long while ago there lived an aged Indian woman who had a son. He must have been a bright, uncommon lad, for he was not only stolen from home, but grew up into a young man possessing wonderful powers. The boy was stolen from the care of his grandmother and carried away to distant parts, beyond the mountains, where if anyone tried to follow, the mountains would come together and crush the life out of them. When the boy’s mother learned he had been stolen she was greatly grieved, and declared she would find her another son, and so she did. He grew apace and became also a bright promising lad. By and by, as the days passed away, the first son found his way back through the treacherous mountains and surprised his mother when he put in an appearance at home once more. He does not seem to have been pleased at the prospect of finding his place at home taken by a brother, and he at once declared he would change the brother into the moon, and let him rule the world by night, while he himself would be changed into the sun and govern things by day. This shows that the family to which this ambitious young man belonged was a great family, and probably governed the world before that time in darkness.

The young man kept his word and wrought the marvelous changes, and it must have occasioned great surprise next morning when the people got up and found all the land aglow with light and beauty. But as the sun got up higher, the people doubtless wished for their darkness back again, for it got awfully hot. The brother—as the sun—in his great wrath burned so fiercely that the heat dried up all the rivers of the country and killed off all the fishes, and the people of the land sweltered and died in the suffocating heat that pervaded everything.

The brother saw that things could not last long in this way, and he decided on a change. So he changed things about, made his weaker and younger brother into the sun and himself into the moon, and this worked better. Ever since that day there has always been “a man in the moon,” and a boy in the sun, but the light of the latter is too strong for the boy’s face to be seen.

The Skal-lal-a-toot was a name applied, it seems, to the stick ta-mahn-a-wis, or spirits of the woods which are accredited with the power to change people into toads, birds, beasts, etc., and keep them as long as they like, or until they see fit to return them to their proper form.

People there are infected with the evil eye, in the imagination of the Indian, and such they always try to avoid—especially so with children, and hence a charm in the form of a rattle was always provided to hang over the bed or cradle of the child. If a person entered the room and made pleasant with the child, and took the rattle, all well and good. If he avoided the child and rattle and acted suspiciously, look out for him—he was one possessed of the evil eye, and was cultus.

Such persons were invested, in the Indian mind, with the spirit power, and through the influence of this evil eye men and children were wrought upon by the Skal-lal-a-toot and changed to various forms of birds, beasts, trees, stones, etc. These evil-eyed geniuses were able to exert this influence for bad to great distances, from the Sound to the Columbia river, and infect individuals there with its baneful influence, the same as if they were by their side.

The Indians used in this connection a mask, which might be called the crying mask, for it seems to have been used as a kind of “Winslow’s soothing syrup” to make the children stop crying. A representation of one of these masks made out of cedar wood and still in good preservation is shown in a sketch herein. The mask is nothing more than a flat board-like piece, longer than the ordinary shingle, with the face cut into it by a series of holes. It was placed in front of the person’s face, and the mother or person using it would suddenly appear before the child to be quieted, singing a peculiar monotone song. It was simply a repetition of the word “skal-lay-a, skal-lay-a,” with the last syllable drawn out indefinitely. Doubtless the charm worked well, and such practices probably had as much to do with the establishment of the seeds of superstition in the infantile mind as any after teaching could have had.

The Puget Sound Indian generally appears to have been but very slightly advanced in the art of carving and what work that is left is of a very crude workmanship. A few good specimens are found among them but it is questionable if any of them are original. In the illustrations is the rude carving of the bear totem on the stem of a canoe found among the Skokomish Indians, though the canoe might have come from the northern Indians who followed more closely the practice of decoration of the canoe.

In comparison to this is shown a carving, the figurehead of the old bark Enterprise which has lain a wreck on the beach at Agate pass, near the Old-Man-House reservation, Port Madison, since some time in the early 50’s. This figurehead was removed from the old hulk and is now among the Indian relics of the old pioneer, William Deshaw. The carving is the work of native East Indians, according to the story of the skipper of the old bark. He came with his vessel from Calcutta to Puget Sound, and while in a port of East India went out with the nobility on a tiger hunt. Securing one, he expressed a desire to have a carving of the head for his vessel in honor of the hunt, and by direction of the rajah or some other high potentate it was made for him by the natives. It is of teak wood and well preserved and hard as flint almost. The figurehead was adorned with large eyes of pearl which after the old bark was wrecked were removed. When the captain expressed a desire to have a tiger head like the animal killed, the Indians set to work and in just two weeks had it completed and at the vessel when it was put on. A good story was told by William Deshaw on Mr. Meigs, the mill owner, at the time the old bark fell to pieces while lying at the mill wharf. It was a calm day, no wind, but the bark all of a sudden went to pieces from sheer age. The mizzen mast went by the board on the very day that Mr. Meigs was in Seattle getting insurance on the vessel as he had just about concluded a purchase of her. Meigs returned to the mill that evening and seeing the wreck said to her old skipper: “Well, I guess you’d better get that old hulk out of here or it will be tearing down of my wharf.” They started in to get the old hulk away from the wharf and she was hauled across the narrow stretch of water onto the beach. As the tide went out she careened over and as Deshaw says, “just naturally wilted away.” The old bark still lies on the beach where she was left twenty-five years or more ago, and the sand has drifted in and about her till it is in places eight and ten feet deep and she is almost lost to view.

The face mask shown in the illustrations herewith, now hangs on the walls of Wm. Deshaw’s store at Agate pass and was given him many years ago by a chief from the straits tribes, and was given with the assurance that it was one of the most powerful charms the Indians possessed. It was particularly efficacious in keeping off the “evil eye” and all that was necessary to be done was to keep it hung up where everyone who entered the building could see it as he entered. If the person entering was possessed of the evil eye, after seeing it he would be powerless to do any evil.

Deshaw had performed a great kindness for the Indian, and had won his everlasting gratitude. The Indian had no money, nor could money have bought the charmed mask, but he gave it up in return for the kindness of saving his daughter’s life.

One day a band of the Indians had come up sound and camped on the beach at the reservation for a few days. While there an Indian daughter of the chief got sick and a terrible hubbub was raised by the Indians in their efforts to drive away the evil eye that had fallen upon her. The medicine men exhausted all their powers and could not bring her around. Deshaw went across the passage to see what all the noise was about and found the girl stripped and lying on a mat on the beach with the medicine men beating her body with hot rocks. Blood was oozing from her ears and nostrils and she was almost dead. He quickly drove the medicine men away, had her wrapped in blankets and carried across the water to his trading post. Here proper treatment and medicine brought her around and in a day or two she was in swimming as lively as any of the other children. Before leaving the old chief went to see Deshaw, told him he was poor and had no money, but some day would come and give him something. Time passed, and when another year had rolled around, one day there walked into the trading post an Indian with something rolled up under his arm. The bundle was neatly wrapped up in a lot of skins, there being a beaver, marten and silver gray fox skin among them. Deshaw had forgotten the circumstance of the sick child and forgotten the man, but thought he had seen him at some previous time. Watching his opportunity, the old chief took the white man off to one side and recalled the incident and gave him the mask, and told him what it was and what to do with it. Deshaw followed instructions and apparently the mask has served its purpose well. “The evil eye” has remained aloof from the trading post, and it looks as if, like the old bark above referred to, it and its genial proprietor will continue to jog on down Time’s broad way until they fall to pieces together, “just naturally wilt away.”

The totem on page 41 was one very efficacious in their superstitions regarding children. It was given to Deshaw in 1861 by Charley G’Klobet, an Indian of prominence in the early days. It was the guardian spirit of children before mentioned herein. The medicine men, who were supposed to get their powers from it would not part with one of them to save their life, so deep and strong was their superstitious belief in regard to it. In their incantations over it they would kneel before it at night on mats spread out, and with their long, greasy hair done up in weird and fanciful knots, their face and bodies painted and besmeared with paints, run around it, talking to it, praying to it and caressing it until they, in their over-wrought imaginations had imbibed all the information it possessed in regard to the children.

The totem has a long nose, over-hanging brow, two big bead eyes, with streaks of white paint across the face half way between the eyes and mouth. There are daubs of blue paint all about the mouth and chin and a small streak of blue around the neck. There is a circle on the breast cut with a knife and radiating from the two upper arcs are small three-pronged notches cut in by the same process much resembling a bird’s claw and intended to represent the superstition of the great white eagle, from which, and a great whale, the Indians there are said to have sprung.