CHAPTER XIV

THEIR DAILY EXISTENCE

The illustrations of the Puget Sound Indian accompanying are very characteristic of the race. In the main the general characteristics are such that they cannot be mistaken. The infusion of white and foreign blood during the last 30 years or so has had a marked effect upon the later generation and to a great extent changed the current of Indian life. Leaving out of the question the general features of color and vigorousness of form they are readily distinguishable from the pure bloods about them. Half-breeds more readily fall into and adopt the customs and practices of the whites and to a considerable extent are not averse to manual labor. Hence they are found in the mills and forests of the country sharing the burdens of civilized life.

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. He will not even deign to assist in these simple labors, and in this he does not surpass his kinsman who are reared in the interior. These are the drudgery of his klootchman and night or day, sun or rain, she may always be found on the beach rustling up the next meal. He will sometimes accompany her and when there are two baskets to “tote” he may even consent to carry one, but it is much more to his nature to trudge along at the rear empty handed. This characteristic is more apparent in the cities when, having more of one or the other than the family larder requires for the time being, they seek the towns to dispose of it for a trifling sum, which is to be expended in knick knacks, gew gaws, etc., etc., that are the fancy of the Indian mind.

The one thing only which the old-time Siwash thinks it not beneath his dignity to indulge in is fishing, and this is his particular special privilege which he never permits any interference with. True, his dame has the privilege of fishing for cod and dogfish and the commoner species, but the taking of the lordly salmon is never relegated to her. If he is one of the old-time Indians wrapped still in the superstitious beliefs of his ancestors, not only is she not permitted the pleasure of the chase for salmon, but she is never permitted to put her foot inside the salmon canim, nor is she ever allowed to touch the salmon line or hook. That would forever spoil either canoe or line from use by the imperious head of the household. These practices, while still in vogue among the more isolated villages, is not so strictly adhered to by Indians who almost daily come in contact with the whites, nor are these remnants of a superstitious race very widely known among their enlightened and civilized neighbors. A trip to any of the favorite fishing grounds about the Sound and a study of the life of the village will convince any one that were they suddenly removed from all influence of civilized life, the Indian of today is just as he was when the first white man’s boat ploughed the gentle waters of the Sound. The thoroughbred Siwash will not even countenance the pretty gearing of the modern fisherman, but clings tenaciously to those articles fashioned by his own hand. He, however, will use the spoon in trolling, but it is one he has made himself from the metal and polished in his own way, swung from a bit of wire crooked and fashioned in his own odd fashion. His is an invention unprotected, yet he will never trouble himself about letters patent, for no white man can ever imitate his work successfully. There is something about it that seems to have a most unusual attraction for the finest and best, for a Siwash is seldom met with winter or summer, on a fishing expedition without one or more of the best fish the water contains.

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.

The klootchman is no less characteristic in appearance and features than the Siwash himself. They are decrepit in looks, bowed in form from the constant life-long use of the canim, prematurely old and unsociable as a black bear. There is if possible more superstition, more mystery to the klootchman than to her lordly partner. She never talks to the whites unless it is to offer for sale the fruit from the forest, the catch from the salt water or when around on begging expeditions, and of the latter there is little. The Siwash will stoop to outright begging, especially if he is a chief or has become debauched by associates with evil-minded whites, but his wife scarcely ever.

La belle klootchman is both the pride of the family and the belle of the village, and on her is lavished all the fashion and vermillion of the sweet society of the natives. She dotes on loud colors and is noticeably proud of whatever she wears as long as it is bright and showy. She ages, however, like an autumn leaf and once past sweet sixteen she is relegated to the shades of ugliness and forgotten. Of all things, Indian, the hardest to determine would be the age of the pure blood Siwash or klootchman. They may be about 30 or may be 75, they all look alike after reaching the usual majority in years.

Outside the supplying of daily wants the only other task of the pure-blood Siwash is the building of his cedar canoes. Seldom is it that the whites get an opportunity of seeing this work in progress. It is most always done on or near the beach in out-of-the-way places and the old-fashioned Indian-made hand adz is as religiously adhered to as it ever was. The interior of the cedar log was originally cleared by burning, but occasionally they will now condescend to the use of a heavier instrument secured from the whites to get rid of the core. In trimming down, fashioning and finishing up the canoe the little bit of sharpened steel is, however, always used.

Early Indians, and for that matter all of the present day, entertained a righteous dread of photography. Electricity, the galvanic battery and the telegraph wires were things as dreadful to them as their imaginary Skal-lal-la-toot, that ranged the woods about their villages. They believe that these things are spirits of some kind that have been through the influence of the white man’s Ta-mahn-a-wis or big medicines enslaved to the fellow who happens to possess the electrical appliance.

When the old trader, William Deshaw, who has been frequently mentioned in connection with Port Madison Indians, first came to Agate pass to look after the Indians there he took with him an old-fashioned galvanic battery. This mysterious instrument probably invested him, in the eyes of the simple savages, who had never before heard of such things, with greater power than anything else he could possibly have taken among them. It promoted him at once to the position of a great white Ta-mahn-a-wis, whose influence was never afterwards disputed. Soon after his appearance there and acquaintance with the Old-Man-House tribes the construction of the old Puget Sound Telegraph & Cable company’s line was carried past their village and it became a thing of dreadful consequence to the Indians. They avoided it and feared it as they did the “evil eye.” It was quite an impossible thing to ever get an Indian to lend a hand at replacing the wires in position when they happened to become broken down during the winter storms. Touch an electric wire? They would sooner have suffered the loss of a hand under a chopping block.

The old trader tells of many amusing spectacles with the use of the old galvanic battery on some of the Indians. As before stated the practices of their severe superstitious rites often caused many of the Ta-mahn-a-wis men to fall into trance-like and comatose conditions, from which it was impossible, by any known Indian agency to arouse them. The old trader tells of one that occurred at Old-Man-House in which the efficacy of the old galvanic battery was proved to the Indians satisfaction with a vengeance. One of these old medicine men had after several days of unusual exertion and privation fallen into a comatose condition. Every art known to the other’s Ta-mahn-a-wis had been exerted to no purpose and as a last resort the Indians had sent for the white Ta-mahn-a-wis living across the narrow pass.“So he’s dead, is he?” inquired the trader of the Indians who went after him.

“Yes, he’s dead. Indian Ta-mahn-a-wis no good for him,” returned the couriers.

“Umph! yes, well white man’s Ta-mahn-a-wis fetch him,” said the trader and he went after the old battery. Going across he found the Indian lying on the floor of a hut upon the inevitable rush mat and to all intents and purposes dead as a mackerel, with a howling, prancing mob of his brethren about him.

The trader felt of him, but he was cold and bloodless without apparent pulse or life. He cleared a space about him and arranged his battery. The Indians becoming subdued watched the process with incredulity and stoical silence. The poles of the instrument were placed so that the full effect of the electric current would be most keenly felt, and then the operator turned it on with force enough to have broken up the nerve system of a dozen ordinary men. With a bound and a shriek the prostrate form was on his feet in an instant and so sudden was the transformation that half the onlookers were knocked down by the terrified and quickened medicine man by his wild leap into the air. He bolted for the door and took for the woods amidst the greatest consternation of his mourning friends. He did not return for some days, but the evil spirit that had been supposed to have taken possession of him was effectually squelched. After that there was no more incredulous smiles and looks when the galvanic battery was around.

This trader, who knew Seattle’s famous old chief almost as a brother, says they had a great time trying to secure a photograph of him in the early days. There was but one small photograph gallery in Seattle at that time. Many days and weeks passed before the old settler could induce the chief even to go near the place. By degrees they got him in the building, but when he would see the muzzle of the camera pointed at him, he would invariably break away. One day the settlers went all the way to Fort Steilacoom and bought a new suit of soldiers clothes for him to be photographed in. The old chief was greatly pleased at such a compliment, but when he found there was to be a string to the proposition, a consideration in the way of submitting to be photographed, the settlers could do nothing further with him. In the language of the old trader, “That put a squibosh on the whole business.”

At the next attempt to get the old fellow photographed somebody got him to “swilling” a little and managed to get the old fellow into the gallery. He was too much under the influence of the liquid to know what was being done, and the photographer got a shot at him. When the old chief came to his senses he was dreadfully outraged in feeling and said that he “didn’t want any more shots at him.” After that when looking through a picture book the old chief was very careful. The Indian’s superstition led him to believe that men in a picture took the evil genius of the photograph, or the electric wire lurked to pounce out and enslave him.