Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California Part 4

Most of these streams rise in lakes, and in some part of their course spread again into one or more lakes; as, the Arrow Lakes of the Columbia, the Flat-head, Kootenay, Pend d'Oreille, and Coeur d'Alene, and the beautiful string of lakes of the Okinakane, and many others.

As we pa.s.sed through the Upper Arrow Lake and Lower Arrow Lake, which lie in British Columbia, we had some splendid views of mountain scenery.

The Upper Lake is thirty-three miles long, and three in width, crystalline water, surrounded by snow-covered peaks and precipices, and forests of pine and cedar. The second is sixteen miles below the first, forty-two miles in length, and two and a half wide. Innumerable arrows were sticking in the crevices of the rocks. Formerly every Indian who pa.s.sed deposited an arrow,--intended probably as an offering to the spirit that rules over the chase, just as the Indian medicine-man, when he gathers his roots, makes an offering to the earth.

The Catholic missionaries were much surprised to find crosses erected sometimes in lonely places, and at first supposed some other priests must have preceded them; but learned that they were set up by the Indians, in honor of the moon, to induce her to favor their nightly expeditions for robbery or the chase.

JULY 22, 1866.

We have been on an excursion to Kettle Falls on the Columbia, where the river dashes over the huge rocks in a most picturesque way. These falls were called _La Chaudiere_ by the Canadian _voyageurs_, because the pool below looks like a great boiling caldron. We noticed that limestone there replaced the black basalt, of which we had seen so much, the water falling over a tabular bed of white marble.

There we saw some Indians engaged in spearing salmon, as the fish were attempting to leap the falls, in their pa.s.sage up the stream to their breeding-places. They do not always succeed in pa.s.sing the falls at their first leap, sometimes falling back two or three times. Many of them are dashed on the rocks at the Cascades, and at other points where the river presents obstacles to their progress. An immense number become victims to the nets of the fishermen, and the traps and spears of the Indians; and those that escape these dangers, and reach the upper waters, are very much bruised and battered,--"spent salmon" they are called. After their long journey of six or seven hundred miles from the sea, it seems as if they would be filled with despair at the sight of these boiling cataracts. They refuse bait on the way, apparently never stopping for food, from the time they leave the salt water. Often with fins and tails so worn down as to be almost useless, their noses worn to the bone, their eyes sunken, sometimes wholly extinguished, they struggle on to the last gasp, to ascend the streams to their sources. In calm weather they swim near the surface, and close to the sh.o.r.e, to avoid the strong current; and they are so possessed with this one purpose, and so regardless of every thing about them, that the Indians catch hundreds of them by merely slipping the gaff-hook under their bodies, and lifting them out of the water,--selecting the best to preserve for food, and throwing aside those that they consider as worthless. These pale, emaciated creatures, I looked at with the greatest interest. How strong is the impulse that carries them through, in spite of these almost insurmountable obstacles! It is beyond our knowledge, why, in coming in from the sea, they pa.s.s certain streams to enter others; but this they are known to do, so perfectly do they understand the mysterious direction given them.

The early explorers witnessed many ceremonies among the Indians not now observed by them; as, the salmon-dance, to celebrate the taking of the first salmon in the river. When the earliest spring salmon was caught in the Columbia, the Indians were extremely particular in their dealings with it. No white man could obtain it at any price, lest, by opening it with a knife instead of a stone, he should drive all following salmon from the river. Certain parts must be eaten with the rising, and others with the falling, tide; and many other minute regulations carefully observed. After the salmon-berry ripened, they relaxed their vigilance, feeling that by that time the influx was secure.

The Gros Ventres celebrated the goose-dance, to remind the wild geese, as they left in the autumn, that they had had good food all summer, and must come back in the spring. This dance was performed by women, each one carrying a bunch of long seed-gra.s.s, the favorite food of the wild goose. They danced to the sound of the drum, circling about with shuffling steps.

V.

Old Fort Colville.--Angus McDonald and his Indian Family.--Canadian _Voyageurs_.--Father Joseph.--Hardships of the Early Missionaries.--The Coeurs d'Alene and their Superst.i.tions.--The Catholic Ladder.--Sisters of Notre Dame.--Skill of the Missionaries in instructing the Indians.--Father de Smet and the Blackfeet.--A Native Dance.--Spokanes.--Exclusiveness of the Coeurs d'Alene.--Battle of Four Lakes.--The Yakima Chief and the Road-Makers.

FORT COLVILLE, July 25, 1866.

We have been making a little visit to Old Fort Colville, one of the Hudson Bay stations, kept by Angus McDonald, an old Scotchman, who has been there for a great many years. He is an educated gentleman, of a great deal of character and intelligence; and his wife is an Indian woman, who cannot live more than half the year in the house, and has to wander about, the rest of it, with her _tilic.u.ms_ (relations and friends).

It was interesting to see how this cultivated man, accustomed to the world as he had been, had adapted himself to life in this solitary spot on the frontier, with his Indian children for his only companions. He has about ten. In some of them the Scotch blood predominated, but in most the Indian blood was more apparent. The oldest son, a grown man, was a very dark Indian, decorated with wampum. Christine, the oldest daughter, resembled her father most. She kept house for him, because, as she explained to us, her mother could not be much in-doors. She spoke, too, of disliking to be confined. I asked her where she liked best to be; and she said, with the Blackfeet Indians, because they had the prettiest dances, and could do such beautiful bead-work; and described their working on the softened skins of elk, deer, and antelope, making dresses for chiefs and warriors. We had a sumptuous meal of Rocky-Mountain trout, buffalo-tongues, and pemmican. Although Christine was, in some respects, quite a civilized young lady, she occasionally betrayed her innocence of conventionalities, as when she came and whispered to me, before the meal was announced, what the chief dishes were to be. She mentioned, as one of the delicacies of the Blackfeet, berries boiled in buffalo-blood.

Mr. McDonald told us many stories about the Canadian _voyageurs_ employed by the Hudson Bay Company, ill.u.s.trating their power of endurance and their elastic temperament. One of their men, he said, was lost for thirty-five days in the woods, and finally discovered by the Indians, crawling on his hands and feet towards a brook, nearly exhausted, but still keeping up his courage. He asked us if we could conjecture how he had kept alive all that time, with no means whatever, outside of himself, to procure food. He had actually succeeded in making a fine net from his own hair, with which he caught small fishes, devouring them raw, accompanied by a little gra.s.s or moss; not daring to eat any roots or berries, lest they might be poisonous, as the country was new to him. These Canadians are as brown as Indians, from their constant exposure to the sun and wind, and have adapted themselves completely to Indian ways, wearing a blanket _capote_, leather trousers, moccasins, and a fur cap, with a bright sash or girdle to hold a knife and a tobacco-pouch. Their half-breed children are generally excellent canoe-men and hunters, with the vivacity of the father, and the endurance of the mother's race. Marcel Bernier, one of these French Canadians, was one of the early settlers in the Cowlitz Valley; and we have travelled with him between the Columbia River and Puget Sound, and once stopped at his house over night. It was quite different from the common Indian houses; having pillow-cases trimmed with ruffles and lace, and great bear-skin mats on the door. The baby slept in a little hammock swung from the ceiling. The family were devoted Catholics, and sung matins and vespers, and had pictures and images of saints about the room. We were quite impressed by the advance in civilization which the little admixture of French blood had brought.

Christine took us to see an ancient Indian woman, who remembers the country when there were no white people in it. She has the fifth generation of her children about her. She is wholly blind, her eyes mostly closed, only little bloodshot traces of them left. She sat serenely in the sunshine, hollowing out a little canoe of pine-bark for the youngest, two little girls who swam in the arm of the river before the tent-door.

We went with Christine also up on the bluff to see Father Joseph, a Catholic priest, who represented to me a new cla.s.s of men, whom I had known before only in books. His eyes were as clear blue as Emerson's ideal ones, that tell the truth; and I knew he meant it, when he answered a question I asked him, in a way that surprised me, and which I should have taken, in some men, for cant. I asked him if it was not ever solitary there; and he said, "It is enough like my own home [Switzerland] for that, but all countries are alike to me. We have no home here below." For twenty-five years he has lived on the top of that hill, with only miserable Indians around him, who could repay him very little for all his efforts. In the Indian war, he was supposed to be so strongly on the side of the Indians, that the government agent, as I find by the printed report, recommended his removal; although he admitted that it was hard to say any thing against a man who had made such unbounded sacrifices for what he considered the good of the Indians. He had books in all languages on his shelves, and was very intelligent and courteous.

He described the condition of the country when the first little band of Jesuits, of whom he was one, entered upon the Oregon mission,--Oregon then extending east as far as the Rocky Mountains. They had often to travel through dark forests, into which the daylight never entered, and, axe in hand, make their own paths through the wilderness, sometimes crawling on all-fours through labyrinths of fallen trees, fording rivers where the water reached to their shoulders, travelling afterwards in their wet clothes, with swollen limbs, and moccasins soaked in blood from laceration of their feet by the thorns of the p.r.i.c.kly pear, and lying down at night on their beds of brushwood, wrapped in their buffalo-robes. The Indians were full of curiosity to know what they were in search of, and listened with great interest when they attempted to talk with them. The first group that Father Joseph gathered about him sat all night to hear him, although they had come from hard labor of hunting and fishing, and digging roots. He said, that, however degraded they were, they were all eager to find some power superior to man.

The tribe among whom he first established himself--the Coeurs d'Alene--were renowned among all the tribes for their belief in sorcery; and he experienced great difficulty in making an impression upon them, from the opposition of the medicine-men (jugglers). Among this tribe he found two relics held in great esteem, of which the Indians gave him this account:--

They said that the first white man they ever saw wore a spotted-calico shirt--which to them appeared like the small-pox--and a great white comforter. They thought the spotted shirt was the Great Manitou himself, the master of the alarming disease that swept them off in such vast numbers, and that the white comforter was the Manitou of the snow; that, if they could only secure and worship them, the small-pox would be banished, and abundant snows would drive the buffalo down from the mountains. The white man agreed to give them up, receiving in exchange several of their best horses; and for many years these two Manitous were carried in solemn procession to a hill consecrated to superst.i.tious rites, laid reverently on the gra.s.s, and the great medicine-pipe (which is offered to the earth, the sun, and the water) was presented to them; the whole band singing, dancing, and howling around them.

Father Joseph treated the Indians altogether as children, and devised a system of object-teaching, making little images representing what they were to shun, and what to seek, to which he pointed in instructing them.

He considered it a miracle, that they yielded their hearts to his teaching; but it seemed to me, that if the good priest's gentle ways and entire devotion to their welfare had produced no effect, it would have been as contradictory to all the laws of nature as any miracle could be.

While instructing some savages from Puget Sound, he said the idea came into the mind of one of the priests, to represent by a ladder, which he made on paper, the various truths and mysteries of religion, in their chronological order. This proved vastly beneficial in instructing them.

It was called the "Catholic ladder," and disseminated widely among the Indians; their progress in religion being measured by their knowledge of this ladder. At the same time that he sent the ladder among them, he sent also roots and seeds and agricultural tools. I could hardly repress a smile at seeing that he spoke with the same enthusiasm of their success with the beans and potatoes, as with the ladder. The truth is, that he had deeply at heart the good of these, his "wild children of the forest," as he always called them. It was quite touching to him, he said, to see how ready they were to believe that G.o.d took charge of earthly things as well as of heavenly.

One of his a.s.sociates in the early missions was a Belgian priest, whose journal he showed us. He brought over, to aid in the work, six sisters of Notre Dame, in 1844. The vessel which brought them to the Pacific coast stopped at Valparaiso and Lima, to inquire how to enter the Columbia River. Not receiving any satisfactory information, they sailed north till they reached the forty-sixth degree of lat.i.tude. Then they explored for several days, and at length saw a sail coming out of what appeared to be the mouth of a river. They immediately sent an officer to find out from this vessel how to enter; but, as he did not return, they were obliged to approach alone the "vast and fearful mouth of the river," and soon found themselves in the terrible southern channel, into which, they were a.s.sured afterwards, no vessel had ever sailed before.

The commander of the fort at Astoria had endeavored, by hoisting flags, by great signal-fires, and guns, to warn them of their danger. They saw the signals, but did not suspect their intention. They sailed two miles amidst fearful breakers. When at length they reached stiller water, a canoe approached them, containing an American man and some Clatsop Indians. The white man told them he would have come sooner to their aid, but the Indians refused to brave the danger; and said that he expected every moment to see the vessel dashed into a thousand pieces. The Indians, seeing it ride triumphantly over the dreadful bar, considered it under the special guidance of the Great Spirit, and greeted it with wild screams of delight. This was the introduction of the serene sisters to their field of labor. My idea of the sisters generally had been of pale, sad beings, whose most appropriate place was by the side of death-beds. These sisters of Notre Dame were brisk, energetic women, of lively temperaments. Finding the building which was preparing for them not yet provided with doors and windows, from the scarcity of mechanics, they themselves set about planing, glazing, and painting, to make every thing neat and comfortable. Wilkes, in his account of his exploring expedition, speaks regretfully of the poor appearance the Protestant missions presented, when compared with those of the Catholics; there being among the former an unthrifty, dilapidated look, and the Indians he saw there appeared to be employed only as servants.

The Catholics took pains to make all their ceremonies as imposing as circ.u.mstances would permit; making free use of musketry, bright colors, and singing,--things most attractive to an Indian,--remarking often, "Noise is essential to the Indian's enjoyment," and, "Without singing, the best instruction is of little value." They showed the Indians that they regarded the comfort and good of their bodies, as well as of their souls; giving them at Easter a great feast of potatoes, parsneps, turnips, beets, beans, and pease, to impress upon them the advantages of civilization, and taking pains that the requirements of religion should not interfere with the fishery or the chase. All the good customs and practices already established among them, they confirmed and approved, and found much to sympathize with in the Indians. The suavity and dignified simplicity of the chiefs particularly pleased them, and the relation of the chief to the people,--they consulting him in regard to every public or private undertaking, as when about to take a journey, or when entering upon marriage; he regulating the gathering of roots and berries, the hunting and fishing, and the division of spoils. The priests said of the chief, "He speaks calmly, but never in vain." They admired the self-control of the Indians, who never showed any impatience when misfortunes befell them; and said, that, the farther they penetrated into the wilderness, the better Indians they found. They were especially pleased with those about the sources of the Columbia, and said of their converts in that region, "If it be true that the prayer of him who possesses the innocence, the simplicity, and the faith of a child, pierces the clouds, then will the prayers of these dear children of the forest reach the ear of Heaven." They were interested in the different views of the future life held by the different tribes. To those who lived by woods and waters, heaven was a country of lakes, streams, and forests; but the Blackfoot heaven was of great sandhills, stretching far and wide, abounding in game.

They devoted themselves with great zeal to reconciling hostile tribes, particularly the Blackfeet and Flat-heads. All the tribes feared the Blackfeet, especially that terrible sub-tribe called the "Blood Indians." The Snakes, too, were a common enemy to all the river-tribes.

Father De Smet, the Belgian priest, with great intrepidity started for the Blackfoot country, although receiving numerous warnings of the risk he incurred. He encamped in the heart of their country. One of their chiefs sought him out, and took a fancy to the fearless old man at sight, embracing him in savage fashion, "rough but cordial." This chief was ornamented from head to foot with eagle-feathers, and dressed in blue as a mark of distinction. With this powerful friend, he immediately gained a footing among them. He conducted towards them with great wisdom and kindness, interfering as little as possible with their old customs.

After he had made many converts among them, they asked him, on one of the great days of the Church, if he would like to see them manifest their joy in their own way,--by painting, singing, and dancing; to which he gave courteous a.s.sent. The dance was performed wholly by women and children, although in the dress of warriors. Some of them carried arms, others only green boughs. All took part in it, from the toddling infant to the ancient grandam whose feeble limbs required the aid of a staff. They carried caskets of plumes, which nodded in harmony with their movements, and increased the graceful effect. There was also jingling of bells, and drums beaten by the men who surrounded them, and joined in the songs. To break the monotony, occasionally a sudden piercing scream was added. If the dance languished, haranguers and those most skilful in grimaces came to its aid. The movement consisted of a little jump, more or less lively according to the beat of the drum. It was danced on a beautiful green plain, under a cl.u.s.ter of pines. All the Indians climbed the trees, or sat round on their horses, to see it.

The missionaries secured some of their readiest converts among the Spokanes (children of the sun), who lived mostly on a great open plain.

Instead of being crafty and reserved, like most of the tribes about them, they were free and genial. They welcomed the earliest explorers, and lived on friendly terms with the settlers. They were more susceptible to civilization and improvement than most of the other Indians.

Father De Smet was enthusiastic in his enjoyment of the forests and the mountains; speaking often of the "skyward palaces and holy towers" among the hills, "the immortal pine," the "rock-hung flower," the "fantastic grace of the winding rivers." The desert country through which he travelled, and of which we also saw something in coming to this place, he called "a little Arabia shut in by stern, Heaven-built walls of rock." In the narrow valleys at the foot of the Cascade Mountains, he found magnificent groves of rhododendrons, thousands of them together, fifteen or twenty feet high,--green arches formed underneath by their intertwined branches; above, bouquets of splendid flowers, shading from deepest crimson to pure white.

He mourned very much over the superst.i.tions of the Indians; but said, nevertheless, that an attack of severe illness, which he suffered after one of his journeys, was no doubt sent as a punishment for his too carnal admiration of nature.

While we were talking with Father Joseph, and looking over the journal, a messenger rode up to the door, and told him that _Tenas Marie_ (Little Mary) was dying. The Indian agent, who stood by, said, "It is not much of a loss; she is a worthless creature." Father Joseph turned to him in a most dignified way, and said, "It is a human being;" and then to Christine, and asked if she would lend him a horse, she having a whole herd at command. Presently he started off for a whole night's ride. I thought, if I were Little Mary, after my bad life, when I must enter into account for it, I should be a good deal cheered and supported to see his kind eyes, and hear his firm voice directing me at the last.

The Coeurs d'Alene (pointed hearts, or hearts of arrows--flint)[1]

were so called from their determined resistance to having the white men come among them. They did not desire to have one of the Hudson Bay Company's posts upon their land, although the other tribes favored their establishment among them, wishing to barter their skins and obtain fire-arms; but said, that, if the white men saw their country, they would want to take it from them, it was so beautiful.

Father Joseph was their interpreter in the negotiations between them and the United States Government. They attacked Col. Steptoe, while he was pa.s.sing through their territory, because they had heard that the white men were going to build a road which would drive away the deer and the buffalo. It was explained to them, that, although this was so, other advantages would more than compensate for it. This was beyond their comprehension. To them, the advantages of civilization bore no comparison to the charm of their free, roving life. When the army officers entered the Coeur d'Alene country, they declared that no conception of heaven could surpa.s.s the beauty of its exquisite lakes, embosomed in the forest. This tribe held firm against all propositions of the government to treat with them, until Donati's comet appeared in 1858; when, supposing it to be a great fiery broom sent to sweep them from the earth, they accepted a treaty.

The "Battle of Four Lakes" was fought in this country. An old man whom we met at the fort in Walla Walla, who saw this battle, gave us some account of it. The lakes are surrounded with rocks covered with pine.

Beyond them is a great rolling country of gra.s.sy hills. For about two miles, he said, this open ground was all alive with the wildest, most fantastic figures of mounted Indians, with painted horses, having eagle-feathers braided into their tails and manes; each Indian fighting separately on his own account. He described to us the appearance of the war chief as he rode to battle, his own head hidden by a wolf's head, with stiff, sharp ears standing erect, ornamented with bears' claws, and under it a circlet of feathers. From this head depended a long train of feathers that floated down his back; the loss of which would be the loss of his honor, and as great a disaster to him as, to a Chinaman, the loss of his cue. His war-horse was painted, as well as his own person, and also profusely decorated with feathers on head and tail. The Indians have such a fancy for feathers, that, in some of their medicine ceremonies, they smear their heads with a sticky substance, and cover them all over with swan's-down.

Lieut. Mullan's surveying expedition roused many of the tribes to desperation. Owhi, the Yakima chief, when urged to give up his land,--or, what amounted to the same thing, to allow free pa.s.sage to the surveying party and the road-makers,--argued that he could not give away the home of his people; saying, "It is not mine to give. The Great Spirit has _measured_ it to my people." Not being successful in his arguments, he organized the outbreak of the following winter. The army destroyed the caches filled with dried berries, and the pressed cake which the Indians prepare from roots for their winter food, many lodges filled with grain, and hundreds of horses; the officers mentioning in their report, that it would insure the Indians a winter of great suffering, and concluding in these words: "Seldom has an expedition been undertaken, the recollection of which is invested with so much that is agreeable, as that against the Northern Indians."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] To the Canadian _voyageur_, the word _alene_ (awl) meant any sharp-pointed instrument.

VI.

Colville to Seattle.--"Red."--"Ferrins."--"Broke Miners."--A Rare Fellow-Traveller.--The Bell-Mare.--Pelouse Fall.--Red-Fox Road.--Early Californians.--Frying-Pan Incense.--Dragon-Flies.--Death of the Chief Seattle.

SEATTLE, August 23, 1866.

We were detained at Fort Colville several days longer than we desired, seeking an opportunity to get back to the Columbia River, by some chance wagon going down from the mines, or from some of the supply-stations in the upper country. In our expedition on the "Forty-nine," we had seen a great many miners, and, among them, one horrid character, with a flaming beard, who was known by every one as "Red." He had been mining in the snow mountains, far up in British Columbia, and joined us to go down on the steamer to Colville. He was terribly rough and tattered-looking. The mining-season in those northern mountains is so short, that he said he was going back to winter at the mines, so as to be on the spot for work in the spring, and that he should take up about forty gallons of grease to keep himself warm through the winter.

He and his companions told great stories about their rough times in the mountains. Some of them mentioned having been reduced to the extremity of living on "ferrins" when all other food had failed. These accounts were generally received, by the rest of the miners, with great outbursts of laughter. That appeared to be their customary way of regarding all their misfortunes,--at least, in the retrospect. We wondered what the "ferrins" could be. n.o.body seemed to resort to them, except in the direst need. Upon inquiry, we found out that they were _boiled ferns_. I have always noticed that even insects of all kinds pa.s.s by ferns. I suspect that even the hungriest man would find them rather unsatisfying, but this light diet seemed to have kept them in the most jovial spirits.

R. was rather averse to travelling in such company, and always presented "Red" to me as the typical miner, when opportunities offered for our getting down from Colville with a party from the mines. Finally I persuaded him to accept either "Buffalo Bill," who offered to take us by ourselves, or an Irishman who insisted upon having a few miners with him. I think he was rather prejudiced against the former, on account of his name; and we therefore made an agreement with the latter, to take us, with only two miners, instead of ten as he at first desired, that R.

should see them before we started, and that we should have the wagon to ourselves at night. As it happened, we left in haste, and did not see the miners until they leaped from the wagon, and began to a.s.sist in putting in our baggage. That was not an occasion, of course, for criticising them. Besides that, I saw, when I first looked at them, that they were rather harder to read than most people I had met; and I could not in a minute tell what to make of them. Our wagoner said they were "broke miners." I did not know exactly what that meant, but thought they might be very desperate characters, made more so by special circ.u.mstances. One of them looked like a brigand, with his dark hair and eyes. But I didn't mind; for I was tired of travelling about, and anxious to get home. I thought I would sleep most of the way down; so I put back my head, and shut my eyes. Presently the dark man began to talk with R., in a musical voice, about the soft Spanish names of places in California; and I could not sleep much. Then he spoke of the primitive forms in which minerals crystallized, the five-sided columns of volcanic rock, and the little cubes of gold. I could make no pretence at sleep any longer; I had to open my eyes; and once in a while I asked a question or two, although I would not show much interest, and determined not to become at all acquainted with him, because we were necessarily to be very intimate, travelling all day together, and camping together at night. But I watched him a great deal, and listened to his conversation upon many subjects. I think, that not only on this journey, but in all the time since we came to this coast, we have not enjoyed any thing else so much. He had uncommon powers of expression, and of thought and feeling too, and took great interest in every thing. He had even a little tin box of insects. He showed us the native grains, wild rice, etc., the footprints of animals, the craters of old volcanoes, and called us to listen to the wild doves at night, and the cry of the loon and the curlew.