THE CANOE and THE SADDLE or KLALAM and KLICKATAT By THEODORE WINTHROP ^ ^*C?-^ .#^s>«^-^s«*^; ^^^i^C^^^^ Y^A-^^rt^^ >^»sS^;j^<^ ^^^^/^'^^svC ^^rx^^^i^le'^i^t^^ PAC-SIMILE OF WINTHROP'S MANUSCRIPT. Page 36. THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. AN ENTRANCE. A wall of terrible breakers marks the mouth of the Columbia, Achilles of rivers. Other mighty streams may swim feebly away seaward, may sink into foul marshes, may trickle through the ditches of an oozy delta, may scatter among sand-bars the currents that once moved majestic and united. But to this heroic flood was destined a short life and a glorious one, — a life all one strong, victorious struggle, from the mountains to the sea. It has no infancy, — two great branches collect its waters up and down the continent. They join, and the Columbia is born to full manhood. It rushes forward, jubilant, through its magnificent chasm, and leaps to its death in the Pacific. Through its white wall of breakers Captain Gray, with his bark, the Columbia, first steered boldly to discover and name the stream. I will not invite my reader to fol- low this example, an,d buffet in the wrecking uproar on the bar. The Columbia, rolling seaward, repels us. Let us rather coast along northward, and enter the Northwest by the Straits of Fuca, upon the mighty tides 4 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE of an inland sea. We will profit by this inward eddy of ocean to float quietly past Vancouver Island, and land at Kahtai, Port Townsend, the opening scene of my narrative. The adventures chronicled in these pages happened some years ago, but the story of a civilized man's solitary onslaught at barbarism cannot lose its interest. A drama with Indian actors, in Indian costume, upon an Indian stage, is historical, whether it happened two hundred years since in the northeast, or five years since in the northwest corner of our country. PORT TOWNSEND IN THE EARLY SEVENTIES. II. A KLALAM GRANDEE, The Duke of York was ducally drunk. His brother, King George, was drunk — royally. Royalty may disdain public opinion, and fall as low as it pleases. But a brother of the throne, leader of the opposition, possible Regent, possible King, must retain at least a swaying perpendicu- lar. King George had kept his chair of state until an angu- lar sitting position was impossible; then he had subsided into a curvilinear droop, and at last fairly toppled over, and lay in his lodge, limp and stertorous. In his lodge lay Georgius Rex, in flabby insensibility. Dead to the duties of sovereignty was the King of the Klalams.* Like other royal Georges, in palaces more regal than this Port Townsend wigwam, in realms more civilized than here, where the great tides of Puget Sound rise and fall, this royal George had sunk in absolute wreck. Kings are but men. Several kings have thought themselves the god Bacchus. George of the Klalams had imbibed this ambitious error, and had proved himself very much lower than a god, much lower than a man, lower than any ple- beian Klalam Indian, — a drunken king. In the great shed of slabs that served them for palace sat the Queen, — sat the Queens, — mild-eyed, melancholy, copper-colored persons, also, sad to say, not sober. Eti- quette demanded inebriety. The stern rules of royal inde- corum must be obeyed. The Queen Dowager had suc- *As to the spelling of Indian names, see Preface. 6 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. cumbed to ceremony; the Queen Consort was sinking; every lesser queen, — the favorites for sympathy, the neglected for consolation, — all had imitated their lord and master. Qourtiers had done likewise. Chamberlain Gold Stick, Black Rod, Garter King at Arms, a dozen high functionaries, were prostrate by the side of prostrate majesty. Courtiers grovelled with their sovereign. Sardanapalus never pre- Mask used in Tribal Dances and Religious Ceremonies. From near Bremerton, Wash. sided, until he could preside no longer, at more tumble- down orgies. King, royal household, and court, all were powerless; and I was a suppliant here, on the waters of the Pacific, for means of commencing my homeward journey toward the Atlantic. I needed a bark from that fleet by which King George ruled the waves. I had dallied too long at Vancouver Island, under the hospitable roof of the Hudson's Bay Com- pany, and had consumed invaluable hours in making a detour from my proper course to inspect the house, the saw-mill, the bluff, and the beach, called Port Townsend. These were the A KLALAM GRANDEE. 7 last days of August, 1853. I was to meet my overland com- rades at the Dalles of the Columbia on the first of Septem- ber. Between me and the rendezvous were the leagues of Puget Sound, the preparation for an ultra-montane trip, the passes of the Cascades, and all the dilatoriness and danger of Indian guidance. Moments now were worth days of com- mon life. Therefore, as I saw those winged moments flit away unharnessed to my chariot of departure, I became wroth, and, advancing where the king of all this region lay, limp, stertorous, and futile, I kicked him liberally. Yes! I have kicked a king! Proudly I claim that I have outdone the most radical regicide. I have offered indignities to the person of royalty with a moccasined toe. Would that that toe had been robustly booted! In his Sans Souci, his (Eil de Boeuf, his Brighton Pavilion, I kicked so much of a first gentleman of his realm as was George R., and no scalping-knife leaped from greasy seal-skin sheath to avenge the insult. One bottle-holder in waiting, upon whose head I had casually trodden, did indeed stagger to his seat, and stammer trucu- lently in Chinook jargon, "Potlatch lum! — Give me to drink," quoth he, and incontinently fell prone again, a poor, collapsed bottle-holder. But kicking the insensible King of the Klalams, that dominant nation on the southern shores of Puget Sound, did not procure me one of his canoes and a crew of his braves to paddle me to Nisqually,* my next station, for a blanket apiece and gratuities of sundries. There was no help to be had from that smoky barn or its sorry inmates, so regally nicknamed by British voyagers. I left them *Fort Nisqually, the Hudson's Bay Company's great trading post on Puget Sound, near the mouth of the Nisqually River, and a few miles west of the present city of Tacoma, played a noteworthy part in early Northwestern history. It was founded in 1833, and at the time of Winthrop's visit, twenty years later, did a large business with the Indiana both west and east of the Cascades, as well as with the white settlements 8 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. lying upon their dirty mats, among their fishy baskets, and strode away, applying the salutary toe to each dignitary as I passed. Fortunately, without I found the Duke of York, only ducally drunk. A duke's share of the potables had added some degrees to the arc of vibration of his swagger, but had not sent it beyond equilibrium. He was a reversed pendu- lum, somewhat spasmodic in swmg, and not constructed on the compensation principle, — when one muscle relaxed, another did not tighten. However, the Duke was still sober enough to have speculation in his eyes; and as he was Regent now, and Lord High Admiral, I might still, by his favor, be expedited. It was a chance festival that had intoxicated the Kla- lams, king and court. There had been a fraternization, a from San Francisco to Alaska. The buildings were roomy, one-story houses of logs, the principal ones set within a large stockade, which was strengthened for defense with blockhouses, well stocked with fire- arms and commanding the surrounding plain. The United States government, in 1869, paid the Hudson's Bay Company and its subsid- iary, the Puget Sound Agricultural Company, $650,000 for their in- terests here, thus ending the story of Great Britain's attempt to hold the Northwest as a game preserve. In 1853, although its fur trade was soon to be cut down by the settle- ments, the "Fort" was still the most important commercial center in the new Territory. The head factor was Dr. William Fraser Tolmie, and his assistant, Edward Huggins, — both men of sterling character and much respected by the American settlers. "Nisqually," often assumed to be an aboriginal Indian word, is merely an Indian adaptation of a white man's phrase. Like many others in the vocabulary of the Northwest, this word owes its origin to the French-Canadian servants of the Hudson's Bay Company. Ob- serving the flat countenances and pug noses of the natives on the upper Sound, the half-breed voyageur called these savages ncz carre. The Indians, probably thinking this a term of honor, appropriated it; and being unable, like the Chinese, to pronounce the letter r, called them- selves "nez kaUi." This sounded to English and American ears, and soon got into written speech, as "Neskwalli" (Gibbs) or "Nisqually." The Nisqually Indians were a family of small tribes inhabiting the south and east shores of the Sound. The Nisqually River gets its name from them. "Siwash" is another Indian appropriation of a name given in con- tempt by the coureur des bois. Little did the Indian suspect, in adopt- ing the Canadian's satwage, that he was dubbing himself a "savage." In due time, his defective pronunciation of the word got current as"Siwash." A KLALAM GRANDEE. 9 powwow, a wahwah, a peace congress with some neighbor- ing tribe, — perhaps the Squaksnamish, or Squallyamish, or Sinahomish, or some other of the Whulgeamish, dwellers by Whulge, — the waters of Puget Sound.* And just as the festival began, there had come to Port Townsend, or Kahtai, where the king of the Klalams, or S'Klalams, now reigned, THE "DUKE OF YORK. a devil-send of a lumber brig, with Hquor of the fieriest. Orgies followed; a nation was prostrate. The Duke was my only hope. Yet I must not betray ♦Winthrop's Indian names illustrate his general accuracy and pains- taking interest in the Red Man and his language. His examples here are fair specimens, phonetically rendered, of the gutteral clatter of si- wash tribal names. There was, of course, no written Indian language, and each student of the dialects had to guess at the best way to spell the Indian words. "Squaksnamish," more commonly "Squaksamish," means the tribe of "Squak," which appears on our present-day maps as "Issaquah." "Squallyamish" was the current name for the tribe of Nisqually, also shortened by the Indians into "Squally," a form which Winthrop frequently uses. "Sinahomish" is a variant for the more com- mon name of the important tribe of "Snohomish." Gibbs {Pacific Rail- way Report, I., 436) uses the same form. "Whulgeamish" is not found 10 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. eagerness. A dignitary among Indians does not like to be bored with energy. If I were too ardent, the Duke would grow coy. Prices would climb to the unapproachable. Any exhibition of impatience would cost me largess of beads, if not blankets, beyond the tariff for my canoe-hire. A frugal mind, and, on the other hand, a bent toward irre- sponsible pleasure, kept the Duke palpably wavering. He would joyfully stay and complete his saturnalia, and yet the bliss of more chattels, and consequent consideration, tempted him. Which shall it be, "lumoti" or "pesispy," — in other books, and may have been coined by Winthrop from the authen- tic word "Whulge," in the fashion of other tribal names which he heard in current use. Deans {American Antiquarian, VIII., 41, 1886) gives the term "WhuUemooch," meaning "Dwellers on Puget Sound," and says that this is "the national name of the various tribes on the north- west coast of Washington. For "Whulge," as the Indian name of Puget Sound, Winthrop also had ample authority. The form he uses is merely a somewhat softened rendering of that in use among most of the tribes on the Sound. Dr. Charles M. Buchanan, the scholarly superintendent of the Tulalip Indian Agency, reservations, and schools, and a lifelong student of the Indian dialects and lore, writes me: "Your informant, Jerry Meeker (an educated Puyallup Indian), is correct, both as to his information and his pronunciation. He says 'Whulch' and I say 'Hwulch,' the only difference being that I aspirate the word a little more strongly than does he. I prefer this to 'Whulge,' though even this latter is only slightly removed from 'Hwulch.' Your informant, Meeker, is correct also as to the meaning of the word, i. e., 'salt water,' in contradistinction to 'k'oh' or 'drinking water,' 'fresh water.' 'Hwulch' is generally used in this vicinity to indicate the neigh- boring salt water, that is, Puget Sound. If Mr. beHeves the word is not in general use, he is much mistaken. The Indians, however, do not give it so soft or gentle a pronunciation as 'Whulge.' They say 'Hwulch,' as if to rhyme with 'gulch.' " Dr. Buchanan has furnished me with a copy of the treaty made by Governor Stevens on January 22, 1855, at "Muckl'te oh, or Point El- liott," with the Indians of northwestern Washington. This document mentions the following tribes: 'Dwamish, Suquamash, Sk tahl-mish, Sam- ahmish, Smalh kahmish, Skopeahmish, St-kah-mish, Snoqualmoo, Skai- wha-mish, N'Quentl-ma-mish, Sk-tah-le-jum, Stoluck-wha-mish, Sno- ho-m'sh, Skagit, Kik-i-allus, Swin a mish, Squin ah-mish, Sah ku mehu, Noo-wha-ha, Nook wa-chah mish, Mee see-qua-guilch, Cho bah-ah- bish, and other allied and subordinate tribes and bands." After reading this list, one feels that Chas. Nordhoff hardly exag- gerated the matter when, on visiting the territory in 1873, he opined that the Northern Pacific Railway had selected Tacoma as its terminus because it was "one of the few places on the Sound whose name did not inspire horror and disgust." A KLALAM GRANDEE. 11 bottle or blanket? revel and rum, or toil and toilette? — the great alternative on which civilization hinges, as well among Klalams as elsewhere. Sunbeams are so warm, and basking such dulcet, do-nothing bliss, why overheat one's self now for the woollen raiment of future warmth? Not merely warmth, but wealth, — wives, chief est of luxuries, are bought with blankets; with them canoes are bought, and to a royal highness of savages, blankets are purple, ermine, and fine linen. Calling the Duke's attention to these facts, I wooed him cautiously, as craft wooes coyness; I assumed a lofty indifference of demeanor, and negotiated with him from a sham vantage-ground of money-power, knowing what trash my purse would be, if he refused to be tempted. A gro- tesque jargon called Chinook is the lingua-franca of the whites and Indians of the Northwest. Once the Chinooks were the most numerous tribe along the Columbia, and the first, from their position at its mouth, to meet and talk with strangers. Now it is all over with them; their bones are dust; small-pox and spirits have eliminated the race. But there grew up between them and ,the traders a lingo, an incoherent coagulation of words, — as much like a settled, logical language as a legion of centrifugal, marauding Bashi Bazouks, every man a Jack-of-all-trades, a beggar and black- guard, is like an accurate, unanimous, disciplined battalion. It is a jargon of English, French, Spanish, Chinook, Kalla- pooya, Haida, and other tongues, civilized and savage. It is an attempt on a small scale to nullify Babel by com- bining a confusion of tongues into a confounding of tongues, — a witches' caldron in which the vocable that bobs up may be some old familiar Saxon verb, having suffered Procrustean docking or elongation, and now doing sub- stantive duty; or some strange monster, evidently nurtured within the range of tomahawks and calumets. There is some danger that the beauties of this dialect will be lost to literature. 12 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. "Carent quia vate sacro." The Chinook jargon still expects its poet. As several of my characters will use this means of conveying their thoughts to my reader, and employ me only as an interpreter, I have thought it well to aid comprehension by this little philological preface. My big talk with the Duke of York went on in such a lingo, somewhat as follows: — "Pottlelum mitlite King Jawge; Drunk lieth King George," said I. "Cultus tyee ocook; a beggarly majesty that. Hyas tyee mika; a mighty prince art thou, — pe kum- tux skookoom mamook esick; and knowest how robustly to ply paddle. Nika tikky hyack klatawah copa Squally, copa canim; I would with speed canoe it to Squally. Hui pesispy nika potlatch pe hui ikta; store of blankets will I give, and plenteous sundries." "Nawitka siks; yea, friend," responded the Duke, grasp- ing my hand, after two drunken clutches at empty air. "Klosche nika tum tum copa hyas Baasten tyee;* tender is my heart toward thee, great Yankee don. Yaka pot- tlelum — halo nika — wake cultus mann Dookeryawk; he indeed is drunk — not I — no loafer-man, the Duke of York. Mitlite canim; got canoe. Pe klosche nika tikky klatawah copa Squally; and heartily do I wish to go to Squally." Had the Duke wavered still, and been apathetic to temptation of blankets, and sympathetic toward the joys of continued saturnalia, a new influence now brought to bear would have steadied him. One of his Duchesses, only duchessly intoxicated, came forth from the ducal lodge, and urged him to effort. "Go, by all means, with the distinguished stranger, *The first American vessels to visit the north coast were commonly from Boston. Hence the Chinook jargon designated all Americans as "Boston men." Similarly, the coming of Vancouver and other Eng- lish navigators during the reign of George III. gave the jargon the phrase "King George men" for all Britishers. A KLALAM GRANDEE. 13 my love," said she, in Chinook, "and I will be the solace of thy voyage. Perchance, also, a string of beads and a pocket-mirror shall be my meed from the Boston chief, a very generous man, I am sure." Then she smiled enticingly, her flat-faced grace; and introduced herself as Jenny Lind, or, as she called it, "Chin Lin." Indianesque, not fully Indian, was her countenance. There was a trace of tin in her copper color, possibly a dash of Caucasian blood in her veins. Brazenness of hue was the result of this union, and a very pretty color it is with eloquent blushes mantling through it, as they do mantle in Indian cheeks. Her fore- head was slightly and coquettishly flattened by art, as a woman's should be by nature, unless nature destines her for missions foreign to feminineness, and means that she shall be an intellectual roundhead, and shall sternly keep a graceless school, to irritate youthful cherubim into original sinners. Indian maids are pretty; Indian dames are hags. Only high civilization keeps its women beautiful to the last. Indian belles have some delights of toilette worthy of con- sideration by their blonde sisterhood. mistaken harridans of Christendom, so bountifully painted and powdered, did ye but know how much better than your diffusiveness of daub is the concentrated brilliance of vermilion stripes parting at the nose-bridge and streaming athwart the cheeks! Knew ye but this, at once ye would reform from your undeluding shams, and recover the forgotten charms of acknowledged pinxit. At last, persuaded by his own desires and the solicitations of his fair Duchess, the Duke determined to transport me. He pointed to a grand canoe on the beach, — that should be our Bucentaur, and now he must don robes of ceremony for the voyage. For, indeed, both ducal personages were in deshabille. A dirty shirt, blue and short, was the Duke's chief habiliment; hers, a shirt longer, but no cleaner. Within his palace-curtains now disappeared the second grandee of the Klalams, to bedeck himself. Presently I 14 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. lifted the hanging mat that served for door to his shed of slabs, and followed him. His family and suite were but crapu- lous after their less than royal potations. He despatched two sleepy braves to make ready the canoe, and find paddles. "Where is my cleanest shirt. Chin Lin?" he asked. "Nika macook lum; I buy grog with um," replied the Duchess. "Cultus mamook; a dastardly act," growled the Duke, "and I will thwack thee for't." Jenny Lind sank meekly upon the mud-floor, and wept, while the Duke smote her with palm, fist, and staff. "Kopet! hold!" cried I, rushing forward. "Thy beauteous spouse has bought the nectar for thy proper jollity. Even were she selfish, it is uncivilized to smite the fair. Among the Bostons, when women wrong us, we give pity or con- tempt, but not the strappado." Harangues to Indians are traditionally in such lofty style. The Duke suffered himself to be appeased, and proceeded to dress without the missing article. He donned a faded black frock-coat, evidently a misfit for its first owner in civilization, and transmitted down a line of deformed wearers to fall amorphous on the shoulders of him of York. For coronet he produced no gorgeous combination of velvet, strawberry-leaves, and pearls; but a hat or tile, also of civil- ization, wrinkled with years and battered by world-wander- ing, crowned him frowzily. Black dress pantaloons of brassy sheen, much crinkled at the bottom, where they fell over moccasins with a faded scarlet instep-piece, completed his costume. A very shabby old-clo' Duke. A virulent radical would have enjoyed him heartily, as an emblem of decay in the bloated aristocracy of this region. Red paint daubed over his clumsy nose, and about the flats surrounding his little, disloyal, dusky eyes, kept alive the traditional Indian in his appearance. Otherwise he might have been taken for a decayed priest turned bar-tender, or a colporteur of tracts on spiritualism, or an ex-constable A KLALAM GRANDEE. 16 pettifogger in a police court. Commerce, alas! had come to the waters of Whulge, stolen away his Indian simplicity, and made him a caricature, dress, name, and nature. A primitive Klalam, clad in skins and undevoured by the flames of fire-water, he would have done well enough as a type of fish-fed barbarism. Civilization came, with step- mother kindness, baptized him with rum, clothed him in discarded slops, and dubbed him Duke of York. Hapless scarecrow, disreputable dignitary, no dukeling of thine shall ever become the Louis Philippe of Klalam revolutions. Boston men are coming in their big canoes over sea. Pikes* have shaken off the fever and ague on the banks of the muddy Missouri, and are striding beyond the Rockies. Nasal twangs from the east and west soon will sound thy trump of doom. Squatters will sit upon thy dukedom, and make it their throne. Tides in Whulge, which the uneducated maps call Puget Sound, rush with impetus, rising and falling eighteen *The word "Pikes" was long current in the West for the rougher element among the frontiersmen. Nordhoflf found it still in common use in the early seventies. It has now become obsolete, except as a sur- vival among the remaining pioneers. The fact that many disorderly characters came from the several Pike Counties in the Mississippi Valley States must bear the blame for this undiscriminating use of the county name as a description of the big-talking, tobacco-spitting, and semi-lawless variety of bipeds, not unknown to other counties than Pike. "America is manufacturing several new types of men. The Pike is one of the newest. He is a bastard pioneer. With one hand he clutches the pioneer vices; with the other he beckons forward the vices of civilization. It is hard to understand how a man can have so little virtue in so long a body, unless the shakes are foes to virtue in the soul, as they are to beauty in the face. "He is a terrible shock, this unlucky Pike, to the hope that the new race on the new continent is to be a handsome race. I lose that faith, which the people about me now have nourished, when I recall the Pike. He is hung together, not put together. He inserts his lank fathom of a man into a suit of molasses-colored homespun. Frowzy and husky is the hair Nature crowns him with; frowzy and stubby the beard. He shambles in his walk. He drawls in his talk. He drinks whiskey by the tank. His oaths are to his words as Falstaff's sack to his bread. I have seen Maltese beggars, Arab camel-drivers, Domini- can friars, New York Aldermen, Digger Indians; the foulest, frowziest creatures I have ever seen are thorough-bred Pikes." — Winthrop: John Brent. 16 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. or twenty feet. The tide was rippling winningly up to the stranded canoes. Our treaty was made; our costume was complete; we prepared to embark. But lo! a check! In malignant sulks, King George came forth from his mal- perfumed lodge of red-smeared slabs. "Veto," said he. "Dog am I, and this is my manger. Every canoe of the fleet is mine, and from this beach not one shall stir this day of festival!" Whereupon, after a wrangle, short and sharp, with the Duke, in which the King whipped out a knife, and brandished it with drunken vibrations in my face, he staggered back, and again lay in his lodge. Had he felt my kick, or was this merely an impulse of discontented ire? How now? Could we not dethrone the sovereign, and confiscate his property? There are precedents for such a course. But savage life is full of chances. As I was urging the soberish Duke to revolutionary acts, or at least to a forced levy from the royal navy, a justifiable piracy, two canoes appeared rounding the point. " 'Come unto these yellow sands,' ye brass-colored braves," we cried. They were coming, each crew roving anywhither, and soon, by the Duke's agency, I struck a bargain for the leaky better of the two vessels. No clipper that ever creaked from status quo in Webb's shipyard, and rumbled heavily along the ways, and rushed as if to drown itself in its new element, and then went cleaving across the East River, staggering under the intoxi- cating influence of a champagne-bottle with a blue ribbon round its neck, cracked on the rudder-post by a blushing priestess, — no such grand result of modem skill ever sur- passed in mere model the canoe I had just chartered for my voyage to Squally. Here was the type of speed and grace to which the most untrammelled civilization has reverted, after cycles of junk, galleon, and galliot building, — cycles of lubberly development, but full of instruction as to what can be done with the best type when it is reasoned CLALLAM AND TILLAMOOK TWINED BASKETS. A KLALAM GRANDEE. 17 out or rediscovered. My vessel was a black dug-out with a red gunwale. Forty feet of pine-tree had been burnt and whittled into a sharp, buoyant canoe. Sundry cross- pieces strengthened it, and might be used as seats or backs. A row of small shells inserted in the red-smeared gunwale served as talismans against Bugaboo. Its master was a withered ancient; its mistress a haggish crone. These two were of unsavory and fishy odor. Three young men, also of unsavory and fishy odor, completed the crew. Salmon mainly had been the lifelong diet of all, and they were oozier with its juices than I could wish of people I must touch and smell for a voyage of two days. In the bargain for canoe and crew, the Duke constituted himself my courier. I became his prey. The rule of tea- making, where British ideas prevail, is a rough generaliza- tion, a spoonful for the pot and one for each bibber. The tariff of canoe-hire onWhulge is equally simple, — a blanket for the boat and one for each paddler. The Duke carefully included himself and Jenny Lind among the paddling recipients of blankets. I ventured to express the view that both he and his Duchess would be unwashed supernumer- aries. At this he was indignant. He felt himself necessary as impresario of the expedition. "Wake closche ocook olyman siwash; no good that old- man savage," said he, pointing to the skipper. "Yaka pottlelum, conoway pottlelum; he drunk, all drunk. Wake kumtux Squally; no understand Squally. Hyas tyee Dooker- yawk, wake pottlelum, — kumtux skookoom mamook esick, pe tikky hyack klatawah copa Squally; mighty chief the Duke of York, not drunk, understand to ply paddle mightily, and want to go fast to Squally." "Very well," said I, "I throw myself into your hands. My crew, then, numbers six, the three fishy youths, Oly- man siwash, Jenny Lind, and yourself. As to Olyman's fishy squaw, she must be temporarily divorced, and go ashore; dead weight will impede our voyage." 18 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. "Nawitka," responded the Klalam, "cultus ocook oly- man cloocheman; no use that oldman woman." So she went ashore, bow-legged, monotonous, and a fatalist, like all old squaws. "And now," continued the Duke, drawing sundry greasy documents from the pocket of that shapeless draggle-tail QUEEN VICTORIA: One of the Wives of the "Duke of York." coat of his, "mika tikky nanitch nika teapot; wilt thou inspect my certificates?" I took the foul papers without a shudder, — have we not all been educated out of squeamishness by handling the dollar-bills of civilization? There was nothing ambiguous in the wording of these "teapots." It chanced sometimes, in days of chivalry, that spies bore missions with clauses sinister to themselves, as this: "The bearer is a losel vile, — have you never a hangman and an oak for him?" The Duke's testimonials were of similar import. They were A KLALAM GRANDEE. 19 signed by Yankee skippers, by British naval officers, by casual travellers, — all unanimous in opprobrium. He was called a drunken rascal, a shameless liar, a thief; called each of these in various idioms, with plentiful epithets thrown in, according to the power of imagery possessed by the author. Such certificates he presented gi-avely, and with tranquil pride. He deemed himself indorsed by civilization, not branded. Men do not always comprehend the world's cynical praise. It seemed also that his Grace had once voyaged to San Francisco in what he called a "skookoom canim copa moxt stick; a colossal canoe with two masts." He did not state what part he played on board, whether cook, captain, stowaway, or Klalam plenipo to those within the Golden Gate. His photograph had been taken at San Francisco. This he also exhibited in a grandiose man- ner, the Duchess, Olyman siwash, and the three fishy siwashes examining it with wonder and grunts of delight. Now it must not be supposed that the Duke was not still ducally drunk, or that it was easy to keep him steady in position or intention. Olyman siwash, also, though not patently intoxicated, wished to be, — so did the three un- savory, hickory-shirted, mat-haired, truculent siwashes. Olyman would frequently ask me, aside, in the strange, unimpassioned, expressionless undertone of an Indian, for a "lumoti," Chinook jargon for la houteille, meaning no empty bottle, but a full. Never a lumoti of delay and danger got Olyman from me. Our preparations went heavily enough. Sometimes the whole party would squat on the beach, and jabber for ten minutes, ending always by de- manding of me liquor or higher wages. But patience and purpose always prevail. At last, by cool urgency, I got them all on board and away. Adieu Port Townsend, town of one house on a grand bluff, and one saw-mill in a black ravine. Adieu intoxicated lodges of Georgius Rex Kla- lamorum! Adieu Royalty! Remember my kick, and con- tinue to be h'happy as you may. III. WHULGE. According to the cosmical law that regulates the west ends of the world, Whulge is more interesting than any of the eastern waters of our country. Tame Albemarle and Pamlico, Chesapeake and Delaware, Long Island Sound, and even the Maine Archipelago and Frenchman's Bay, cannot compare with it. Whulge is worthy of the Scandi- navian savor of its name. Its cockney misnomer should be dropped. Already the critical world demands who was "Puget," and why should the title be saved from Lethe and given to a sound. Whulge is a vast fiord, parting rocks and forests primeval with a mighty tide. Chesapeakes and the like do very well for oyster "fundums" and shad- fisheries, but WTiulge has a picturesque significance as much greater as its salmon are superior to the osseous shad of the east. Some of its beauties will appear in this my voyage. I sat comfortably amidships in my stately but leaky galley, Bucentaur hight for the nonce. Olyman si wash steered. The Duke and Duchess, armed with idle paddles, were between him and me. The fishy trio were arranged forward, paddling to starboard and port. It was past noon of an August day, sultry, but not blasting, as are the summer days of that far Northwest. We sped on gallantly, paddling and spreading a blanket to the breeze. The Duke, however, sogered bravely, and presently called a halt. Then, to my consternation, he produced a "lumoti" and passed it. Potations pottle-deep ensued. hai/onaaiol al baslal oi iriJiow ,>lE9q haqijrfg-bxiuom ,9via8/)n-: .lelxiggni nt: 2i( n99W}9<.I 9DB9q L'uJdqiaq lo mofdmt* eJiriw s biisJe Jo§ I exnea eJl ♦ » * .anoJha lariroid lyo bns ai boqqib bsd I le^'ts .saed 8Ji i& ^dhi imrntrj 9di moil tacli .isAbQ oj eA .:r8£9l nornlae-baliod i; jxj joq tisdj tjd Jon bluorfg anuiJ^inoM rj'>Jio;_ :.i: ■ ' 'jfi'nrf •:>njj;r ".ebaqid b^dBiugnr MOUNT BAKER FROM PORT TOWNSEND. Admiralty Inlet and Whidbey Island in foreground. "Kulshan, misnamed Mount Baker by the vulgar, is an irregular, massive, mound-shaped peak, worthy to stand a white emblem of perpetual peace between us and our brother Britons. * * * Its name I got from the Lummi tribe at its base, after I had dipped in their pot at a boiled-salmon feast. As to Baker, that name should be forgotten. Mountains should not be insulted by being named after undistinguished bipeds." —Chapter III. WHULGE. 21 Each reveller took one sixth of the liquor, and, after the Duke's exhaustive draught, an empty bottle floated astern. A general stagger began to be perceptible among the sitters. Their paddling grew spasmodic. After an interval I heard again a popping sound, not unknown to me. A gurgle followed. I turned. The Duke was pouring out a cupful from his second bottle. He handed me the cup and lumoti for transmission to the fishy, for- ward. This must stop. I deposited the bottle by my side and emptied the cup into Whulge. Into an arm of the Pacific in the far Northwest I poured that gill of fire-water. Answer me from the northeast corner, Neal Dow, was it well done? Then raged the siwashes all, from Olyman perched on high and wielding a helmsman paddle aft, to a special blackguard in the bow with villain eyes no bigger than a flattened pea, and a jungle of coarse black hair, thick as the mane of a buffalo bull. All stowed their paddles and talked violently in their own tongue. It was a guttural, sputtering language in its calmest articulation, and now every word burst forth like the death-rattle of a garroted man. Finally, in Chinook, "Kopet; be still," said the Duke. "Keelapi; turn about," said he. They brandished paddles, and, whirling the canoe around, tore up the water violently for a few strokes. I said nothing. Presently they paused, and talked more frantically than before. Something was about to happen. Aha! What is that, Duke? A knife! What are these, dirty siwashes? Guns are these, flint-locks of the Hud- son's Bay pattern. "Guns for thee, spiteful spiller of enlivening beverage, and capturer of a lumoti. Butchery is the order of the day!" "Look you, then, aborigines all. I carry six siwash lives at my girdle. This machine — mark it well! — is called a six-shooter, an eight-inch navy revolver, invented by 22 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. Col. Sam Colt, of Hartford, Conn. God bless him! We are seven, and I should regret sending you six others to the Unhappy Hunting-Grounds of the Kicuali Tyee, Anglice Devil, the lowermost chieftain. Look down this muzzle as I whisk it about and bring it to bear on each of you in turn. Rifled you observe. Pleasant, well-oiled click that cylinder has. Behold, also, this other double-ban^elled piece of artillery, loaded, as you saw but now, with polecat- shot, in case we should see one of these black and white objects skulking along shore. Unsavory though ye be, my Klalams, I should not wish to identify you in your deaths with that animal." Saying this, with an air of indifference, but in expressive pantomime, I could not fail to perceive that the situation was critical. Three drunken Indians on this side, and two and a woman on that, and I playing bottle-holder in the midst, — what would follow? Their wild talk and threaten- ing gestures continued. I kept my pistol and one eye cocked at him of the old clo', the teapots, and the daguerreotype; my other eye and the double-barrel covered the trio in the bow. This deadlock lasted several minutes. Meantime the canoe had yielded to the tide, and was now sweeping on in a favorable course. At last the Duke laid down his knife, Olyman si wash his gun, the three fishy ones theirs, and his Grace, stretching forth an eloquent arm, made a neat speech. Fluency is impossible in few-worded Chinook jargon, but brevity is more potent. "Hyas silex nika; in wrathful sulks am I. Masatche nika tum tum copa mika; bitter is my heart toward thee. Wake cultus tyee Dookeryawk; no paltry sachem, the Duke of York. Wake kamooks, halo pottlelum; no dog, by no means a soaker. Ancoti conoway tikky mamook iscum mika copa Squally, — alta halo; but now, all wished to con- duct thee to Squally; now, not so. Alta nesika wake tikky pesispy, pe shirt, pe polealely, pe kaliaton, pe hiu ikta, — WHULGE. 23 tikky keelapi; now we no want blankets and shirts and powder and shot and many traps, — want to return. Cono- way silex, — tikky moosum; all in the sulks, — want to sleep." Whereupon, as if at a signal, all six dived deep into slumber, — slumber at first pretended, perhaps to throw me off my guard, perhaps a crafty method of evading the diffi- culty of a reconciliation, and the shame of yielding. So deep did they plunge into sham sleep, that they sunk into real, and presently I heard the gurgle of snores. While they slept, the canoe drifted over Whulge. Fleet waters bore me on whither they listed, fortunately whither I also listed, and, if ever the vessel yawed, a few quiet strokes with the paddle set her right again. The current drew me away from under shore, and to the south, through dis- tancing haze of summer, the noble group of the Olympian 24 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. Mountains became visible, — a grand family of vigorous growth, worthy more perfect knowledge. They fill the southern promontory, where Whulge passes into the Pacific, at the Straits of Fuca. On the highest pinnacles of this sierra, glimmers of perpetual snow in sheltered dells and crevices gave me pleasant, chilly thoughts in that hot August day. After the disgusting humanity of King George's realms, and after the late period of rebellion and disorganization, the calming influence of these azure luminous peaks, their blue slashed with silver, was tran- scendent. So I sat watchful, and by and by I heard a gentle voice, "Wake nika moosum; I sleep not." "Sleepest thou not, pretty Duchess, flat-faced one, with chevrons vermilion culminating at thy nose-bridge? Wilt thou forgive me for spilling thy nectar, Lalage of the dulcet laugh, dulcet-spoken Lalage? Would that thou wert clean as well as pretty, and had known but seldom the too fragrant salmon! — would that I had never seen thee toss off a waterless gill of fire-water! Please wake the Duke." The Duke woke. Olyman woke. Woke Klalams one and all. Sleep had banished wrath and rancor. All grasped their paddles, and, soon warming with work, the fugleman waked a wild chant, and to its stirring vibrations the canoe shook and leaped forward like a salmon in the buzz of a tideway. We careered on for an hour. Then I suggested a pause and a picnic. Brilliant and friendly thought, — "Conoway tikky muckamuck;" all want to eat. Take then, my par- doned crew, from my stores, portions of dried cod. Thin it is, translucent, and very nice for Klalam or Yankee. Take also hardtack at discretion, — "pire sapolel," or fired corn, as ye name it. Our picnic was rumless, wholesome, and amicable, and after it paddling and songs were re- newed with vigor. We were not alone upon Whulge. Many lumber vessels were drifting or at anchor under the opposite THE OLYMPICS AND THE STRAITS OF JUAN DE FUCA. View from Victoria, B. C. "To the south, through distancing haze of summer, the noble group of the OljTnpian Mountains became vis- ible, — a grand family of vigorous growth, worthy more perfect knowledge. They fill the southern promontory, where Whulge passes into the Pacific, at the Straits of Fuca." —Chapter III. MA'Jl 'iU >TIAHT8 3HT Q^IA 3DHMYJ0 3HT .AO'JT 3a -erv amfiosd eruelni/oM neiqrcTilO 9f?J to qi/aig sidon 9iom '{riJiov/ ,riJwoig auoiosiv lo ylimfi] brferg fi — ,9[di , iio^flomoiq mgriJuca 9xf3 lift Y^riT .egbglwonsl iToahgq \o eJifi-iJS adJ Jb .Dftbs*! 9dt otai aaeesq 98lt;dW sisriw All ■»^Jq05\0— WHULGE. 26 shore, loaded mainly with fir-trees, soon to be drowned as piles for San Francisco docks. Those were prosperous days in the Pacific. The country which goes to sea through Whulge had recently split away from Oregon, and called itself Washington, after the General of that name. Indian Whulgeamish and Yankee Whulgers were reasonably polite to each other, the Pacific Railroad was to be built straight- way, Ormus and Ind were to become tributary. It was the epoch of hope, but fruition has not yet come. Savages and Yankees have since been scalping each other in the most uncivil way, the P. R. R. creeps slowly outward, Ormus and Ind are chary of tribute. Dreams of growth are faster than growth. The persons of my crew have been described. They all, according to a superstition quite common among Indians, declined to give their names, or even an alias, as other scamps might do, except the Duke and Duchess, proud in their foreign appellatives. I will substitute, therefore, the names of the crew of another canoe in which I had previously voyaged from Squally to Vancouver Island, with Dr. Tol- mie, factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at the former place. These were: 1. Unstu or Hahal, the handsome; 2. Mastu or La Hache; 3. Khaadza; 4. Snawhaylal; 5. Ay-ay- whun, briefly A-wy; 6. Ai-tu-so; 7. Nuckutzoot; 8. Paicks; and two women, Tlaiwhal and Smoikit-um-whal, "Smoikit" meaning chief. They were of several different tribes, Squallyamish, Skagits, members of the different "amish" that dwell along the Sound, and two, Ai-tu-so and Nuckutzoot, proudly distinguished themselves as Haida, a generic name applied to nations northward of Whulge. These few type names, not without melody or drollery, may be interesting to the philo-siwash. It would be in- appropriate to the method of this sketch to go into detail with regard to Indians of Whulge. But literature has taken little notice of those distant gentry, and before they retreat into the dim past, to become subjects of threnody with other 26 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. lost tribes, let me chronicle a few surface facts of their life and manners. It seems a sorry thing, but is really a wise admonition of Nature, that we should first distinguish in people their faults and deformities. The first observation when one of the Whulgeamish appears is, "Lo the flat-head!" Among them a tight-strapped cushion controls the elastic skull of child- Slwash Mother Flat-heading her Infant. hood, crushing it back idiotic. Now a forehead should not be too round, or a nose too straight, or a cheek too ruddy, or a hand too small. Nature, however, does quite well enough by those she means to be flat-head beauties. In- dians do not recognize this, and strive to better Nature. Civilization, beholding the total failure of the skull-crushing system, is warned, and resolves to discard its coxcombries and deformities, and to strive to develop, not to distort, the body and soul. WHULGE. 27 Are thoughts equally profound to be suggested by other corporeal members of Klalams and their brethren? All are bow-legged. All of a sad-colored, Caravaggio brown, through which salmon-juices exude, and which is varnished with fish-oil. All have coarse black hair, and are beardless. Old people of either sex are hardly to be distinguished, man from woman. The young ladies are not without charms, and blush ingenuously. The fashion of fish-ivory ornaments, hung to the lower lip, has retreated northward, and glass beads and necklaces of hiaqua, a shell like a quill tooth-pick, conchologically known as a species of Dentalium, have replaced the disgusting labial appendages.* Hickory shirts and woollen blankets are worn instead of skin raiment, mat aprons, and Indian blankets, woven of the hair of the fleecy dog. In fact, except for paint, these Indians might pass well enough for dirty lazzaroni. Gigantic clams, cod, and other maritimes, but chiefly salmon, are the food of the Whulgeamish. Ducks and geese visit their shores, and are bagged. No infrequent polecat skulks about their unsavory cabins, and meets the fatal arrow. Grasshoppers and crickets, dried, yield them pies. They cultivate a few potatoes, pluck plentiful berries, and dig sweet kamas bulbs in the swamps. Few things edible are disdained by them. Once, the same summer, as I voyaged with a crew of the Lummi tribe toward Fraser River, they discerned a dead seal grotesquely floating on the water. Him they em- barked, with roars of laughter, as his unwieldiness slipped through their fingers; and they supped and surfeited un- harmed on rancid phoca that evening. But salmon, netted, hooked, trolled, speared, weired, scooped, — salmon taken by various sleight of savage skill, — is the chief diet of Whulge. In the tide-ways toward the Sound's mouth, the Indians *"Labret3" are still somewhat used among the natives of British Columbia, as may be seen in the illustration from a recent photograph showing Haida basket makers wearing such lip ornaments of bone. 28 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. anchor two canoes parallel, fifteen feet apart, and stretch a flat net of strips of inner bark between them, sinking it just below the surface. They don a head-gear like a "rat's nest," conf ected of wool, feathers, furry tails, ribbons, and rags, considered attractive to salmon, and "hyas tamanous," highly magical. Salmon, either wending their unconscious way, or tuft-hunting for the enchantments of the magic cap, come swimming in shoals across the suspended net. Where- upon every fisher, with inconceivable screeches, whoops, and howls, beats the water to bewilder the silver swimmers, Return of Siwash Fishermen. and, hauling up the net, clutches them by dozens. Some- times fleets of canoes go a trolling, one fisherman in each slight shallop. He fastens his line to his paddle, and as he paddles trolls. A pretty sight to behold is a rocky bay of Whulge, gay with a fleet of these agile dugouts, and ever and anon illumined with a gleam when a salmon takes the bait. In the voyage I have mentioned with Dr. Tolmie, a squadron of such trollers near the Indian village of Kowitchin crowded about us, praying to be vaccinated, and paying a salmon for the privilege. Small-pox is the fatalest foe of the Indian. Spearmen also for food are the siwashes. In muddy streams, where Boston eyes would detect nothing, Indian ^ a a -5. <3 t« WHULGE. 29 sees a ripple, and divines a fish. He darts his long wooden spear, and out it ricochets, with a banner of salmon at its point. But salmon may escape the coquettish charms of the trolling-hook, may safely run the gauntlet of the parallel canoes and their howling, tamanoiis-cap wearers; the spear, misguided in the drumly gleam, may glance harmless from scale-armed shoulders: still other perils await them. These Cascades of the Columbia, ^ith Indian Fishing from a Scaffolding over the Water. aristos of the waters need change of scene. Blubberly fish may dwell through a life-long pickle in the briny deep, and grow rancid there like olives too salt, but the delicate salmon must have his bubbles from the brlinnen. Besides, his youthful family, the parrs, must be cradled on the rip- ples of a running stream, and in innocent nooks of freshness must establish their vigor and consistency, before they 30 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. brave the risks of cosmopolitan ocean life. For such reasons gentleman salmon seeks the rivers, and Indian, expecting him there, builds a palisade of poles athwart the stream. The traveller, thus obstructed, whisks his tail, and coasts along, seeking a passage. He finds one, and dashes through, but is stopped by a shield of wicker-work, and, turning blindly, plunges into a fish-pot, set to take him as he whirls to retreat, bewildered. At the magnificent Cascades of the Columbia, the second-best water bit on our continent, there is more exciting salmon-fishing in the splendid turmoil of the rapids. Over the shoots, between boulders and rifts of rock, the Indians rig a scaffolding, and sweep down stream with a scoop-net. Salmon, working their way up in high exhilara- tion, are taken twenty an hour, by every scooper. He lifts them out, brilliantly sheeny, and, giving them, with a blow from a billet of wood, a hint to be peaceable, hands over each thirty-pounder to a fusty attache, who, in turn, lugs them away to the squaws to be cleaned and dried. Thus in Whulge and at the Cascades the salmon is taken. And now behold him caught, and lying dewy in silver death, bright as an unalloyed dollar, varnished with opaline iridescence. "How shall he be cooked?" asks squaw of sachem. "Boil him, entoia, my beloved" (Haida tongue), "in a mighty pot of iron, plumping in store of wapatoo, which pasaiooks, the pale-faces, name potatoes. Or, my cloocheman, my squaw, roast of his thicker parts sundry chunks on a spit. Or, best of all, split and broil him on an upright frame-work, a perpendicular gridiron of aromatic twigs. Thus by highest simple art, before the ruddy blaze, with breezes circumambient and wafting away any mephitic kitcheny exhalations, he will toast deliciously, and I will feast thereupon, my cloocheman, whilst thou, working partner of our house, art preparing these brother fish to be dried into amber transparency, or smoked in a lachrymose cabin, that we may sustain ourselves through dry-fish Lent, WHULGE. 31 after this fresh-fish Carnival is over." Such discussions occur not seldom in the drama of Indian life. In the Bucentaur, after our lunch on kippered cod and biscuits, we had not tarried. Generally in that region, in breezeless days of August, smoke from burning forests falls, and envelops all the world of land and water. In such strange chaos, voyaging without a compass is impossi- ble. Canoes are often detained for days, waiting for the smoke to lift. To-day, fortunately for my progress, there was a fresh breeze from China-way. Only a soft golden haze hung among the pines, and toned the swarthy coloring of the rocky shores. All now in good humor, and Col. Colt in retirement, we swept along through narrow straits, between piny islands, and by sheltered bays where fleets might lie hidden. With harmonious muscular throes, in time with Indian songs, the three stoutly paddled. The Duke generally sogered, or dipped his blade with sham vehemence, as he saw me observing him. Olyman steered steadily, a Palinurus skilful and sleepless. Jenny Lind, excusable idler, did not belie her musical name. She was our prima donna, and leader of the chorus. Often she uttered careless bursts of song, like sudden slants of rays through cloudiness, and often droned some drowsy lay, to which the crew responded with disjointed, lurching refrain. Few of these airs were musical according to civilized standards. Some had touches of wild sentiment or power, but most were grotesque combinations of guttural howls. In all, however, there were tones and strains of irregular original- ity, surging up through monotony, or gleams of savage ire suddenly flashing forth, and recalling how one has seen, with shudders, a shark, with white sierras of teeth, gnash upon him not far distant, from a bath in a tropic bay. I found a singular consolation in the unleavened music of my crew. Why should there not be throbs of rude power in aboriginal song? It is well to review the rudiments 32 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. sometimes, and see whether we have done all we might in building systems from the primal hints. The songs of Chin Lin, Duchess of York, chorussed by the fishy, seemed a consoling peace-offering. The under- tone of sorrow in all music cheats us of grief for our own distress. To counteract the miseries of civilization, we must have the tender, passionate despairs of Favorita and SE-AT-TLH Chief of the Duwamish and Suqamish Federation, after whom tlie City of Seattle was named. Traviata; for the disgusts of barbarism I found Indian howls sufficient relief. By and by, with sunset, paddle-songs died away, and the Bucentaur slowed. The tide had turned, and was urgently against us. My tired crew were oddly dropping off to sleep. We landed on the shingle for repose and supper. Twilight was already spreading downward from the zenith, and pouring gloom among the sombre pines. Grotesque SEATTLE HARBOR AT SUNSET. "According to a cosmical law that regulates the west ends of the world, Whulge is more interesting than any of the eastern waters of our country. Tame Albemarle and Pamlico, Chesapeake and Delaware, Long Island Sound, and even the Maine Archipelago and French- man's Bay, cannot compare with it. Whulge is worthy of the Scandinavian savor of its name, — a vast fiord, parting rocks and forests primeval with a mighty tide." —Chapter III. WHULGE. 83 masses of blanched drift-wood strewed the shore and grouped themselves about, — strange semblances of monstrous shapes, like amorphous idols, dethroned and waiting to perish by the iconoclastic test of fire. Poor Prometheus may have been badly punished by that cruel fowl of Caucasus, but we mortals got the unquenchable spark. I carried a modi- cum of compact flame in a match-box, and soon had a funeral pyre of those heathenish stumps and roots well ablaze, — a glory of light between the solemn wall of the forest and the dark glimmering flood. On the romantic shores of Whulge, illumined by my fire, I had toasted salt pork for supper, while the siwashes banqueted to repletion on dried fish and the unaccustomed luxury of hardtack, and were genially happy. But when, with kindly mind, I, their chieftain, brewed them a princely pot of tea, and tossed in sugar lavishly, sprinkling also unper- ceivedly the beverage with forty drops from the captured lumoti, and gave them tobacco enough to blow a cloud, then happiness capped itself with gayety and merriment. They heaped the pyre with fuel, and made it the chief jester of their jolly circle, chuckling when it crackled, and roaring with laughter when the frantic tongues of flame leaped up, and shot a glare, almost fiendish, over the wild scene. I sat apart with my dhudeen, studying the occasion for its lesson. "Would I be an Indian, — a duke of the Klalams?" I asked myself. "As much as I am to-night, — no more, and no longer. To-night I am a demi-savage, jolly for my rest and my supper, and content because my hampers hold enough for to-morrow. I can identify myself thoroughly, and delight that I can, with the untamed natures of my comrades. I can yield myself to the dominion of the same impulses that sway them out of impassiveness into frantic excitement. They sit here over the fire, now jabbering lustily, and now silent and drifting along currents of associa- tion, undiverted by discursive thought, until some pervading 34 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. fancy strikes them all at once, and again all is animation and guttural sputter of sympathy. I can also let myself go bobbing down the tide of thoughtless thought, until I am caught by the same shoals, or checked by the same reef, or launched upon the same tumultuous seas, as they. These influences are primeval, aboriginal, fresh, enlivening for their anti-cockney savor. Wretchedly slab-sided, and not at all fitting among the many-sided, is he who cannot adapt himself to the dreams and hopes, the awes and pleasures of savage life, and be as good a savage as the brassiest Brass-skin. "However, it is not amiss," continued my soliloquy, puffing itself away with the last whiffs of my pipe, "to have the large results of the world's secular toil in posse. It is sometimes pleasant to lay aside the resumable ermine. It is easy to linger while one has a hand upon the locomotive's valve. I will, on the whole, remain an American of the nineteenth century, and not subside into a Klalam brave. Every sincere man has, or ought to have, his differences or his quarrels with status quo, — otherwise what becomes of the millennium? My personal grudge with the present has not yet brought me to the point of rupture and reaction." Had I uttered these reflections in a prosy lecture, my fishy suite could not have been sounder asleep than they now were. They had coiled themselves about the fire, in genuine slumber, after labor and overfeeding. Without dread of treachery, I bivouacked near them. I was more placable and less watchful than I should have been had I known that the Kahtai Klalams, under the superintendence of King George and the Duke, were in the habit of murder- ing. They sacrificed a couple of pale-faced victims within the year, as I afterwards was informed. However, the lamb lay down with the wolf, and suffered no harm. From time to time I awoke, and rolled another log upon the pyre, and then returned to my uneasy naps on the pebbles,^ uneasy, not because the pebbles dimpled me somewhat WmiLGE. 36 harshly through my blankets, not because the inextinguish- able stars winked at me fantastically through ether, nor because my scalp occasionally gave premonitions of depart- ure; but because I did not wish, when offered the boon of a favorable tide, to be asleep at my post and miss it. A new flood-tide was about to be sent whirling up into the bays and coves and nooks of Whulge when I shook up my sobered hero of the libellous teapots, shook up Olyman and his young men, and touched the Duchess lightly on the shoulder, as she lay with her red-chevroned visage turned toward the zenith. The Duke alone grumbled, and shirked the toil of launching the Bucentaur. We others went at it heartily, dragging our vessel down the shingle to the chorus of a guttural De Profundis. It was an hour before dawn. We reloaded, and shoved off into the chill, star-lighted void, — a void where one might doubt whether the upper stars or the nether stars were the real orbs. Our red fire watched us as we sailed away, glaring after us like a Cyclops sentinel until we rounded a point and passed out of his range, only to find ourselves sadly gazed at by a pale, lean moon just lifting above the pines. With the flames of dawn a wind arose and lent us wings. I succeeded in inspiring my crew with a stolid intention to speed me. A comrade-ry grew up between me and the truculent black- guard who wielded the bow paddle, so that he essayed unintelligent civilities from time to time, and when we landed to breakfast, at a point where a giant arbor-vitae stood a rich pyramid of green, he brought me salal-berries, and arbutus-leaves to dry for smoking; meaning perhaps to play Caliban to my Stephano, and worshipping him who bore the lumoti. The Duke remained either "hyas kla hye am," in the wretched dumps, or "hyas silex," in the deep sulks, as must happen after an orgie, even to a princely personage. I could get nothing from him, either in philology or legend, — nothing but the Klalam name of Whulge, K'uk'lults. However, thanks to a strong following wind 36 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. and the blanket-sail, we sped on, never flinching from the tide when it turned and battled us. We had rounded a point, and opened Puyallop Bay, a breadth of sheltered calmness, when I, lifting sleepy eyelids for a dreamy stare about, was suddenly aware of a vast white shadow in the water. What cloud, piled massive on the horizon, could cast an image so sharp in outline, so full of vigorous detail of surface? No cloud, as my stare, no longer dreamy, presently discovered, — no cloud, but a cloud compeller. It was a giant mountain dome of snow, swelling and seeming to fill the aerial spheres as its image displaced the blue deeps of tranquil water. The smoky haze of an Oregon August hid all the length of its lesser ridges, and left this mighty summit based upon uplifting dimness. Only its splendid snows were visible, high in the unearthly regions of clear blue noonday sky. The shore line drew a cincture of pines across the broad base, where it faded unreal into the mist. The same dark girth separated the peak from its reflection, over which my canoe was now pressing, and sending wavering swells to shatter the beautiful vision before it. Kingly and alone stood this majesty, without any visible comrade or consort, though far to the north and the south its brethren and sisters dominated their realms, each in isolated sovereignty, rising above the pine-darkened sierra of the Cascade Mountains, — above the stern chasm where the Columbia, AchOles of rivers, sweeps, short-lived and ju- bilant, to the sea, — above the lovely vales of the Willa- mette and Umpqua. Of all the peaks from California to Fraser River, this one before me was royalest. Mount Regnier Christians have dubbed it, in stupid nomenclature perpetuating the name of somebody or nobody.* More melodiously the siwashes call it Tacoma, — a generic term also applied to all snow peaks. Whatever keen crests and crags there may be in its rock anatomy of basalt, snow *As to Winthrop's error here, see Appendix A. WHULGE. 37 covers softly with its bends and sweeping curves. Tacoma, under its ermine, is a crushed volcanic dome, or an ancient volcano fallen in, and perhaps as yet not wholly lifeless. The domes of snow are stateliest. There may be more of feminine beauty in the cones, and more of masculine force and hardihood in the rough pyramids, but the great domes are calmer and more divine; and, even if they have failed to attain absolute dignified grace of finish, and are riven and broken down, they still demand our sympathy for giant power, if only partially victor. Each form — the dome, the cone, and the pyramid — has its tjT)e among the great snow peaks of the Cascades. And now let the Duke of York drowse, the Duchess cease awhile longer her choking chant, and the rest nap it on their paddles, floating on the image of Tacoma, while I ask recognition for the almost unknown glories of the Cascade Mountains. We are poorly off for such objects east of the Mississippi. There are some roughish excrescences known as the Alleghanies. There is a knobby group of brownish "Wliite Mountains. Best of all, high in Down- East is the lonely Katahdin. Hillocks these, — never among them one single summit brilliant forever with snow, golden in sunshine, silver when sunshine has gone; not one to bloom rosy at dawn, and to be a vision of refreshment all the sultry summer long; not one to be lustrous white over leagues of woodland, sombre or tender; not one to repeat the azure of heaven among its shadowy dells. Exaltation such as the presence of the sublime and solemn heights arouses, we dwellers eastward cannot have as an abiding influence. Other things we may have, for Nature will not let herself anywhere be scorned; but only moun- tains, and chief est the giants of snow, can teach whatever lessons there may be in vaster distances and deeper depths of palpable ether, in lonely grandeur without desolation, and in the illimitable, bounded within an outline. There- fore, needing all these emotions at their maximum, we were 38 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. compelled to make pilgrimages back to the mountains of the Old World, — commodiously as may be when we con- sider sea-sickness, passports, Murray's red-covers, and h-less Britons everywhere. Yes, back to the Old World we went, and patronized the Alps, and nobly satisfying we found them. But we were forced to inspect also the heritage of human institutions, and such a mankind as they had made after centuries of opportunity, — and very sadly depressing we found the work, so that, notwithstanding many romantic joys and artistic pleasures, we came back malcontent. Let us, therefore, develop our own world. It has taken us two centuries to discover our proper West across the Mississippi, and to know by indefinite hearsay that among the groups of the Rockies are heights worth notice. Farthest away in the west, as near the western sea as mountains can stand, are the Cascades. Sailors can descry their landmark summits firmer than cloud, a hundred miles away. Kulshan, misnamed Mount Baker by the vulgar, is their northernmost buttress, up at 49° and Fraser River. Kulshan is an irregular, massive, mound-shaped peak, worthy to stand a white emblem of perpetual peace between us and our brother Britons. The northern regions of Whulge and Vancouver Island have Kulshan upon their horizon. They saw it blaze the winter before this journey of mine; for there is fire beneath the Cascades, red war suppressed where the peaks, symbols of truce, stand in resplendent quiet. Kulshan is best seen, as I saw it one afternoon of that same August, from an upland of Vancouver Island, across the golden waves of a wheat-field, across the glimmering waters of the Georgian Sound, and far above its belt of misty gray pine-ridges. The snow-line here is at five thousand feet, and Kulshan has as much height in snow as in forest and vegetation. Its name I got from the Lummi tribe at its base, after I had dipped in their pot at a boiled-salmon feast. As to Baker, that name should be WHULGE. 89 forgotten. Mountains should not be insulted by being named after undistinguished bipeds, nor by the prefix of Mt. Mt. Chimborazo, or Mt. Dhawalaghiri, seems as feeble as Mr. Julius Caesar, or Signor Dante. South of Kulshan, the range continues dark, rough, and somewhat unmeaning to the eye, until it is relieved by Tacoma, vulgo Regnier. Upon this Tacoma's image I was now drifting, and was about to make nearer acquaint- ance with its substance. One cannot know too much of a nature's nobleman. Tacoma the second, which Yankees call Mt. Adams, is a clumsier repetition of its greater brother, but noble enough to be the pride of a continent. Dearest charmer of all is St. Helens, queen of the Cascades, queen of Northern America, a fair and grace- ful volcanic cone. Exquisite mantling snows sweep along her shoulders toward the bristling pines. Sometimes she showers her realms with a boon of light ashes, to notify them that her peace is repose, not stupor ; and sometimes lifts a beacon of tremulous flame by night from her summit. Not far from her base the Columbia crashes through the mountains in a magnificent chasm, and Mt. Hood, the vigorous prince of the range, rises in a keen pyramid fourteen or sixteen thousand feet high, rivalling his sister in glory . * Mt. Jefferson and others southward are worthy snow peaks, *The heights of the several northwestern snow-peaks described in this chapter are given by the United States Geological Survey's "Dic- tionary of Altitudes," as follows: Mt. Rainier, 14,363; Mt. Adams, 12,470; Mt. Hood, 11,225; Mt. Baker, 10,827; Mt. St. Helens, 10,000. Early Oregonians, as Winthrop hints, held greatly exaggerated notions of the height of Mt. Hood. A member of the first party to reach its sum- mit, Thomas J. Dryer, editor of the Portland Oregonian, published an account of the ascent in which he asserted with fine exactness, if not ac- curacy, that the elevation was 18,361 feet ! This ascent was made August 4, 1854. The leader of the party was William Barlow, son of Captain Samuel K. Barlow, builder of the famous "Barlow Road" across the Cascades south of Mt. Hood, by which many thousands of settlers entered the Willamette Valley. Dryer had climbed Mt. St. Helens a year before. His published ac- count says he was accompanied by "Messrs. Wilson, Smith, and Drew." St. Helens was frequently in eruption during the first years of white settlement, and down to about 1842. This is noted in the journals 40 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. but not comparable with these; and then this masterly family of mountains dwindles ruggedly away toward Cali- fornia and the Shasta group. The Cascades are known to geography, — their summits to the lists of volcanoes. Several gentlemen in the United States Army, bored in petty posts, or squinting along Indian trails for Pacific railroads, have seen these monu- ments. A few myriads of Oregonians have not been able to avoid seeing them, have perhaps felt their enno- bling influence, and have written, boasting that St. Helens or Hood is as high as Blanc. Enterprising fellows have climbed both. But the millions of Yankees — from codfish of the Hudson's Bay Fort at Vancouver, and in the private letters and diaries of the time. These records show that the expulsion of ashes was sometimes so tremendous as to darken the sky at Vancouver for days at a time, and more than once ashes are reported to have fallen in considerable amount, as far away as The Dalles. Mt. Adams was first ascended in the same year as Mt. Hood, the successful climbers being Col. B.F.Shaw, Glen Aiken, and Edward J. Allen, the builder of the Naches Pass road. Fourteen years later Mt. Baker was climbed, after several unsuc- cessful attempts, by Edmund T. Coleman, an English landscape painter then living in Victoria. His party included Thomas Stratton of Port Townsend, David Ogilvy of Victoria, and a settler named Tenant. The highest and noblest of all these snow mountains remained longest unconquered. Dr. William F. Tolmie had made a botanizing trip to the upland "parks" in 1833, being the first white man to visit the peak. His visit resulted in the first discovery and announcement of the exist- ence of glaciers in the present territory of the United States south of Alaska. In 1857, Lieutenant (later General) A. V. Kautz, accompanied by several soldiers from Fort Nisqually, first attempted the ascent, and reached the crest of South Peak, a few hundred feet lower than the ac- tual summit. Thirteen years later, on August 17, 1870, this summit, now known as Columbia's Crest, was gained by Gen. Hazard Stevens, son of the Territory's first governor, who had himself served with dis- tinction as a young officer during the Civil War, and was then living at Olympia as United States collector of internal revenue; and Philemon Beecher Van Trump, of Yelm, Wash, General Stevens published a de- lightful account of their feat, "The Ascent of Takhoma," in the Atlantic Monthly of November, 1876. Widely acquainted with Indians of the territorial period, he says: "Tak-ho-ma, or Ta-ho-ma, among the Yakimas, Klickitats, Puy- allups, Nisquallys, and allied tribes is the generic term for mountain, used precisely as we use the word 'Mount,' as Takhoma Wynatchie, or Mount Wynatchie. But they all designate Rainier simply as Takhoma, or The Mountain, just as the mountain men used to call it 'Old He.' " WHULGE. 41 to alligators, chewers of spruce-gum or chewers of pig-tail, cooks of chowder or cooks of gumbo — know little of these treasures of theirs. Poet comes long after pioneer. Mountains have been waiting, even in ancient worlds, for cycles, while mankind looked upon them as high, cold, dreary, crushing, — as resorts for demons and homes of desolating storms. It is only lately, in the development of men's comprehension of nature, that mountains have been recognized as our noblest friends, our most exhalting and inspiring comrades, our grandest emblems of divine power and divine peace.* More of these majesties of the Cascades hereafter; but now meseems that I have long enough interrupted the desultory progress of my narrative. We have floated long enough, my Klalam braves, on the white reflection of Tacoma. To thy paddle, then, sluggard Duke. Dip and plough into Whulge, ye salmon-fed. Squally and blankets be the war-cry of our voyage. But first obey the injunction of an Indian ditty, oddly sung to the air of Malbrook:^ — "Klatawah ocook polikely, Klatawah Steilacoom;" "Go to-night, — go to Steilacoom." Steilacoom was a mili- tary post a mile inland from Whulge. It had a port on the Sound, consisting of one warehouse, where every requisite of pioneer hfe was to be had. Thither I directed my course, pork and hardtack to buy, compact prog for my mountain journey. Also, because I could not ride the leagues of a transcontinental trip, barebacking the bonyness of prau-ie nags, a friend had given me an order for a capital saddle of his, stored there. The crafty trader at Port Steilacoom ♦Appreciation of the mountains and interest in their exploration are modern to a degree that Western Americans can now scarcely under- stand. As late as 1854, Murray's "Handbook for Switzerland" con- tained such discouragements to the mountain-climber as the following: "The ascent of Mont Blanc is attempted by few. Those who are im- 42 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. denied the existence of my friend's California saddle, a grandly roomy one I had often bestrode, and substituted for it an incoherent dragoon saddle. He hoped, the scamp, that my friend would never return to claim his property, and he would be left residuary legatee. Some strange Indians lounging here gave a helpful fact. The Klickatats,* so the Sound Indians name generally the Yakimahs and other ultramontane tribes, had just pelled by curiosity alone are hardly justified in risking the lives of the guides. It is somewhat remarkable that a large proportion of those who have made the ascent have been persons of unsound mind." Many curious superstitions worthy of the Middle Ages centered about the great peaks of the Alps until comparatively recent times. To the dw^eller in the Swiss valleys, the high plateaus were inhabited by rock-eating chamois, and their lakes had the marvelous property of swallowing up those who fell asleep on their banks. Before the modern era of mountain-climbing, the natives living at the feet of the peaks believed them to be inhabited by goblins and afrits, who would visit destruction upon all that might attempt to invade the heights. Visitors to Lucerne are familiar with the legend that connects the moun- tain Pilatus with the name of Pontius Pilate, whose unhappy spirit is said to dwell upon the summit. In his first efforts to scale the Matter- horn, Whymper had to overcome not only the difficulties of a virgin peak, but the terror and superstition of his guides. The natives of the Val Tournanche, he found, were convinced that on the summit of the Matterhorn was a ruined city, the abode of the Wandering Jew and the spirits of the damned. — Whymper: Scrambles amongst the Alps, Ch. IV. When Stevens and Van Trump reached the snow-line on their ascent of Tacoma in 1870, their Indian guide, Sluiskin, refused to accompany them farther, because he feared the anger of the mountain deity; and when they dechned to heed his warnings, he spent the night in chant- ing a weird dirge in anticipation of their fate, and parted with them in the morning, convinced that they would never return. When they reappeared the next day, after a night on the summit, he could not easily be persuaded that they were real men, and not some new kind of klale tamanous, black magic. *"The Yakimas, including outlying bands, were over 3,900 strong, and occupied the large region between the Columbia and the Cascades, with their principal abodes in the Yakima Valley. One band, the Pa- louses, lived on the Palouse River, on the north side of the Snake and east of the Columbia, next the Nez Perce country. Large bands of the Yakimas had crossed the Cascades and were pressing on the feebler races on the west, by whom they were appropriately termed 'Klik-i-tats,' or robbers." — Life of Isaac Ingalls Stevens, by Hazard Stevens, II., 22. The other great family of the upper Columbia basin was the Sa- haptin. This included the Cayuses, Walla Wallas, Nez Perces, and Flat- heads. Snowden characterizes these tribes as "among the brightest and most powerful of the native people." o OS a O g >^ '^ I ^-^ •51 03 Oh ^ ^^ .9 <1 S WHXJLGE. 43 arrived at Nisqually, on their annual trading-trip. Horses and a guide I could surely get from them for crossing the Cascades into their country. Here I heard first the mighty name of Owhhigh, a chief of the Klickatats, their noblest horse-thief, their Diomed. He was at Nisqually, with his tail on, — his tail of bare-legged highlanders, — buying blankets and sundries, with skins, furs, and stolen steeds. Squally, euphonized to Nisqually, is six or seven miles from Steilacoom. We sped along near the shore, just away from the dense droop of the water-wooing arbor-vitae pyramids. "How now, my crew? Why this sudden check? Why this agitated panic? What, Dookeryawk! Are ye paralyzed by Tamanoiis, by demoniacal influence?" "By fear are we paralyzed, kind protector," responded the Klalam. "Foes to us always are the Squallyamish. But more cruel foes are the mountain horsemen. We dare not advance. Conoway quash nesika; cowards all are we." "Fear naught, my cowards. The retinue of my high mightiness is safe, and shall be honored. Ye shall not be maltreated, nor even punished by me for your misdeeds. Have a mighty heart in your breasts, and onward." Panic over, we paddled lustily, and soon landed at a high bluff, — the port of Nisqually. We hauled up the Bu- centaur, grateful to the talisman shells along its gunwale, that they had guarded us against Bugaboo. I looked my last, for that time, upon the sturdy tides of Whulge, and led the way under the oaks toward the Fort. Incised Design on Stone Dish. From Priest Rapids. IV. OWHHIGH. It was harsh penance to a bootless man to tramp the natural macadam of minced trap-rock on the plateau above the Sound. The little pebbles of the adust volcanic pavement cut my moccasined feet like unboiled peas of pilgrimage. I marched along under the oaks as stately as frequent limping permitted. My motley retinue followed me humbly, bearing "ikta," my traps, and their own plun- der. Their demeanor was crushed and cringing, greatly changed since the truculent scene over the captured lumoti, which I still kept as a trophy, hung at my waist to balance my pistol. After a walk of a mile, with my body-guard of shabby S'Klalam aristocrats, I entered the Hudson's Bay Com- pany's fort of Nisqually. Disrepute draggled after me, but my character was already established in a previous visit. I had left Dr. Tolmie, the factor, at Vancouver Island; Mr. H., his substitute, received me hospitably at the postern.* Nisqually is a palisaded enclosure, two hun- dred feet square. Bartizan towers protect its corners. Within are blockhouses for goods and furs, and one-story cottages for residence. *Dr. William Fraser Tolmie had come to this country from Edin- burgh in 1833, as a surgeon for the Hudson's Bay Company. He be- caTie a trader, and was for many years the Company's chief factor at Fort Nisqually. Soon after the discovery of gold on the Fraser River in 1857, he removed to Victoria, where he continued in charge of the Com- pany's affairs until 1870. He was succeeded at Nisqually by Edward Huggins, an Englishman, who came to the coast in 1850, and who con- tinued as chief factor until the United States took over the Company's property in 1869. OWHHIGH. 46 Indian leaguers have of yore beset this fort. Indians have lifted Indians up toward the fifteenth and topmost foot of the fir palisades. Shots from the loopholes of the bartizans dropped the assailants, and left them lying on the natural macadam without. Whereupon the survivors retired, and consulted about fire; but that fatal foe was DR. WILLIAM FRASER TOLMIE. Hudson's Bay Company's Factor In Charge at Fort Nlsqually. also defeated by the death of every incendiary as he ap- proached. To visit such a place is to recall and illustrate all our early New-England history. Our forefathers fled, in King Philip's time, to just such refuges. Personal contact with a similar state of facts makes their forgotten perils real. In that recent antiquity, pioneers exposed to the indiscrimi- nate revenge of the savage flew from cabin and clearing to stockades far less defensible than this. Better its inse- 46 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. cure shelter for wife and child than the terror of a forest forever seeming aglare with cruel eyes, — where the forester could never banish the curdling consciousness of an unseen presence, watching until the assassin moment came; where the silence might hear other sounds than the hum of insects or the music of birds, — might hear the scoffing yell of Indians, contemptuous victors over the race that scorned them. What wonder that the agonies of such suspense stirred up the settlers to cowardly slaughter of every savage, friend or foe? A frightened man becomes a barbarian and a brute. Fear is a miserable agent of civilization. We can hardly now connect ourselves with that period. No longer, when twigs crackle in the forest, do we shrink lest the parting leaves may reveal a new-comer, with whom we must race for life. Larceny is disgusting, burglary is unpleasant, arson is undesirable, murder is one of the foul arts; Indians were adepts in all of these trades at once. Any reminiscence of a condition from which we have happily escaped is agreeable. This palisade fort was a monument of a past age to me. It made me two hundred years old at once. A monument, but not a cenotaph; on the contrary, it was full of bustling life. Rusty Indians, in all degrees of frowziness of person and costume, were trading at the shop for the three 6's c Indian desire, — blankets, beads, and 'baccy, — representatifves of need, vanity, and luxury. The Klickatats had indeed arrived. To-morrow Owhhigh and the grandees were to come in from their camp to buy and sell. All the squaws purchasing to-day were hags beyond the age of coquetry in costume, yet they were buying beads and hanging them in hideous contrast about their baggy, wrinkled necks, and then glowering for admiration with dusky eyes. These were valued customers, since they knew the tariff, and never haggled, but paid cash or its equivalent, otter, beaver, and skunk skins, and similar treasures. The pretty girls would come afterward, as OWHHIGH. 47 money failed, and try to make their winsome smiles a substitute for funds. In contrast to these unpleasant objects, a very handsome and gentlemanly young brave entered just after me, and came forward as I was greeting Mr. H. He was tall and loungingly graceful, and so fair that there must have been silver in the copper of his blood. This rather supercilious EDWARD HUGGINS: Last Factor of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort NIsQually; the "Mr. H." of Chapter IV. personage was, he told me, of Owhhigh's band, not by nation but by adoption. He was a Spokan from the Upper Columbia, a volunteer among the Klickatats, perhaps because their method of filibusterism was attractive, per- haps because there was a vendetta for him at home. He wore a semi-civilized costume, — coat of black from some far-away slop-shop of Britain, fringed leggins of buckskin from the lodge of a Klickatat tailoress. A broad-beaded 48 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. band crossed his breast, like the ribbon of an order of nobil- ity. The incongruity in his costume was redeemed by his cool, dignified bearing. He was an Adonis of Nature, not a rubicund Adonis of the D'Orsay type. While we talked, he kept a cavalier's advantage, not dismounting from his fiery little saddleless black. Him, by Mr. H.'s advice, I prayed to be my ambassador to the great Owhhigh. Would that dignitary permit me an interview to-morrow, and purvey me horses and a guide for my dash through his realm? My Spokan Adonis, with the self-possessed courtesy of a high-bred Indian, accepted the office of negotiator, and ventured to promise that Owhhigh would speed me. But in case Adonis should prove faithless, or Owhhigh indifferent, Mr. H. despatched a messenger at once for one of the Company's voyageurs, now a quiet colonist, who could resume the rover, and guide me, if other guidance failed, anywhere in the Northwest. I now conducted the Duke and my party to the shop, and served out to them one two-and-a-half-point blanket apiece, and one to Olyman for the Bucentaur, accompanying the boon with a lecture on the evils of intemperance and the duty of faithfulness. They seemed quite pleased now that they had not butchered and scalped me, and expressed the friendliest sentiments, perhaps with a view to a liberal "potlatch" of trinkets. They also besought permission to encamp in the fort, lest pillage should befall them. It was growing dark, and the different parties of Indians admitted within the palisades were grouped, gypsy-like, about their cooking-fires. Some of these unbrotherly siwashes cast wolf's-eyes upon my Klalams, now an enviable and plunder- able squad. These latter, wealthy and well-blanketed, skulked away into a corner, and when I saw them last, by their fire-light, the Duke, more like a degraded ecclesiastic than ever, was haranguing his family, while Jenny Lind sat at his feet, and bent upon him untruthful eyes. At morn they were not to be seen; the ducal pair, Olyman and the OWHHIGH. 49 fishy, all had vanished. A few unconsidered trifles, such as a gun, a blanket, and a basket of kamas-roots, property of the unbrotherly, had vanished with them. Unconsidered trifles will stumble against the shins of Indians, stealing away at night. As these representatives of Klalam civilization now make final exit from my narrative, I must give them a proper "teapot." They may be taken as types of the worse OOLONEL MICHAEL T. SIMMONS : Appointed by Gov. Stevens In 1853 as Indian Agent for the Puget Sound Tribes. Famous as "the Daniel Boone of the Territory." character of the coast Indians, — jolly brutes, with the bad and the good traits of savages, and much harmed by the besettings of civilized temptations. I cannot omit from the Duke of York's teapot facts within my own observation, — that he was drunken, idle, insolent, and treacherous, — nor the hearsay fact that he has since been beguiled into murders; but I must notice also his apologies of race, circumstance, the bad influence of 50 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. Pikes by land and profane tars by sea, and governmental neglect, a logical result of slavery.* Mr. H. had had great success in converting the brown dust of a dry swamp without the fort into a garden of suc- culent vegetables. As we were inspecting the cabbages and onions next morning, we heard a resonance of hoofs over the trap pavement. A noise of galloping sounded among the oaks. Presently a wild dash of Indian cavaliers burst into sight. Their equipm.ent might not have borne inspection: few things will, here below, except such as rose-leaves and the cheeks of a high-bred child. Prejudice might have called their steeds scrubby mustangs; prejudice might have used the word tag-rag as descriptive of the fly-away effect of a troop all a-flutter with ribbons, fur-tails, deerskin fringes, trailing lariats, and whirling whip-thongs. It was a very irregular and somewhat ragamuffin brigade. But the best hussars of the Christendom that sustains itself by means of hussars are tawdry and clumsy to a critical eye, and *It is only fair to the memory of this famous siwash character to say that other contemporaries give him much better "teapots" than does Winthrop. Thus Elwood Evans (History of the Pacific Northwest) says: "Cheetsamahoin, who is usually styled the Duke of York, ap- pears to have been hereditary chief of the Clallams. He was an able, faithful ruler, and highly esteemed by the whites. As early as 1854 he was officially appointed head chief of his tribe by Governor Stevens through the agent, Michael T. Simmons. He held this office and per- formed its duties with vigor and fidelity until, in 1870, he was found to be growing too old, and by Agent Eells was at that time constituted honorary chief. He was a good, faithful man, and doubtless saved many lives by his honest adherence to our government. He died a few years ago at a great age, and was followed to his grave by a great concourse of people of both the white and Indian races." James G. Swan tells of the Duke's visit to him in San Francisco: "This chief, whose name was Chetzamokha, and who is known by the whites as the Duke of York, was very urgent to have me visit his people. Subsequently, on his return home he sent me a present of a beautiful canoe," etc. — Swan: The NorthwestCoast, 17. Costello tells of seeing the Duke in 1869, and speaks of him and his tribesmen as "the noble old Indian with a large retinue of followers." — Costello: The Sitvash, 100. Winthrop, in his journal on August 22, gives a third form of the Duke's Indian name, — "Chitsmash." I have not been able to find any evi- dence of truth in the rumors which Winthrop heard, charging the Duke and his brother, "King George," with the murder of whites. OWHHIGH. 61 certainly not so picturesque as these Klickatats, stampeding toward us from under the gray mossy oaks. They came, deployed in the open woods, now hidden in a hollow, now rising a crest, all at full gallop, loud over the baked soil, — a fantastic cavalcade. They swept about the angle of the fort, and we, following, found them grouped near the open postern, waiting for permission to enter. Some were dismounted; some were dashing up and down on their shaggy nags, — a band of picturesque marauders on a peaceful foray. Owhhigh and his aides-de-camp stood a little apart, Spokan Adonis among them. At a sign from Mr. H., they followed us within the fort, and entered the factor's cottage. Much ceremony is observed by the Hudson's Bay Company with the Indians. Discipline must be preserved. Dignity tells. Indians, having it, appreciate it. Owhhigh alone was given a seat opposite us. His counsellors stood around him, while three or four less potent members of his suite peered gravely over their shoulders. The palaver began. Owhhigh's braves were gorgeous with frippery, and each wore a beaded order. The Murats of the world make splendid fighting-cocks of themselves with martial feathers; the Napoleons wear gray surtouts. Owhhigh was in stern simplicity of Indian garb. On ordinary occasions of council with whites, he would courteously or ambitiously have adopted their costume; now, as he was master of the situation and grantee of favors, he appeared in his own proper style. He wore a handsome buckskin shirt, heavily epauletted and trimmed along the seams with fringe, and leggins and moccasins of the same. For want of Tyrian dye, these robes were regalized by a daubing of red clay. A circlet of otter fur served him for coronet. He was a man of bulk and stature, a chieftainly personage, a fine old Roman, cast in bronze, and modernized with a fresh glazing of ver- milion over his antiquated duskiness of hue. And certainly 62 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. no Roman senator, with adjuncts of whity-brown toga, curule chair, and patrician ancestry, seated to wait his doom from the Gauls, ever had an air of more impassive dignity than this head horse-thief of the Klickatats. In an interview with a royal personage, his own language should be used. But we, children of an embryo civilization, are trained in the inutilities of tongues dead as Julius Csesar, never in the living idioms of our native princes. I was not, therefore, voluble in Klickatat and Yakimah. Chinook jargon, however, the French of Northwestern diplomatic OW-HI: A Chief of the Yakimas. life, I had mastered. Owhhigh called upon one of his "young men" to interpret his speeches into Chinook. The inter- preter stepped forward, and stood expectant, — a youth fraternally like my Spokan, but with a sprinkle more of intelligence, and a sparkle less of beauty. My suit, already known, was now formally stated to the chief. I wanted to buy three quadrupeds, and hire one biped guide for a trip across the Cascade Mountains, and on to the Dalles of the Columbia. The distance was OWHHIGH. 53 about two hundred miles, and I had seven days to effect it. Could it be done? "Yes," replied Owhhigh; and then — his bronze face remaining perfectly calm and Rhadamanthine — he began, with most expressive pantomime, an oration, describing my route across the mountains. His talk went on in sway- ing monotone, rising and falling with the subject, while with vigorous gesture he pictured the changeful journey. The interpreter saw that I comprehended, and did not interfere. Occasionally, when I was posed, I turned to him, and he aided me with some Chinook word, or a sput- tered phrase of concentrated meaning. Meanwhile the circle of counsellors murmured approval, and grunted coincidence of opinion. My way was to lead, so said the emphatic recital of Owhhigh, first through an open forest, sprinkled with lakes, and opening into great prairies. By and by the denser forest of firs would meet me, and giant columnar stems, parting, leave a narrow vista, where I could penetrate into the gloom. The dash of a rapid, shallow, white river, the Puyallop, where was a salmon-fishery, would cross my trail. Then I must climb through mightier woods and thicker thickets, where great bulks of fallen trees lay, and barri- caded the path ; must follow up a turbulent river, the S'Kamish, crossing it often, at fords where my horses could hardly bear up against the current. Ever and anon, like a glimpse of blue through a storm, this rough way would be enlivened by a prairie, with beds of fern for my repose, and long grass for my tiring beasts, — grass long as macaroni, so he measured it with outstretched hands. Now the difficul- ties were to come. He depicted the craggy side of a great mountain, — horses scrambling up stoutly, riders grasping the mane and balancing carefully lest a misstep should send horse and man over a precipice. The summit gained, here again were luxurious tarrying-places, oases of prairie, and perhaps, in some sheltered nook, a bank of last winter's snow. 64 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. Here there must be a long nooning, that the horses, tied up the night before in the forest; and browsing wearily on bitter twigs, might recruit. Then came the steep descent, and so, pressing on, I should arrive for my third night's camp at a prairie, low down on the eastern slope of the mountains, where a mighty hunter, the late Sowee, once dwelt. Up before dawn next morning, — continued Owhhigh's vivid tale, vivid in gesture, and droning ever in delivery, — up at the peep of day, for this was a long march and a harsh one, and striking soon a clear river flowing east, the Nachchese, I was to follow it. The river grew, and went tearing down a terrible gorge; through this my path led, sometimes in the bed of the stream, sometimes, when precipices drew too close and the gulf too profound, I must climb, and trace a perilous course along the brink far above, where I might bend over and see the water roaring a thousand feet below. At last the valley would broaden, and groves of pine appear. Then my horses, if not too way-worn, could gallop over the immense swells of a rolling prairie-land. Here I would encounter some of the people of Owhhigh. A sharp turn to the right would lead me across a mass of wild, bare hills, into the valley of another stream, the Atinam, where was a mission and men in long robes who prayed at a shrine. By this time my horses would be exhausted; I should take fresh ones, if possible, from the priests' band, and riding hard across a varied region of hill, prairie, and bulky moun- tains thick with pines, and then long levels where Skloo, a brother-chieftain, ranged, I would arrive, after two days from the mission, at a rugged space of hills, and, climbing there, find myself overlooking the vast valley of the Colum- bia. Barracks and tents in sight. Scamper down the moun- tain. Fire a gun at river's bank. Indians hear, cross in canoe, ferry me and swim my horses. All safely done in six crowded days. So said Owhhigh. This description was given with wonderful vivacity and verity. Owhhigh as a pantomimist would have commanded OWHHIGH. 65 brilliant success on any stage. Would that there were more like him in this wordy world. He promised also a guide, his son, now at the camp, and as to my horses, I might choose from the cavalcade. We went out to make selection, — all the Klickatats, except Owhhigh, Adonis, and the interpreter, following in bow- legged silence. These three were vocal, and of better model than their fellows. No Indian wished to sell his best horse; each his second-best, at the price of the best. Their backs were in shocking condition. Pads and pack-saddles had galled them so that it was painful to a humane being to mount; but I felt that any one of them, however maltreated, would better in my service. I should ride him hard, but care for him tenderly. Indians have too much respect for "pasaiooks," blanketeers, Caucasians, to endeavor to cajole us. They suppose that, in a horse-trade, we know what we want. No jockeying was attempted; there were the nags, I might prove them, and buy or not, without solicitation. The hard terrace without the fort served us for race- course. We galloped the wiry nags up and down, while the owners waited in an emotionless group, calm as gamblers. Should any one sell a horse, he would not only pocket the price, but be spurred to new thefts from tribes hostile or friendly to fill the vacancy; yet all were too proud to exhibit eagerness, or puff their property. At last, from the least bad I chose first for my pack animal a strawberry-roan cob, a "chunk of a horse," a quad- ruped with the legs of an elephant, the head of a hippopota- mus, and a peculiar gait; — he trod most emphatically, as if he were striving to go through the world's crust at every step. This habit suggested the name he at once received. I called him Antipodes, in honor of the region he was aiming at, — a name of ill omen, suggesting a spot where I often wished him afterwards. My second choice, the mount for my guide, was Antipodes repeated, with slight improve- 66 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. ments of form and manner. Gubbins I dubbed him, appro- priately, with a first accolade, — accolade often repeated, during our acquaintance, with less mildness. Hard horses were Antipodes and Gubbins, — hard trotters, hard- mouthed, hard-hided brutes. Each was delivered to me with a hair rope twisted for bridle about his lower lip, sawing it raw. And now the most important decision remained to be made. It was nothing to me that a misty phantom, my guide, should be jolted over the passes of Tacoma on a Gubbins or an Antipodes, but my own seat, should it be upon Rosinante or Bucephalus, upon an agile caracoler or a lubberly plodder? Step forward, then, cool and care- less Klickatat, from thy lair of dirty blanket, with that black pony of thine. The black was satisfactory. His ribs, indeed, were far too visible, and there were concavities where there should have been the convex fullness of well- conditioned muscle, but he had a plucky, wiry look, and his eye showed spirit without spite. His lope was as elastic as the bounding of a wind-sped cloud over a rough mountain- side. His other paces were neat and vigorous. I bought him at more dollars than either of his comrades of clumsier shape and duller hue. Indians do not love then* horses well enough to name them. My new purchase I baptized Klale. Klale in Chinook jargon is Black, — and thus do man- kind, putting commonplace into foreign tongues or into big words of their own, fancy that they make it uncommonplace and original. There are several requisites for travel. First, a world and a region of world to traverse; second, a traveller; third, means of conveyance, legs human or other, barks, carts, enchanted carpets, and the like; fourth, guidance by man personal, or man impersonal acting by roads, guide-boards, maps, and itineraries; fifth, multifarious wherewithals. The first two requisites seem to be indispensable in the human notion of travel, and existed in my case. The third I had OWHHIGH. 57 provided; my stud was complete. A guide was promised; after an interview with Owhhigh I could give credence to his unseen son, and believe that the fourth requisite of my journey was also ready. I must now arrange my miscellane- ous outfit. For this purpose the resources of Fort Nisqually were infinite. Mr. H. approached the dusty warehouses; he wielded the wand of an enchanter, and forth from dim corners came a pack-saddle for Antipodes, a pad-saddle for Gubbins, and great hide packs for my traps. Forth from the shelves of the shop came paraphernaha, — tin pot, tin pan, tin cups, and the needful luxuries of tea and sugar. My pork and hardtack had been already provided at Steila- coom, and Mr. H. added to them what I deemed half a dozen gnarled lignum- vitae roots. Experimental whittling proved these to be cured ox-tongues, a precious accession. My list was complete. I was lodged in a small cabin adjoining the factor's cottage. All my sundries had been piled here for packing, and I was standing, somewhat mazed, in the centre of a group of tin pots, gnarled tongues, powder-horns, papers of tea, blankets, bread-bags, bridles, spurs, and toggery, when in walked Owhhigh, followed by several of his suite. Owhhigh seated himself on the floor, with an air of con- descension, and for some time regarded my preparations in grave silence. Mr. H. had told me that his parade of an interpreter during the council was only to make an im- pression. Some men regard an assumption of ignorance as lofty. Now, however, Owhhigh, dropping in unceremo- niously, laid aside his sham dignity with a purpose. We had before agreed upon the terms of payment for my guide. The ancient horse-thief sat like a Pacha, smoking an in- glorious dhudeen, and at last, glancing at certain articles of raiment of mine, thus familiarly, in Chinook, broke silence. Owhhigh. "Halo she collocks nika tenas; no breeches hath my son" (the guide). 58 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. I. (In an Indianesque tone of some surprise, but great indifference). "Ah hagh!" Oivhhigh. *Te halo shirt; and no shirt." I. (Assenting, with equal indifference). "Ah hagh!" Owhhigh smokes, and is silent, and Spokan Adonis fugues in, "Pe wake yaka shoes; and no shoes hath he." Another aide-de-camp takes up the strain. "Yahwah mitlite shoes, closche copa Owhhigh tenas; there are shoes (pointing to a pair of mine) good for the son of Owhhigh." /. "Stick shoes ocook, — wake closche copa siwash; hard shoes (not moccasins) those, — not good for Indian." Owhhigh. "Hyas tyee mika, — hin mitlite ikta, — halo ikta mitlite copa nika tenas, — mika tikky hin potlatch; great chief thou, — with thee plenty traps abide, — no traps hath my son, — thou \v\\t give him abundance." /. "Pe hyas tyee Owhhigh, — conoway ikta mitlite-pe hin yaka potlatch copa liticum; and a great chief is Owhhigh, — all kinds of property are his, and many presents does he make to his people." Profound silence followed these mutual hints. Owhhigh smoked in thoughtful whiffs, and the pipe went round. The choir bore their failure stoically. They had done their best that their comrade might be arrayed at my expense, and if I did not choose to throw in a livery, I must bear the shame and the unsavoriness if he were frowzy. At last, to please Owhhigh, and requite him for the entertainment of his oratory, I promised that, if his son were faithful, I would give him a generous premium, possibly the very shirt and other articles they had admu'ed. Whereupon, after more unwordy whiffs and ineffectual hints that they too were needy, Owhhigh and his braves lounged off, the gloomy bow-legged ones, who had not spoken, bringing up the rear. I soon had everything in order, tongues, tea, and tin properly stowed, and was ready to be off. Experienced campaigners attempt no more than a start and a league or two the first day of a long march. To OWHHIGH. 59 burst the ties that bind us to civilization is an epoch of itself. The first camp of an expedition must not be beyond re- clamation of forgotten things. Starts, too, will often be false starts. Raw men and raw horses and mules will con- dense into a muddle, or explode into a centrifugal stampede, a "blazing star," as packers name it. Then the pack-horse with the flour bolts and makes paste of his burden, up to his spine in a neighboring pool. The powder mule lies down in the ashes of a cooking fire. The pork mule, in greasy gallop, trails fatness over the plain. In a thorny thicket, a few white shreds reveal where the tent mule tore through. Another beast flies madly, while after him clink all the can- nikins, battering themselves shapeless upon his flanks. It is chaos, and demands hours perhaps of patience to make order again. Such experience in a minor degree might befall even my little party of three horses and two men. I therefore, for better speed, resolved to disentangle myself this evening and have a clear field to-morrow. Recalcitrant Antipodes, therefore, suffered compulsion, and was packed with his complex burdens. Leaving him and Gubbins with Owhhigh to follow and be disciplined, Mr. H. and I galloped on under the oaks, over the trap-rock, toward the Klickatat camp. Klale, with ungalling saddle, and a merciful rider of nine stone weight, loped on gayly. The Klickatats were encamped on a prairie near the house of a settler, five miles from the fort. Just without the house was a group of them gambling. Presently Owhhigh followed Mr. H. and me into the farmer's kitchen, bringing forward for introduction his son, my guide. He was one of the gambling group. I inspected him narrowly. My speed, my success, my safety, depended upon his good faith. Owhhigh bore no very high character, — why should son be honester than father? To an Indian the temptation to play foul by a possessor of horses, guns, blankets, and traps was enormous. 60 THE CANOE AND THE SADDLE. My future comrade was a tallish stripling of twenty, dusky-hued and low-browed. A mat of long, careless, sheen- less black hair fell almost to his shoulders. Dull black were his eyes, not veined with agate-like play of color, as are the eyes of the sympathetic and impressionable. His chief physiognomical characteristic was a downward look, like the brown study of a detected pickpocket, inquiring with himself whether villany pays; his chief personal and seemingly permanent characteristic was squalor. Squalid was his hickory shirt, squalid his buckskin leggins, long widowed of their fringe. Yet it was not a mean, but a proud uncleanliness, like that of a fakir, or a voluntarily unwashed hermit. He flaunted his dirtiness in the face of civilization, claiming respect for it, as merely a different theory of the toilette. I cannot say that this new actor in my drama looked trustworthy, but there was a certain rascally charm in his rather insolent dignity, and an exciting mystery in his undecipherable phiz. I saw that there was no danger of our becoming friends. There existed an antagonism in our natures which might lead to defiance and hostility, or possibly terminate in mutual respect. Loolowcan was his name. I took him for better or for worse, without questions. Owhhigh fully vouched for him, — but who would vouch for the voucher? Who could satisfy me that the horse- thieving morality of papa might not result in scalp-thieving principles in the youth? At least, he knew the way unerringly. My path was theirs, of constant transit from inland to sea- side. As to his conduct, Owhhigh gave him an impressive harangue, stretching forth his arm in its fringed sleeve, and gesturing solemnly. This paternal admonition was, for my comprehension, expressed in Chinook jargon, doubly ludi- crous with Owhhigh's sham stateliness of rhetoric. His final injunctions to young hopeful may be condensed as follows: — "Great chief go to Dalles. Want to go fast. Six days. AMONG THE DOUGLAS FIRS. 'The trail took us speedily into a forest-temple. Wherever I ro