An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 85

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172

USA > Washington > Skagit County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 85
USA > Washington > Snohomish County > An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington > Part 85

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It is a favored notion among ethnologists that primitive man in America was not a "son of the soil," but an emigrant from Asia in those days when the star of empire had not yet taken its westward way. In support of this contention many statements are put forth. They point to the chain of Aleutian Islands which dot the sea between the two continents and speak of them as the peaks of the partially submerged volcanoes and mountains of that isthmus which once pos- sibly formed the tangible connecting link between the eastern and western hemispheres. Here are the people, and there is the way, say the adher- ents of this view, though there are other circum- stances which are apparently confirmatory. It is indeed a matter of much more moment than is superficially apparent and it has occupied the

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most careful attention of the Morris K. Jesup and other expeditions of recent years. It is several years now, also, since Monsieur, le Docteur, E. T. Hamy, a French anthropologist, discussed in an address the subject of the spread of the yellow race from eastern Asia. He claimed to recognize eight distinct types, including not only the Chinese, Turks and certain Siberian tribes, but also the Aleuts of the Alaskan side of Bering Strait and the Esquimaux of northeastern Green- land. He expressed utmost confidence in the belief that one or more waves of emigration had not only extended from Siberia across Arctic America, but also further southward, penetrating down into the very heart of the continent. So far as America is concerned, his argument is based chiefly upon resemblances between the skulls and other bones of the races of both shores of the Pacific. But for the matter of that, even we, at the present day, can see in the living Indian some traces of what appears to be a Mongolian strain-such as the tint of the skin, the tendency here and there to "almond eyes" and perhaps most marked of all, the high cheek bones. But the evolutionist in reply says that both races live or lived upon the shores of the same great ocean, under very similar conditions (or what were probably so then). How far, then, may not similarity of environment have produced similarity of habit and speech (for the Hon. W. Wickershaw of Tacoma affirms that there is a similarity in speech), and how far might not similarity of environment and habit induce and produce similarity of physical structure? And so we have gone in a circle. We have reached our starting point and we find the question thrown as wide open as ever.

A further theory of forced rather than volun- tary migration has been suggested. This is put forward npon the basis that a spirit of enterprise. restlessness, or adventure, coupled with the overcrowding of old homes (which often explain the peaceful invasions of new territory), might have been factors in this hypothetical peopling of America by the Asiatics. It was in the year 1890 that the German investigator, Sittig, wrote upon "Compulsory Migrations in the Pacific." In this instructive paper he calls attention to the fact that there are a large number of recorded instances in which both boats and ships have been carried out of their course to distant lands. Scores of voyagers in the region of the trade winds were wafted westward, so he claims, from the Gilbert Marshall Tonga and Samoan groups of islands. It is to be noted also that further north the Kuro Shiwo, the great Japanese Gulf Stream, which laves our coast with its benefi- cent tides, had carried shipwrecked or storm- tossed sailors from China and Japan to the shores of Alaska and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest, even as Eric the Red was once wafted across the broad Atlantic from Iceland to Greenland. Sittig

argued that if a few cases of this kind had occurred within the short period for which any record is obtainable, it seems probable that many more may have happened of which the story, the record, has been lost. But from its very nature such migration must of necessity have been limited and intermittent, and even if it did occur at all, still the inexplicable question recurs, was it sufficient to found a new race or merely to infuse a new strain into the old one?

These are a few of the arguments which are used to substantiate the belief that primitive man in America was an emigrant from Asia. But we have shown how the arguments are answered, in part at least, by those who do not hold to the theory and how, when direct rebuttal is not to be had, one question is answered by another equally pertinent. There are two sides of the shield, and perhaps no one in this country at least, is better able to express an opinion than Major J. W. Powell, of the United States Bureau of Ethnology, for it is the work of his bureau to delve and dig and gather material of this nature, and he has directly at hand the fruits of years of such scientific labors. He says upon this point:

Many attempts have been made to prove that aborigi- nal America was peopled from Asia by way of Bering strait, and a vague belief of this nature has spread widely, but little scientific evidence exists to sustain it. On the other hand, investigations in archeology have made it clear that man was distributed throughout the habitable earth at some very remote time or times, in the very lowest stage of human culture, when men employed stone tools and other agencies of industry of a like lowly character, and that from this rude condition men have advanced in culture everywhere, but some to a much greater degree than others. The linguistic evidence comes in to sustain the conclusions of archeology, for a study of the languages of the world leads to the conchision that they were devel- oped in a multiplying of centers, that languages of distinct stocks increase in number as tribes of lower culture are found, and that probably man was distributed through the world anterior to the development of organized or grani- matic speech.

There are those also who from a combination of religious and sentimental, but far from scien- tific, reasons claim that the North America Indians are the direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. Scientists generally contend that this is nothing more than a pleasing myth. And yet it is a very poor theory indeed which cannot muster some show of truth. No idea, however wild or improbable, need suffer for lack of some slight semblance of foundation in fact. And so it seems astounding when we read the book of Deuteronomy (\\\ : 5, et. seq.), and also the book of Ruth. As we read we are struck with amazement, for here is described and prescribed a custom strikingly similar to the Indian custom of sbah-loth-sid, as it existed when the white man first came into the Indian country, and as it still exists to-day in some places where civilization has touched the race with a lightsome stroke. The Biblical passages refer to the old levirate law

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It is interesting also, in passing, to note that the same custom is found among the Ilindoos.

Again, in many respects the legends of the Indians of Puget sound marvelously duplicate some of the features of the mythologies of the beauty-loving Greeks and of the more sensual Romans. At death the soul is ferried across a barbaric styx by an equally barbarie Charon, and thus reaches the ski-u-swaht-ih-huh-tid, or the land of the departed spirits. The analogy might be continued. Even those least interested in the subject can recognize the strong resemblance between the Latin and the French et and the Snohomish cta, both of which are identical in meaning. Bad, baba and papa are variant forms of the word father in Snohomish (for in this Indian tongue the letters b, m and pare practi- cally identical, having approximately the same phonetic valuation; thus the English word sir might be rendered equally correct in Snohomish as se-ab, se-am or se-ap). The analogy that exists between the English and the variant Snohomish forms is obvious. And indeed baba and papa can also be found occasionally in the Latin and in the French, as well as in English. The Snoho- mish kito and the Latin cito are unum et idem in their meaning. The Italian says adesso and the Snohomish says adessa. The Italian says cosi (so or thus), and the Yakima says cos or ikosi. The Italian ma (still) is the Snohomish ma or cma (still) also. The old Irish pi or si (she) is the Sno- homish se (or si with the French phonetic valua- tion). In the old Irish or (Erse) tongue we find all of the gutturals and the hard consonants that abound in the Snohomish tongue (and the basic principles of the Snomohish tongue are those of most of the Indian tongues of Puget sound, many being dialectic variants of one common tongue). Moreover, there are a great number of Irish and Snohomish words as well as roots which have the same meaning. The words for heavy and black- berry are strikingly similar; so also the word for permission and this,-even without the interven- tion of Grimm's law. The resemblance between the Erse guala and the Snohomish gualap (shoul- der) is obvious. So also that between the Erse tiomna (a will) and the Snohomish or Klickitat temna. The German da is exactly the Snohomish da or ta. The English send, the German senden and the Snohomish send or tsend bear their rela- tionship visibly. And so this idea, this mere suggestion, might be expanded to the tedious proportions of a volume. Let this suffice.

What then and where then is the origin of the Indian? We have seen that theory might be piled upon theory until the whole dizzy structure fell to earth of its own weight and mightiness. But again occurs the question, -it will not down. The Indian, what is he, whence is he? Is he Mongal, Tartar, Turk, Jew, German, French, Irish, Latin, Hindoo? I know not,-do you? What do I think? Well my opinion is a matter

of very small moment indeed, but since all of the theories appear to be true, at least in part if not in toto, why not call them all true and be done with it? Could anything more strikingly indicate than these variant and various theories that the Indian belongs to the whole universal race of mankind, that the common blood of brotherhood leaps within our veins, that he is brother to the whole wide world? All signs point infallibly therefore, whatever else they may indicate, to the fact that he is the child of the ages, one of the numerous progeny of old Mother Earth, and that the secret of his primi- tive origin is locked up beyond our ken together with the great and coeval mystery as to the origin of life, whether by special creation or by evolution. Whence he came we do not know. But it is certain that he has inhabited this conti- nent for a very long period of time, long enough to have established here a people, a race, well differentiated, and concerning whose purity and whose antiquity at least there can be no question. It may be that the countless resemblances which have been so often traced to all peoples are fortuitous, though that may not be stated as a positive fact. Powell has said :

It may be that the unity of the human race is a fact so profound that all attempts at a fundamental classification to be used in all the departments of anthropology will fail, and that there will remain multifarious groupings for the multifarious purposes of the science, or otherwise expressed, that languages, arts, customs, institutions and traditions may be classified, and that the human family will be considered as one race.

But what has the Indian to say upon the sub- ject of his origin? Alas, he has no written tongue, and therefore no ponderous and dusty tomes, heirlooms of the ages, that we might consult upon the subject. Still he has the imperishable traditions of his race. He must go back to his abundant and never failing legendary lore, which teaches him that man was once an animal and that thence he came, in which view he would, no doubt, have the indorsement of Mr. Darwin and his friends. Verily, verily, there is nothing new under the sun!

* *

Ever since the days of Columbus have we placed about "Poor Lo," the robe of romance, if we have not decked his brow with the halo of saintliness. Columbus found them a simple, peaceful, almost harmless folk, but he left them not so. What did the old world bring to the new? Small need have we to blame them that they learned too well the lessons of treachery, bloodshed, deceit, lust and greed which the Spanish conquistadores taught theni. Their his- tory is pathetic. I have used the term history, though we must remember that the barbaric clio of the Occident hardly yet knew either quill or tablet, for she dwelt in a realm of fancy where:

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not yet had come the graphic arts. These people had no written tongue, therefore no need for waxen tablets, papyrus, vellum, parchment, or paper. Naught had they save those imperishable records which experience or memory has stored away in the wonderful mind of man as treasures to be gloated over at leisure. By word of mouth, from father to son, through countless generations, have they handed down their changeless and unchanging legendary lore, at once the history and the literature of a great people-great at least in their own peculiar way. Hoary and old, these traditions come to us with the dust of the ages.

The legends of these simple folk, of these children of Nature, teem with the adventures, the haps, the mishaps, the loves, the hates, the ambitions, the desires, the lusts and the fates which befell the present race of animals in that dim, distant, dusky "once-upon-a-time." These tales were replete with the craft, cunning and immorality of Spee-yor, the Fox, the vulgar ambitions and greedy lust of Bus-chub, the Mink, the vain and empty boastfulness and conceit of Kowyuks, the Raven, the wisdom and sagacity of ; Kiki, the Blue Jay, the modesty and worth of Sgwul-lohb. the Pheasant, the modest merits of tiny Tsit-Tscese, the Warbler, the Terrors and powers of the awful and all-powerful Whay- kwah dee, the Thunder Bird, the wiles of Putch- chub, the Wildcat, the sorrows of Sboh-kaval, the Crane, the deceit and duplicity of Hoh-hay, the Little Diver, the might and brutality of Kub-kah-date-suh, the great giant who ate people, and many, many others, for their name is truly legion. -

By reason of environment, the aborigine of the Pacific Northwest is either huntsman or fisherman, or both. Therefore, it is expected that these vocations and their associations should play an important part in the evolution of their aboriginal mythology. Such 'in fact we find to be the case. The legends are fairly peopled with the birds of the air, the beasts and creeping things of the woods and plains, as well as the mammals and fish of the briny deep, with all of which they were familiar, and many of which became actual participants, as it were, in the Indian's very life-history. But all through this legendary race, this people of the mythland, runs a broad and most palpable streak of human nature, which sufficiently attests the earthly and carthy origin of both the tales and the adven- tures which they portray. All of which seems but to indicate that the mythical individuals, in spite of the glamour or romance thrown about them and the endorsement of tradition, are but mortals masquerading in the guise of the brute creation, like the ass in the lion's skin, or like erstwhile gods of high Olympus come to earth again. For they are all, every one, creatures of like passions as ourselves and molded from the

selfsame clay, and in recounting their deeds the untutored savage but repeats the lesson which he has learned from the ages, when he "Ilolds the mirror up to Nature," instead of following the custom of many latter-day raconteurs who hold Nature up to the mirror. Of a truth, these legendary heroes and heroines are not altogether inhabitants of the cold and misty land of mysti- cism-not they indeed! Through their veins leaks the warm, red tide of life tumultuous, lusty and strong, singing, as it runs its course, of ambi- tion and its fruition, of envy, Inst and love, of affection, of hate and all the changing emotions which have ever served to sway the human heart or to dominate the human mind. And so springs into being this great picture whose colors brightly glow from the vast but intangible scroll whereon is depieted the history of mankind.

So it happens that in the winter season, when comes the moon of Gull-beck (the big moon of feasting-it is a lunar month, as all their months were, in the neighborhood of our December), which some prefer to call Shuk-sect-sel-wahss ( put up the paddle), the canoes are drawn high upon the beach. It is then that the paddles are put by and the craft are carefully groomed, like marine race-horses, and then snugly housed between rush-mat and cedar-shake, high above the reach of even the greatest tides. The season has come when the winds sweep madly down to smite the luckless wayfarer and the sharp edges of the wind-whipped rain cut keenly, like a knife, if indeed any one is so foolish as to be abroad at such a time. There is no son of Sdohobsh who does not know that it is no fit season for hunting, nor for fishing, nor indeed for any pursuit which may take one out of doors for any length of time. And since the woods and the waters have become deserted, cach lodge, cach ah-laht becomes populous with braves and gay with jest, song and story, for, of a truth, this is not the season of the sad heart. "Lo" is by no means the mirthless stoic which the white man's fancy dreams him to be.

It has come-the winter, the time of feasting. The great communal houses are filled to over- flowing, well-nigh to bursting. It is now that the winter stores will be subjected to havoc in the days and nights of feasting, when each one takes his leisure and incidentally his fill of food. It is then, too, that the old people, barbaric bards of old, tell again to embryonic brave and squaw all those tales of glory, the wonderful traditions of the past, which have been handed down from father to son since the time when the world was young, and the animals were such a race of braves and warriors as man has never since beheld, nor is likely to behold again. It is at this time that the weird, wild historian of the West is at his best and in his fullest glory. No one fears the sharp tooth of the gale howling dismally without-in sooth, no one hears it, for

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all are too intent on the story. The heavy rains beat down upon ,the shakes till they tremble be- neath the mighty impulse, and the dripping gusts come swirling down the great smoke-hole which gaps and yawns in the roof like a mighty cavern of black. Up leaps the great flame and the cloud of smoke to meet the challenge of the rain and wind, and dying in vapors of mist the moisture without inay not reach within. And then, per- chance, they think of Suh-hway and how he brought the great floods in the long ago; how the winds and waters both rose at his magic song, and never ceased to do his bidding while one of his enemies lived.

Or perhaps the unaccustomed lightnings may flash and the thunders roll as the rain beats steadily down upon the oozing earth. Then their thoughts will dwell upon the awful l'hay'- kwah.dee, the terrible Thunder-bird, from whose pinions the thunders roll, from whose eyes the lightning fires flash, and from whose feet the rushing rains reek forth upon a patient earth. Or mayhap when the rain is done the sun will shine again in his accustomed place in the heav- ens. Great bats wheel their lazy flight through the liquid ether, but high above is painted the great Koh-bah-chud (rainbow), a wonderful skah.lah-lee-toot (a supernatural thing) glowing with awesome beauty in the shuk-savaht-ih-huh- tid (land above). And so the winter, with its short, rainy days and its long, dark nights would be whiled away in song and story. No tedious moment would mark its flight.

When at last it happened that the good season of summer returned, that the rains ceased and the sun lingered longer and warmer in the heav- en above, then, with the long, warm days and the short bright nights crystalline with stars-Oh, then it is glorious to be alive, then is the time to hunt, to trail the bear, to stalk the deer, to snare the salmon, and to lure the seal! Then is the golden time of all the year, when Nature yields her harvest with abundant hand. Then the squaws garner food against the time when Nature will again wear a forbidding face, against the time of feasting and song, -for all must come again even as day must be followed by night. And all day long the children sport on the sands of the beach and the lazy camp fires send upward their straggling trails of smoke, while the clams blush brown at its fumy kiss. Day after day the great piles of fern-root are parched and the camus baked. Stores of spay-koolts (tubers of a variety of Sagittaria-they resemble potatoes, and hence potatoes are known by the same name-spar- koolts in Snohomish, and wapato in the Chinook jargon) are gathered in. It is the season when all the racks of Schuh-tlahks are red with the drying fish, and the air is heavy with the oily aroma of salmon. And other racks than those of Schuh- tlahks are bending beneath their burdens of berries drying in the open air and sunshine, that the sun

may the better steal away the perishable and juicy fragrance and thus preserve them against the time of need.

But whether it be summer or winter, whether it be rain or shine, dew or frost, hail or snow, heat or cold, all the time is a happy time, whether it be the time for food or the season for feasting upon it. What boots it? Is it Winter? Then let us feast and be merry together while we may, for the summer will soon come again and the winters too in their turn! Is it Summer? Then let us live while we live and prepare against the time of mirth and feasting. Why should we grieve for a day or a season? Let us make the most of each day as it comes and squeeze every enjoyment out of it, for when we die we are dead a long time. O barbaric sage of the sands! Who taught you the subtle purports of your phil- osophy? Can it be that Divine Nature, who schooled Plato, taught Aristotle, educated Epic- tetus, trained Zena, taught you also in that self- same school of experience and made you also, perhaps, the peer of them all?

Ah, but the legends !- those legends, the hoary heirloom of time, bequeathed by those ages when History wove neither warp nor woof in her yet unfashioned loom, those æons when Clio had not yet found her quill nor dreamed of her scroll. Who can reproduce them as they are, save when they come to him a natal birthright, the heritage of the ancients? Who can hope to match the savage at his art? But it is a treasure by no means to be despised even at second-hand. So in the telling of them let us not despise the version told by proxy ; for not all of us may hear them at first hand nor understand them as they are, garbed in their natural dress of uncouth but poetic Snohomish, or other tongue of the children of Nature. Let us remember that half a loaf, which is said to be better than no bread.

It is night, and all are seated in circle about the comfortable blaze which sheds its mystic fire- light over all, transforming things with a subtle alchemy altogether its own. See the bard as he sits in the midst of the dusky circle of hearers. The eyes glisten with eager anticipation and each ear is strained with the very personification of rapt attention. The fire dies down to smoldering coals and fitfully spurts into flames and dies back to its dull glow again. The thin line of smoke trickles upward through the smoke-hole in the roof. Inthe distance some lone dog howls dis- mally. See the bard! Keep your eyes fixed upon liis face. His strong features are silhou- etted boldly against a very background of light, and the fire of prophecy seems to glow within his eagle eye as he scans the circle. The mystic shadows draw figures, on the sand and on the walls. There is a subtle spell working some- where, somehow-how, where, why? Let it suffice that it should be, and note the skill of this uncouth man as he plies his imaginary brush in

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very masterpieces of word-painting. See how he loses no opportunity "to point a moral or adorn a tale!" In the midst of the fire of talk see how he mingles and weaves strands of philosophy, morality and ethics! So beneath the magic touch and subtle skill of the aboriginal academi- cian these legends of prehistroie adventures become, in spite of occasional gross lapses from virtue into vulgarity, veritable sermons in allegory. To those who do not really know "Poor Lo" as he actually exists, it seems singu- lar to note how high an appreciation he has (in the abstract if not in the concrete), of all that we more cultured creatures have long deemed desirable in the up-building of character.

Indeed, it is often surprising to find one so wild, so free, with natural bents unchecked, becoming a moralist in the rough, for we must always do him the justice to judge him by his own standards, and not by ours. Entirely in theory, and largely in practice, he may, and indeed does, become a surprising (at least so it seems to us) idealist. Though often again, and alas, he finds himself, like many more noted and less dusky preachers, running far short of his ideals. He is not skilled in the subtleties of Paley, nor filled with the esoteric mysteries of Lecky ; he probably never heard of Zena, of Plato. of Aristotle; he does not know that such men existed, nor indeed that he himself is an unsus- pected and unsuspecting philosopher. But like our own refreshing and invigorating Emerson, he hitches his wagon to a star, however much betimes it may trail in the dust, the star-dust of the universe. It is surprising how these stories have passed unchanged through the ages, as the rock-ribbed hills. Down through generation after generation have they come with no altera- tion in their essential features, and not even for the young have vices been changed to virtues. What though the garb of words may have changed with each speaker, as the garb of man may change with every passing fashion, -the meat remained the same; the marrow was there; they remained unchanged and unchanging through ali time.

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An illustrated history of Skagit and Snohomish Counties; their people, their commerce and their resources, with an outline of the early history of the state of Washington, Part 85

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.) Publication date: 1906 Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company Number of Pages: 1172

Author: Inter-state Publishing Company (Chicago, Ill.)
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: [Chicago] Interstate Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 1172