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 86

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 86
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 86

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This was the education of the Indian youth. Here was his kindergarten, his school, his acad- emy, college, university, his all. lIere he learned such lessons as youth learns in every clime and beneath every sky-nay, more, for the lessons of his youth did not have to change with adolescence. He learned things just as they were, no matter how young he might be nor how inexperienced in worldly wisdom and wickedness. He was taught to know that vice and sin existed in the world, and why they existed, and how each sin bore with it its own punishment, while "vir- tue is its own reward." So that the lessons which Dame Experience taught him in his later years were but continuations of those lessons which he learned with lisping lips in his baby-

hood at his mother's knee or in his father's arms. The Book of Life was not sealed to him at any time, it was his to read at all times and at all ages. I do not presume to say whether it was better so or not; I am content to chronicle fact rather than create fiction. It was by means of these legends that the young were educated, and by means of which they became inculeated with those manly attributes and those maidenly vir- tues which were considered desirable above all else by his tribesmen and his people. So he grew up hand in hand with Life and Experience. Human virtues, vices, passions and weaknesses were ascribed to the members of the animal kingdom which were most familiar to the people, and thus was acquired the dramatis persone of those domestic comedies and tragedies recounted and re-enacted for ages in the lodges of the chil- dren of Nature. Great moral lessons (from their own standpoint, at least), were thus taught by the qualities given to their heroes, heroines and villains of the brute creation. I say "villains" advisedly, for aboriginal literature was by no means devoid of them. They stalked through the legends, plotted, pursued, succeeded, failed, or were punished in the end, exactly as happens with their brethren of the modern drama and stage.

Take them all in all, these stories and tales of the redmen are but the stories of human vices and virtues as old as time. They are the trage- dies-and let us hope more often the comedies also-which life has ever been repeating through her various mouthpieces since she first endowed them with a listy being and since Time and Man first began to co-exist and doubtless they will continue to exist as long as flesh and blood con- tinue to endure the shock of the ages. We must remember, too, that the Indian is a man like ourselves in all of his primitive emotions, perhaps only lacking in the culture which is accustomed to hide but not cradicate those ineradicable emo- tions. He is simply an edition of mankind bound in red-perhaps not an edition de luxe, as some would say, but certainly one that has served to withstand the wear and tear of time as well as the wars, onslaughts and feuds of intertribal warfarc. And certainly we can all afford to indulge the hope that we may long see copies of this edition of a great master-work upon the shelves of Life's large library.

And so it happens that the narration of these legends, so ancient that their origin is undreamed of even by the Indian himself, forms at once the education, the history, and the literature (and in a sense, the very life history) of the aborigine with whom they deal.

CANOES, CANOEING AND CANOE BUILDING

What the horse is to the Indian of the plains, even so is the canoe to the aborigine of the Pacific

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Northwest, for he belongs to a race of fisher folk, | and hence is amphibious-indeed his better half may be termed aqueous without any great stretch of either the truth or imagination. Very slowly is the canoe being supplanted, though gradually ; here and there the white man's boat is encroach- ing, co-eval with the march of the white man's methods, the white man's implements and the white man himself. For this reason the race of canoe builders, learned in their cunning craft, is slowly disappearing and it need be no cause for wonder that the right hand of the aborigine is forgetting its whilom cunning, both in wood craft and sea craft.

It requires little imagination to follow graphi- cally with the mind's eye the evolution of the canoe. Is it not Dryden who says:

Some log, perhaps, upon the waters swam An useless drift, which, rudely cut within And hollowed, first a floating trough became And 'cross some riv'let passage did begin.

We can readily picture primitive man navigat- ing the fringe of water bordering the shore, his gallant eraft a drifting tree or log, and his means of propulsion comprising only that afforded by sticks or poles-or, perhaps, when the wind blew favorably, he found it advantageous to hoist a fragment of brush as a sail. We can easily imagine that he was not long in discovering that the pad- dle was mightier than the pole, and that it gave more speed in return for an expenditure of less exertion ; moreover, it did not compel him to limit his excursions to the shallow water near the shore. Nor in his primitive sailing could he have been over long in discovering that skins

stretched upon poles would waft his log along better than brush. But the log itself was unsea- worthy and rolled in rough water unbearably. To overcome this he split the log in half, in order to be rid of the unstable top hamper. This made such an improvement in seaworthiness that he straightway began to hollow the log out, not only to make it still lighter but also to make room for himself and the fruit of his forays. It was, as the poet himself very practically sings:

In shipping such as this the Irish kern And untaught Indian on the stream did glide Ere sharp-keel'd boats to stem the tide did learn, Or fin-like oars did spread from side to side.

The many refinements which have since sprung into existence have been so decidedly advantageous that to-day we would hardly recog- nize in the slender and handsome race canoe the offspring of our primitive progenitor's unwieldy and unpromising log.

As canoe builders the Indians of British Col- umbia are acknowledged to excel all others among the tribes adjacent to Puget sound, at least in the making of the large, so-called "Chinook" canoe; it is from such source that most of the Indians of the vicinity obtain their craft, either

by barter or by purchase. Not that good builders do not exist among our own Indians of the sound : country, but they do not exist as a distinctive class and the few instances are only sporadic cases, like the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule. The British Columbia Indians for some reason do not seem to have adopted the methods of civilization to quite the same extent as their brethren on this side of the line. They of the "other side" still adhere to many of their old cus- toms, habits and occupations and they have not suffered themselves totally to forget the knack of canoe building and the skill of sea craft and this adds another to the already large and growing list of so-called "lost arts," consequently their canoes are in more or less demand, and fine, large Chinook canoes in good condition frequently bring as high as one hundred dollars or even more. Yet they can also be obtained at a very much more reasonable figure, so that they may be classed as necessities or luxuries as suits the case.

It is in the making of the Chinook canoe that the British Columbia Indians excel, for the others are made almost universally over the sound; indeed wherever an Indian's shack may dot the beach.

Some well-known authorities consider the birch-bark canoe to be the very highest type of aboriginal, nautical craft, but in very many instances the canoes in common use by the natives of the Pacific Northwest equal and indeed often excel it. Indeed the birch-bark canoe is only superior in lightness, ease of repair and in portability; this latter property allowing it to be carried from place to place with ease. But here in the tide-water region, where rocky beaches are as common as sandy ones, the con- stant dragging of the canoe down to low water and up out of reach of high water, would wear it to pieces in a very short time. Certainly the native craft of the Northwest are more sub- stantial and long-lived and the reason is obvious, when it is considered that they are fashioned out of one entire piece of solid wood. Yet the wear and tear incident to their ordinary usage is very great, and in spite of their apparent invulnera- bility, they cannot be continually, carelessly or roughly handled. They demand careful treat- ment, for their creation is an arduous task, and any roughness in beaching the canoe on a rocky coast, or any severe shock may split it from end to end, and cavalier treatment is thus promptly resented. In case of injury the work of repair is comparatively difficult, because of the non-plastic and unyielding nature of the substance from which it was fabricated, whereas the work of repair in the case of a birch-bark canoe is speed- ily and readily effected by bark patches.

The canoes of Puget sound may be classified into four different and distinct types or models, all of which are made from a single piece of wood (al-

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THE INDIANS

most invariably white cedar), and vary in length from five and ten feet to fifty and sixty, the longest and largest even of race canoes very rarely exceed- ing the latter figure. When thoroughly seasoned this cedar is exceedingly light and comparatively easy to work, and only well- seasoned timber is used in the construction of such craft. It is selected as free from blemishes and imperfections as possi- ble. After felling the tree, a dead and seasoned tree, or else after finding a suitable windfall in the forest or a drifted log of suitable size and condition upon the beach, it was flattened upon top and roughly shaped, either with an axe or an adz. Before the advent of the white man and his superior utensils of metal, the flattening was effected by splitting the log by means of a stone maul and a wedge fashioned from tough elk horn, or else of stone, and all of the subsequent work of rough shaping and finer finishing was accom- plished by means of a small "pec-yah-kud," or hand adz, to be mentioned and described further on. Then the work of hollowing or cutting away the interior began. In earlier days much of this work was accomplished by means of slow fires built upon the top of the log and kept constantly and carefully under watch and control, so as to cause them to burn down into the substance of the log with slowness and uniformity. Now, however, the axe or adz roughly and certainly more surely and speedily effects the same end. When the burning had proceeded sufficiently the fires were extinguished and the interior scraped, or rather "pecked," for the latter word is much more truly descriptive of the actual process nsed. This work was and still is done by means of what is practically a small hand adz, called by the Snohomish Indians a "pee-yah-kud." It was made by lashing a sharpened piece of elk horn, or of flint, obsidian or other hard stone, suitably shaped to a small wooden handle made from the forks of a sapling. The lashing was effected either by means of wrappings of withes of wild cherry bark wound tightly and evenly, sometimes over a slight layer of pitch or balsam, or else by means of deer thongs bound on while fresh or wet and allowed to dry and harden in place. Sometimes strips of buckskin were used, but they proved a much more unsatisfactory form of fastening than either of the other two. The use of wild cherry bark withes was much more common among the tribes bordering upon salt water, while the fastenings of deer thongs were used almost exclusively by the tribes dwelling more inland than the former. Nowadays the use of elk horn, or of stone for the cutting or chiseling blade has been discarded and old files (sheet-stun) or old broad bladed knives are sharpened like chisels and then lashed to sim- ilar handles as of yore. This is the chiefest and most important instrument in the whole of the canoe-builder's armamentarium and with it he, the canoe-builder (dus-py-yuk). goes carefully, .

slowly and laborionsly over the whole surface of

the canoe, with each blow of the pee-yah kud re- moving only a thin and tiny flake of wood not much larger than a man's thumb nail. This process is continued, internal and external, until the whole surface of the canoe has received his tender ministrations and passes satisfactorily beneath his careful and critical scanting. Then fires are again built inside and outside of the canoe and allowed to smoulder and to char the wood slightly. The pee-yah-kud is again called into requisition, and the same rou- tine followed until a satisfactory degree of thin- ness and finish is secured. The firing, in addition to clearing away and hollowing out the center, is supposed to season the timber thoroughly and to act as a safeguard against subsequent sun- cracking or warping. Frequently a final finish is given with the curved knife, and this is some- times followed by a scraping. The curved knife is not an aboriginal instrument, being of compara- tively recent origin, certainly subsequent to the time when the pal-stud totobsch (white man) brought steel and iron to the ken of the natives. They found these metals to be so well adapted to their uses that they have ever since discarded the stone or elk horn of their former and crude imple- ments.

After the completion of the cauoe, it is "spread" and braced by several thwarts or cross pieces, the latter being lashed to the sides or to the gunwale by means of withes of wild cherry bark and serve to prevent further spreading, shrinking or warping. With the larger canoes the soft cedar was carved into a common and char- acteristic form of prow, which to my mind, resem - bles nothing more than it does a small terrier or watch dog, with ears erect, on the alert to scent a foe and give the alarm. Not infrequently the Indian further ornamented the prow by carving upon it his family totem.

If the craft is to be painted, as is customary, then the charred surface is scraped free from all semblance of charcoal and the paint applied. As a rule not more than three colors at most are used in canoe decoration (red, black and yellow) and more often only two (red and black) are used, red for the interior and black for the exterior. This latter system of coloring is almost universal, the little color decoration of the black exterior being in red. These consist merely of eyelike dots upon the prow. a few stripes at the base of it. and a few diagonal stripes at the stern. If the craft is not to be painted, then it is left invested with its slight carbonaccous scale of burned wood as a protection from decay and from the ravages of barnacles and other crustaceans.

Sometimes, in spite of every possible precau- tion a defective log is chosen and the defects are not discovered until the canoe is so near comple- tion that it would be a waste of both time and endeavor to discard it. A new problem confronts poor dus-py-yuk (canoe-builder), for his new

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canoe that has not been launched-or, indeed, even finished-needs repairs, for the process used is exactly similar to that of repair when damage results from the natural usage of the craft. The defective conditions that may be encountered are obviously numerous. For example the wood may be found to be knotty; in some instances the knots may become loosened and drop out, leaving gaping holes that would be fatal to the buoyancy of any kind of boat. But dus-py-yuk is not cast down; he does not despair, but goes bravely to work to ream out of each hole any of the unsound wood that may remain. He then fashions sound plugs of wood, hammers them home, trims them off and gives them their final finish. Or perhaps a decayed streak may be met in the interior of the log and he is called upon to restore its lost integ-

rity. In such a case the defective portion is exactly duplicated from another piece of wood, and when finished it is tennoned into the place of the defective part, which has been thoroughly removed. Hence it may happen that while the finished canoe is in intent a single piece of wood, it may in reality quite often consist of a dozen different pieces so cleverly and snugly fitted together that not even the keen eyed waters may be able to find the joints, search how they may.

For bailing ont his canoe the Indian uses a very picturesque and simple bailer (kwvad-gwild), fashioned from cedar bark, cedar wood and withes of wild cherry bark. A piece of cedar bark nearly two feet long is taken; this piece is about six inches in width. Placing it with the concave side up-that is, the inner surface of the bark-it is cut across and nearly through about six inches from each end. The cutting is not for the purpose of division, but merely to facilitate bending the bark at these places without breaking it. These end pieces are then turned perpendicularly up, crinkled together at each end, and split slightly to allow the insertion of a cedar stick for a handle, which is then lashed firmly on with withes of wild cherry bark, and the kwvad-gwild is com- pleted. This forms a very serviceable implement. and one that always strikes the artistic fancy of white persons who see it for the first time.

As has been previously said, there are four types of canoes used by the Indians in navigating the waters of Puget sound. At least two of the four have no English names which are at all dis- tinctive, and therefore we must fall back upon the graphic and gutteral Snohomish (Indian) tongue for their names. The four types are (1) the tlie or shovel-nosed canoe; (2) stec-ohattl; (3) stee- Theettl; (4) ah-oh-tuss, or "Chinook-canoe." The second type is quite uncommon and the first comparatively so. By far the commonest forms are the third and fourth, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages which espe- cially adapt it to its own peculiar uses.

The tlic, or "shovel-nose," is very well de- scribed by its name. It is not pointed at either :

end; it is a double ender, each end being flattened and in shape very like the bowl of a large coal shovel. The tlie is used almost exclu- sively for river navigation, is exceedingly swift when properly manned and propelled, but is not so commonly seen now. It is the simplest and most primitive form of canoe; is undoubtedly the primary form of craft from which the others were derived in a process of evolution.

The stee-wheettl is usually small. It is a light, easily propelled craft, but quite unsteady, bobbing around upon the surface like a cork, or an egg shell, and therefore it is unsuited to the stress of rough or windy weather. It is used for hunting and fishing chiefly and is commoner on sheltered bodies of water. It is very common indeed and may be seen all over Puget sound. We can easily imagine it to be evolved from the primary form of the tlie by a sharpening of stem and stern and the modeling of the former into a cut water, thus making it more wieldy, more rapid and slightly more seaworthy.

The stec-whattl is a type almost obsolete. It has a projecting, squarely cut prow, cut squarely away beneath instead of the curve of the stec- wohcette, which it markedly resembles. In the evolution of this form the stee-wheettl becomes less slender and tapering and the prow is angular instead of gracefully curved.

The ah-oh-tuss is usually larger, heavier, more stable and much more seaworthy than all the other forms. It is therefore the craft more gen- erally used for traveling and transportation, for which purposes its greater carrying capacity and its comparative stability peculiarly fit it. It is the model followed in the building of all race canoes and war canoes and therefore represents the very highest type in the evolution of the canoe of this vicinity.

For the propulsion of these canoes, paddles of two different kinds are used, one for men and one for women, and fashioned preferably from alder wood. Both forms, however, were furnished with small cross-pieces or cross-bars at the end of the handles, which were necessary for the proper manipulation of the paddles. The essential difference between these two forms is in the blades; the paddle for the man and called the man's paddle (totobsch il-wass) having a longer and narrower blade with a more sinuously curved border than the woman's paddle (lah-dic-ell- t'ass), which was shorter and broader and rather more gracefully curved as to the border and edge. While the men customarily use their own paddles and the women their own, yet in race canoes or war canoes, or in large craft manned by a num- ber of braves and where speed is desired, the shorter and broader woman's paddle is almost universally used. In addition to the paddle most of the canoes, especially the larger ones, are pro- vided forward near the first thwart with step or chock for a light mast which usually carries a

India

Sainomest Indian

Reservation

ON THE TULALIP AND SWINOMISII INDIAN RESERVATIONS

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX

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THE INDIANS

square or spritsail to be used in sailing before the wind. It is well-nigh impossible to indulge in either beating or tacking, for the canoes have no keels and, because of their smooth and broadly rounded bottoms, any attempt to beat results in slipping away rapidly to leeward.

To the uninitiated it seems almost border- ing on witchery to see an old Indian seated in the stern of his light canoe, troll trailing astern, con- tinually paddling on one side of the canoe only and yet going straight ahead in a relatively straight line, when, apparently, by all the can- nons of kinetics he should be traveling in a beautiful circle. The manner of effecting this is very simple indeed and consists solely in trailing the paddle rudder-fashion after every couple of strokes and thereby correcting the natural ten- dency of the craft to turn in response to an impulse continually directed from one side.

There is also another method of paddling used by hunters or others when it is desirable to mask all the sound made by the paddle. To accomplish this the blade is kept continually in the water and its motion is directed as though cutting figures of eight. All noise from rippling or the dipping of water from the uplifted paddle is avoided and the craft is forged slowly and silently ahead upon the unsuspecting quarry much as a propeller would supply motive power.

While the canoe is necessarily a tricky and unstable craft, yet its stability, when properly handled, even under adverse stress of wind and weather, is something remarkable. Nevertheless travel in rough and stormy weather is avoided as far as it is possible to do so.

No celebration of any magnitude on Puget sound is considered altogether complete if it has not down on the programme an Indian canoe race -and, indeed, even a "kloochman race," klooch- man being the Chinook word for woman. Thus often may the original American be seen enthu- siastically celebrating the birthday of the nation of his supplanter and benefactor. The model of the race canoe is generally the same as that of the ordinary Chinook canoe (or ah-oh-tuss), except that, as becomes a racer, they are more slender, light, clean and well trimmed-indeed the racer craft is so very suggestive of speed and a fine blooded and well groomed race horse that it could be easily picked out on sight. The lines which are graceful and light in the extreme, themselves speak of the swiftness which they give to the canoe. The racers are fashioned with infinite care, pride and labor, and the hull is worked at inside and out until it remains but the merest shell of cedar wood. They are exceedingly unsteady, however, and the marvel is that they can be kept right side up long enough to complete a most exciting race with eleven strong, swarthy and brawny braves, com- pletely carried away by their enthusiasm and fairly leaping in their seats in the earnestness of their effort to force the frail form through the

resisting tide. As the slender craft, is urged along with incredible swiftness it is not by any means unlike a huge, black marine monster cran- ing its head as it flies over the water-and the fantastically carven prow does not serve to dispel any such illusion. In a race recently held over a three-mile course, the winning crew ran at the rate of three miles in nine minutes, or twenty miles an hour, a rate which would indicate speed even in a steamboat.

In the great majority of races the course is not straight away, but go and return, rounding some stake boat and then coming back again to the point of starting. Many such races are won by means of the very trick which Ben H ir played so successfully in the famous chariot race in Gen- eral Wallace's excellent novel. Indeed the fine Tulalip race canoe was built especially for just such a trick. As might be imagined, a craft of such length (the Tulalip canoe is forty-four feet long), though it may be remarkably agile and swift in running straight ahead, would from its very length, find much impediment in making a quick, sudden or close turn or other similar man- euver. Noticing and appreciating this difficulty, it was very properly conceived that such a weak- ness might be largely overcome by cutting away the bottom of the canoe fore and aft and leaving it much deeper in the center than at either end. When made in this fashion, the canoe in turning is practically pivoted on its center and is enabled to come about with remarkable facility. With such a canoe and by just such means as were used by Ben Hur, the Tulalip crew was enabled in a Fourth of July race in Seattle, some years ago, to beat the famous crack crew from Victoria, B. C., much to the surprise of the former and to the disgust of the latter.

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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 86

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