USA > Washington > History of Washington the evergreen state : from early dawn to daylight with portraits and biographies Vol. I > Part 21
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64
The Indians of Klamath Lake at one time burned their dead chiefs and their living slaves with them.
There is much of romantic suggestion in the fact that the Indians of the Northwest believed that there was some mystic influence connected with the wild rosebush, whose perfume, so exquisite to the living, they imagined most offensive to the dead ; hence their use of it to drive away the ghosts of the de- parted. They placed these rosebushes about the beds of their sick and dying, that the spirits might tangle and wound them- selves with their thorns, and so be driven from those whom they were striving to win and beckon away to join them in the silent land. The Indian dreads and avoids the grave even of his dear- est friend, ghosts and spirits being about them, especially at that midnight hour when we are told
' That churchyards yawn,
And graves give up their dead."
Brave, indeed, would be the squaw who could be induced dur- ing the hours of darkness to visit or even pass by the resting- places of those silent sleepers. Should she be obliged to do so while carrying her babe, she does it with infinite dread, and sur- rounds the papoose-board on which her infant rests with the wild rosebushes already mentioned, to fright away the spirits, whom they believe have a particular love and affinity for these little ones, and are always on the watch, striving to snatch away their souls and bear them to the unseen land.
" Neither salmon nor berries may be eaten after touching a
R.Dutchinson
333
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
corpse without five days of previous purification ;" consequently the dead are only handled by persons supposed to be specially ghost-proof, a guild of spiritual undertakers. Should the eyes of the corpse remain open, the spirit is looking back upon some member of its family doomed erelong to follow it. The lodge in which the soul departed is speedily torn down, lest the spirit should linger there, thus realizing the thought of Longfellow's exquisite poem, which tells us that
" All houses wherein men have lived and died Are haunted houses."
If a camp-fire be built "over the grave of the dead or where blood has been spilt by murder, it is believed that the apparition of the deceased will appear in the flame and cast its shadow beside the fire upon the earth.
" At a funeral, if anything is dropped, though it be but a hair, they imagine that the individual who drops it will soon sicken and die. They never look back on leaving a graveyard or point to a grave; it is an insult to the dead which their ghosts will surely resent. Should an Indian accidentally sleep where some one has been buried or died, the ghosts will draw his mouth or eye to one side. The effects of facial paralysis are thus ac- counted for. They have a generic name for such maladies, called, as translated from the Klikitas tongue, " the ghost dis- ease."
The historian to whose research and erudition we are so deeply indebted, Dr. Kuykendall, very wisely suggests that our own superstitions and weaknesses can hardly afford to point the finger of derision at those of these densely ignorant aborigines.
Antiquity called the radiant orbs which roll in the fields of illimitable space after their gods and goddesses and even the lower animals, and the astrologer of to-day talks of their occult influences over human lives and fortunes. Indeed, unless his- tory belie him, the great Napoleon himself was a firm believer in signs that bore upon his fate for good or evil. The " sun of Austerlitz" was not more potent in his imagination than the malign or fortunate agencies of the new moon, as it may be seen over the right or left shoulder of the beholder, is to many a man counted wise by the generation of to-day.
So much for the Indian of the past ; we will devote our next
334
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
chapter to the Washington Indian of to-day, premising that, as it narrates occurrences fresh from the pen of a most intelligent observer, it will be found both entertaining and instructive, most original withal, for a " give-away party" of all one has on earth, while still in the land of the living, is to the white man at least a thing hitherto unknown.
CHAPTER XX.
WASHINGTON INDIANS OF TO-DAY-PATSY, THE POTLACH-GIVER.
" ' Bis dat qui cito dat,' he sings, Who in Italia dwells. ' He giveth twice who quickly gives,' As our translation tells.
Poor Patsy's ' potlach' party done, Behold him stripped of all
The wealth by years of labor won, Scattered beyond recall.
Yet most ungrudgingly he yields To kith and kin his store,
Who thankless take each proffered gift, Then hasten from the shore. And while with paddles deftly plied Their homeward way they wend,
The ' potlach' giver only fears Lest he forgot some friend."
- BREWERTON.
THE following is Judge James Wickersham's interesting de- scription of a Toanhooch Indian Potlach, as read before the Academy of Science :
" The word 'potlach' in the Chinook means a gift ; 'cultus potlach ' means that something is given that is of no conse- quence or not valuable ; but the real idea expressed in speaking of a ' potlach'-without qualification-is of a great meeting of the friends of some Indian who has accumulated Indian wealth, and who will, at such gathering, after the proper religious and other ceremonies, give away all his possessions-stripping him- self and family in one hour of a fortune won by years of hard work and economy-out Bellamying-Bellamy, and practically illustrating the scriptural injunction that it is better to give than to receive. With this general idea of a 'potlach' in my mind, and in obedience to the expressed wish of the Washington His- torical Society, I undertook to attend a 'potlach' announced
336
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
far and near by the 'Boston man's' papers to take place at Port Hadlock, on Port Townsend Bay, July 4th, 1891. Just across the bay from Port Hadlock, probably a quarter of a mile away, we could see the white cloth roof of the low, long building erected by Patsy, the wealthy potlach-giver, for the uses of his friends, and under the roof of which the ceremonies would take place. Down the bay could be seen coming potlachward many canoes loaded with aborigines from Skagit, Snoqualmie, Skoko- mish, Port Madison, Neah Bay, and even from Quillayute, Quinalt, and " Kaouk," or Lake of the Sun, on the Pacific Coast. At dark the opening ceremonies were to take place, and while the Indian is slow, dignified, and quiet, while he is reserved and stoical, yet he is fond of ceremony, and will make every effort to be present at the opening of every great pow-wow. By dark on the evening of the 3d, fully five hundred Indians were camped in and around the potlach grounds. As the sun descended behind the Olympics its last rays, falling across the waters of this beautiful bay, lit up a scene truly barbaric. Upon the beach, pulled high above the tide, were the great war canoes of the coast tribes, as well as the smaller but equally well made and gaudily painted 'canims' of the Sound Indians. On a grassy spot of about two acres in extent and not more than ten feet above the 'salt-chuck,' Patsy, the potlach-giver, had erected of old boards and refuse lumber a building one hundred feet long by forty wide, and had covered the entire structure with thin white cloth purchased at the Hadlock mill store. The balance of the open space was filled with tents and every variety of Indian shelter. The whole space was crowded with a moving throng of Indians, talking and shouting, with many motions and much excitement, carrying their property of every description from their canoes to their temporary homes, and all engaged in getting their quarters into proper shape for the night and the coming ceremonies.
"Patsy, the potlach-giver, went around among the arrivals and distributed stores of crackers and other eatables, so that every person present was supplied with food and shelter. After a hearty supper, everybody, including the 'Boston' present, gathered in the great potlach house. A door at each end gave entrance and exit. There was no window, and no necessity for one, as the nature of the roof afforded a light equal to that out-
John Beverly
339
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
side in the daytime, the whole building being lighted at night by coal-oil lamps fastened to great posts down the centre of the room. On either side, the full length of the building, a shelf- like platform had been built about two feet high and four feet wide, and upon this reclined all these five hundred Indians, clothed in their many-colored and ill-fitting garments and smell- ing of fish, good, bad, and indifferent, but especially indifferent. Patsy, the giver of feasts, the open-hearted potlach-giver, is a native of the Skokomish country, and was born on the portage between North Bay and Hood's Canal. His Indian name is 'Shupald.' He is a heavy-set man, bow-legged and fishy, and wears an old cap, heavy brogans, brown and very greasy over- alls, a checkered shirt, and a cast-off coat of ancient pattern, with a bright handkerchief around his neck, a stubby beard, a flat nose, broad face, thick lips, and black, beady eyes, with a complexion originally bronze, but colored and grimed with the smoke of full sixty years-a sketch which completes a rather flattering picture of the host of the evening.
" It was whispered that part of the ceremonies in the next two days would be the binding in marriage to Patsy of the new wives, the daughters of Snohomish ; but the Prince of Wales, the head of the noble House of York, who sports brass buttons and represents the whole dignity of the United States Government by his appointment on the Indian police force, assured inquirers that no polygamous marriages were allowed by him ; that in the past, in ' Ahncutty,' in good old days the giver of feasts, at the ceremonies of the ' potlach,' would take new wives ; but a vulgar prejudice on the part of the Indian agent now prevents this old custom. 'Aunt Sally ' is the Boston name for Shupald's wife. She is an ancient Klootchman, pierced-nosed, flat-headed, and frowsy, and born Squaxinward, many, many years ago. A great cub of a son, heir to Shupald's honor, completes the family that is for the time the centre of attraction, the potlach-givers, the most aristocratic of Twana aristocrats. The Siwash four hundred are gathered in the great hall, and a Snohomish brave advances to the centre of the room and announces in a loud voice the opening ceremonies. He speaks of the coming potlach, of the goodness of Shupald, of his wealth and the glory that he obtains by giving in potlach. He then turns Snohomishward, and many an Indian face streamed with tears as he spoke of the
340
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
great gatherings of their fathers, of the times that would never return, of the departed glory of their race, of the dwindling tribes, and the fading away of their olden customs.
" He then announced that the Snohomish people would enter- tain the assembly by exercises, and at once proceeded to call out in a loud voice the words of songs. Slowly, laboriously, and coldly the Snohomish joined in the guttural song, keeping time by walking and leaping around the room. A verse would be announced by the leader during a moment of silence and wait- ing, which would at once be taken up by the tribe and sung three times over, and ending with a general squatting motion and a loud ' ho.' At an opportune moment the leader would again recount the glories of the tribe, and this Snohomish enter- tainment went on in this way until a late hour at night. When we saw the last, the dance was in the dizziest whirl, and loud rose the voices of the dancers, while the raised platform along the sides of the 'rancherie' were lined with sleeping forms that even excitement and the traditions of the ' Snoho' people had not kept awake.
GIVING AWAY HIS SUBSTANCE.
" On the morning of the Fourth the throng gathered again in the banquet hall, and Patsy-Shupald-the potlach-giver, divided boxes of eatables, crackers, and other prepared foods of 'Bos- ton' manufacture among his friends. They were seated around the hall, silent and grave ; the host's assistants were carrying the loaded boxes in from the storehouse, and while some were break- ing them open, Patsy, with pride and happiness fairly beam- ing upon his face, was engaged in handing out to others their contents, who distributed them, laying each gift at the feet of the person for whom it was intended, informing him that it was from Shupald. That 'it is better to give than to receive ' is fully exemplified by these unorthodox Siwash, for so little do they think of the receipt of potlach valuables, that they take it as a matter of course, and utter no word of thanks, while to the giver lifelong credit attaches.
" Late in the evening the Indians began to congregate upon the potlach ground from the Boston man's Fourth of July festivi-
341
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
ties, and when we crossed the bay at dark to the camp every- thing was excitement in anticipation of the event of the season. All Siwashdom, the entire four hundred, would hold a great ball in the potlach house, given by the Clallam people, and it was expected to be the grandest for many years.
" The dance began early in the evening, and between the songs and the dances different old Indians made speeches in their native tongue of a character to excite the dancers all the more. The glories of the Clallam nation were recounted ; the daring of Makah whale-hunters, of Quilla-ayute elk-slayers, of Snohomish salmon-catchers, and of the various feats of daring performed by various individual members of their tribe were retold to an interested and thoroughly appreciative audience. The dancing waxed faster and the music louder as the songs and oft-repeated tales warmed the blood of the listeners. The Siwash audience applauded each new song, and shouted with pride at every tale of glory.
" Of the dancers, about one third were women ranged in a line up and down the hall on the south side, while the men occupied the centre. They danced backward and forward, lengthwise of the hall, and as the stories grew louder and the songs more fre- quent, the dancing became more animated. Guns, paddles, spears, and war clubs were waved in the air by the fur-covered aborigines, who danced rapidly from one foot to another, while occupying positions with their arms above their heads, and every power of lung exerted in song or in shouts of approval and triumph. The row of blanket-covered Klootchmen, with flying feathery white hair and faces streaming with perspiration, rap- idly dancing backward and forward, up and down the length of the hundred-foot ' potlach' hall, filled to the roof on either side by the crowd of gayly colored and highly excited Indians, made indeed a barbaric scene. Decrepit old hags, toothless and bent with years of clam-digging, became young and vigorous under the inspiration of the occasion, and danced like howling demons, flying from end to end of the great hall as though age and rheumatism of sixty years of tent life had not touched them. Old men, aged and gray, straightened and danced with the suppleness of youth, and as the music grew louder and the dance faster their voices grew stronger, and possibly never in
342
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
Clallamdom had a more thoroughly Indian dance been danced or an Indian song been sung.
THE POTLACH PROPER.
" Bright and early on Sunday morning the ' potlach ' proper began. All else had been ceremony-social, religious, and patri- otic ; but the purpose of the assemblage was the ' potlach,' which now began. The entire multitude was gathered in the house, and quietness and peace ruled the hour. The visitors had per- formed their part, and now merely waited for Shupald to do his. At the west end of the hall boxes and packages were being broken open and the contents arranged on the floor by Shupald and his friend, ' Skokomish Jim,' Di-Dah-Quah. Great bolts of calico of the hues so pleasing to the Indian eye were being unrolled and cut into lengths sufficient for a dress by the Indian women. Upon a motion from Shupald, Sally, the frowsy, the aristocratic wife, who smelled of fish and various other things, was loaded with strips of calico about six yards long, of all colors and varieties. They put as many pieces of cloth across her arm as she could conveniently manage, and she started down the hall, distributing the cloth to every female in the house. The crisp, new calico dragged in a long trail behind her, and she continued to load her left arm and drag the cloth around the room until every Klootchman had received a dress, and thus dis- tributing more than fifteen hundred yards of new calico to the friends of her husband, Patsy, the noble Shupald, the potlach- giver. Many baskets and other feminine trinkets were also dis- tributed by Sally. During the time of the distribution of the calico Patsy stood amid the packages of goods and spoke to the people ; he told them how much he loved his friends, and spoke particularly of many with whom he had been raised ; and when he referred to his age and numerous friends who were dead, and of the possibility that he would never again meet those who were present at a potlach, he broke down and cried, and many an old Indian around the room showed equal signs of feeling and sympathy. A fitting reply was made to Patsy's speech by an Indian, who was applauded when he spoke of Patsy's gener- osity and of the honor due him for giving the potlach.
" After distributing the calico and other feminine trinkets, the
Engam F G Kernar NY
& Alexander
345
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
' chickamin potlach ' took place-in other words, Patsy's money was distributed. The money was entirely in silver, and the bags containing it were carried into the centre of the room and it was poured out on the floor. Patsy's son furnished about one third of the money, and from the interest that Aunt Sally exhibited in this part of the ceremony, it was quite clear to my mind that she, too, had assisted in gathering the purse. These three squatted around the pile and, assisted by the " Prince of Wales," sorted the money into various little heaps. After consultation a sum-say two dollars-would be handed to Di-Dah-Quah, the master of ceremonies, who would rise on his toes and hold the money at arm's length above his head and call out the name of the person for whom it was intended. A carrier would then re- ceive the money and take it to the person named, who would slip it in his pocket without a word of thanks or otherwise. Slowly and carefully the whole of Patsy's money was distributed in this way to his friends, and by two o'clock in the afternoon no one was so poor as Patsy. The saving of a lifetime had been potlached to his friends. About two thousand dollars in cash had been given away in one day, and his entire worldly posses- sions now consisted of his family and the clothes upon his back. But he had gained social distinction. He was the Ward McAl- lister of the Siwash Four Hundred ; of the select, the selectest ; of the blue-blooded, the bluest. He now sailed upon the top- most crest of the social wave, and was the envy of all, save possibly some degenerated Siwash that had learned that money among the 'Bostons' counted for more than social distinction among the Siwash.
" The moment the last dollar was potlached the meeting broke up and everybody hastened to load the canoes for departure. Some of the young men quickly stripped the white cloth roof from the house, the tents were pulled down, and all the 'iktas' kids and cats were hastily packed into the canoes, and soon the entire assemblage was homeward bound. Aunt Sally, however, lingered. After the last canoe had pushed off she entered the banquet hall, now deserted and roofless, and struck up a wild Indian song in glory of Patsy, the potlach-giver, and accom- panied her loud, cracked voice by beating upon a board. Quickly we gathered around and assisted the old lady to the best of our ability in the performance. For a short time she continued to
346
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
sing and dance and then subsided, and the potlach was ended."
Who shall say, after reading Judge Wickersham's graphic account of the potlach party, that the Indian is degenerate ? If the Vanderbilts and Astors of to-day were to follow so laudable an example, what scribe would not be pleased to sit an honored guest at so generous a feast ?
CONTINUED IN VOLUME II.
BIOGRAPHICAL.
INTRODUCTION.
THE mass of biographical matter with which some unthinking critics may be disposed to consider our historical text unduly encumbered has a deeper mean- ing than might at first sight appear. It is neither wanting in utility nor question- able in taste to blend these humble logs of life's every-day, commonplace voyages with the grander story of the birth, struggles, rise, and progress of the sovereign State whose history we have followed. As for these recorded lives, whether its subject be a simple farmer, learned judge, or accomplished professional, the out- come of the workshop or the ripened brain fruit of academic training, each and all are but units in the sum total of Washington's success-a factor more or less important in the founding and upbuilding, morally and politically, of its newly born commonwealth, none so poor or unfruitful as not to become a teacher to those who scan her progress aright, nor yet any so apparently prolific in success as to discourage emulation. They have a common lesson, each in its way bear- ing evidences of earnest struggle, of difficulties overcome, obstacles ignored or even turned into elements of final triumph by victories hard wrung from adverse circumstance. It may be objected that these personal narratives are oppressive in their sameness-a prairie land, so to speak, of dreary, monotonous flatness unrelieved by striking incidents, and only here and there diversified by eminences of legislative, judicial, or professional celebrities, occurring so few and far be- tween as only to enhance its general wearisomeness and render it more notice- able. The majority of our subjects are, as will be perceived almost at a glance, farmers, men of small beginnings, stock-raisers, lumbermen, merchants, or traders, whose story runs somewhat as follows : A common school education in the Eastern or Middle States, necessarily limited by their surroundings, followed by apprenticeship to some trade or even harder labor in the paternal fields ; then come years of wanderings, object lessons in the stern and bitter school of daily experience ; a journey across the plains ; unwritten dangers, privations, and migra- tions ; then settlement in Washington Territory ; the taking up of a claim ; the battle with the wilderness ; the breaking of the virgin prairie, or yet more difficult assault upon the primitive forest-all resulting after years of toil in the acquisition of that financial independence which is the hope and ultimate crown of that unconquerable effort, so peculiarly American, that goes to prove the true and unquestionable manhood of him who exercises it. Let none call these lives useless, or attempt to confine their influence to the individuals in question. What constitutes a State, in the truest acceptation of the term, if it be not the
348
HISTORY OF WASHINGTON.
existence and presence of such as these, the pith and marrow, the bone and sinew of every land ? And braided with and inseparable from them in the unity of usefulness are those more highly favored ones who entered the arena full armed, Minerva-like, springing from the Jovian brain of Education to adorn the bench, the legislature, or some field of professional research, each in his or her place- for to her pioneer woman the State of Washington owes as much, or more, than to her men as set in the order of Almighty Providence working and " building far better than they then knew," for though apparently only striving for self, they were in reality laying the foundations and raising the pillars upon which in the years to come was to rise the superstructure of this glorious " Evergreen State." What, then, have they wrought ? Our answer must be but a repetition of that made to him who, lost amid the grandeur of St. Paul's Cathedral, looks about among the crowded testimonials to departed worth and genius, in vain for that dedicated to its builder, but finally discovers the inscription, " If you ask his monument, look around you and see." Look about you, then, if you would behold inscribed upon the face of nature, as she stands regenerated from the savagery of the wilderness, the story of these hardy pioneers. They speak to you in smiling homes, in fields ripe to harvest, in the hum of busy cities, in the white sails dotting the placid waters of Puget Sound, in the temples of trade and the spires that point heavenward, in the laden orchard trees, the clustering hops, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. And not only in these material things, but in the voice of eloquence, the wise and just exposition and application of law, the elaboration of an educational system which offers to the child of the poorest settler far greater advantages than their fathers ever enjoyed. All these and many more are born of such lives and experiences as you will find recorded here -evidences of success and monuments of encouragement to those just putting on the armor of life's battle, weapons welded and annealed in the furnace of humble endeavor and patient endurance by those who are about laying it aside forever, but whose example will live after them to strengthen the hearts of strivers still unborn, and leave their impress upon generations yet to be. Who, then, but the superficial observer shall dare to declare that these life histories are less valuable than the record of the State planted by their courage, wisdom, and determination on the shores of this Northwestern coast-lives which are not an external, but an integer and inseparable part of the State itself, for they grew up together, as intimately associated as the grain, the blade, and the tasselled ear in the ripened corn.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.