USA > Washington > Spokane County > Spokane > History of the city of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington : from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume I > Part 18
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ous dimensions. It is excellent, especially when boiled with meat; if kept dry, it can be preserved a long time."
Throughout the forested sections of the Spokane country the Indian, when re- duced to famine in springtime, resorted to pine moss. M. M. Cowley informed the editor that he often saw the Spokanes make use of this poor substitute, after he came into the valley in 1872. DeSmet thus describes its use: "It is a parasite of the pine, a tree common in these latitudes, and hangs from its boughs in great quantities. It appears more suitable for mattresses, than for the sustenance of human life. When they have procured a great quantity, they pick out all hetero- geneons substance. and prepare it as they do the camash: it becomes compact, and is, in my opinion, a most miserable food, which, in a brief space, reduces those who live on it to a pitiable state of emaciation."
Over a period of nearly two years we find this intrepid missionary ranging the vast wilderness around the sources of the Columbia, the Missouri. the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca. at times bearing the gospel and the eross to the very sources of the great river of the west. "The tradition of man's creation and future immor- tality," he writes from the "Fort of the Mountains," October 30, 1845, "exists among most of the Indian tribes: I have had the opportunity of visiting and questioning them on the subject. Those who live by fishery, suppose their Heaven to be full of lakes and rivers. abounding in fish, whose enchanted shores and verdant islands produce fruits of every kind."
Much of this trying and perilous period he passed among the fierce and blood- thirsty Blackfeet. "I encamped (he writes in the same letter) on the banks of two lakes to the east of the Rocky mountains, which the Blackfeet call the Lake of Men and the Lake of Women. According to their traditions, from the first of these issued a band of young men, handsome and vigorous, but poor and naked. From the second, an equal number of ingenious and industrious young women, who eon- structed and made themselves clothing. They lived a long time, separate and un- known to each other, until the great Manitou Wizakeschak, or the old man (still in- voked by the Blackfeet) visited them; he taught them to slay animals in the chase. but they were yet ignorant of the art of dressing skins. Wizakeschak conducted them to the dwelling of the young women, who received their guests with danees and eries of joy. Shoes, leggins, shirts and robes, garnished with porcupine quills, were presented them. Each young woman selected her guest. and presented him with a dish of seeds and roots; the men, desiring to contribute to the entertainment, sought the chase and returned loaded with game. The women liked the meat, and admired the strength, skill and bravery of the hunters. The men were equally delighted with the beauty of their trappings, and admired the industry of the women. Both parties began to think they were necessary to each other, and Wizakeschak presided at the solemn compact in which it was agreed that the men should become the protectors of the women, and provide all necessaries for their support; whilst all other family cares should devolve upon the women."
DeSmet drolly adds that "the Blackfeet squaws often bitterly complain of the astonishing folly of their mothers in accepting such a proposition : deelaring, if the compact were yet to be made, they would arrange it in a very different manner.
"The Blackfoot heaven is a country of sandy hills, which they call Espatchekie, whither the soul goes after death, and where they will find again all the animals
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they have killed, and all the horses they have stolen. The buffalo, hind and stag abound there. In speaking of the departed, a Blackfoot never says such a one is dead, but 'Espatchekie etake,'-to the Sand hills he is gone."
Is it only coincidence that the Japanese have a tradition closely resembling the Blackfoot myth of the origin of the family relation?
A year later, in 1846, Father DeSmet is found traversing the expansive prairies that now support the thriving eities of Calgary and Edmonton. With prophetie vision he thus writes of the potential resources of the broad region lying between Walla Walla and Edmonton:
"Are these vast and innumerable fields of hay forever destined to be consumed by fire, or perish in the autumnal snows? How long shall these superb forests be the haunts of wild beasts? And these inexhaustible quarries, these abundant mines of coal, lead, sulphur, iron, copper and saltpetre-can it be that they are doomed to remain forever inactive? Not so-the day will come when some laboring hand will give them value: a strong, active and enterprising people are destined to fill this spacious void .- The wild beasts will, ere long, give place to our domestic animals ; floeks and herds will graze in the beautiful meadows that border the numberless mountains, hills, valleys and plains of this extensive region."
In letters from "Boat Encampment on the Columbia," May 10, 1846, and "St. Paul's Station near Colville," May 29, 1846, the missionary gives us a lively, cheer- ful and at times humorous narrative of a remarkable journey he had just completed, by way of the historie route of the fur traders, from the headwaters of the Atha- basca to navigable water on the Columbia. Boat Encampment is at the extreme northern point of the upper big bend of the Columbia, where the Canoe and Little Canoe enter the larger river. At this point, in 1809, David Thompson, explorer and astronomer for the Northwestern Fur company, paused to build eanoes for his descent of the Columbia, the first white man to explore the great river from that point to the mouth of Snake river. It was long a noted stopping place on the upper Columbia, where horses or snowshoes were exchanged for canoes or bateaux, or navigation ended and the land journey begun, as the case might be.
"We had now (says DeSmet) seventy miles to travel on snowshoes. in order to reach the Boat Encampment on the banks of the Columbia. We proposed to ac- complish this in two days and a half. The most worthy and excellent Messrs. Rowan and Harriot, whose kindness at the Rocky mountain house and Fort Au- gustus I shall ever acknowledge, were of opinion that it was absolutely impossible for me to accomplish the journey. However, I thought I could remedy the ineon- venience of my surplus stock, by a vigorous fast of thirty days, which I cheerfully underwent. I found myself much lighter, indeed, and started off somewhat en- couraged over snow sixteen feet deep. We went in single file,-alternately ascend- ing and descending-sometimes across plains piled up with avalanches-sometimes over lakes and rapids buried deeply under the snow,-now on the side of a deep mountain-then across a forest of eypress trees, of which we could only see the tops. I ean not tell you the number of my summersets. I continually found myself em- barrassed by my snowshoes, or entangled in some branch of a tree. When falling. 1 spread my arms before me, as one naturally would do, to break the violence of the fall; and upon deep snow the danger is not great,-though I was often half buried, Vol. 1-9
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when I required the assistance of my companions, which was always attended with great kindness and good humor."
In this manner thirty miles were made the first day, and the party encamped near the summit. "Some pine trees were cut down and stripped of their branches, and these being laid on the snow, furnished us with a bed, whilst a fire was lighted on a floor of green logs." Every one who has traveled primitively in these north- western solitudes, and has carried to the toil a genuine love of nature, can appre- ciate the missionary's revery :
"To sleep thus-under the beautiful canopy of the starry heavens-in the midst of lofty and steep mountains-among sweet murmuring rills and roaring torrents- may appear strange to you, and to all lovers of rooms rendered comfortable by stoves and feathers; but you may think differently after having come and breathed the pure air of the mountains, where in return, coughs and colds are unknown. Come and make a trial, and you will say that it is easy to forget the fatigues of a long march, and find contentment and joy. even upon the spread branches of pines, on which, after the Indian fashion, we extended ourselves and slept, wrapped up in buffalo robes."
Only a soul imbued with a profound and abiding love of nature, and sustained by deep faith in God's infinite wisdom and merey, could express sentiments so beautiful and lofty after enduring the dreadful hardships that befell Father DeSmet the day following:
"At the foot of the mountain an obstacle of a new kind presented itself. All the barriers of snow, the innumerable banks, which had stopped the water of the streams, lakes and torrents, were broken up during the night, and swelled consider- ably the great Portage river (the Little Canoe). It meanders so remarkably in this straight valley. down which we traveled for a day and a half, that we were com- pelled to cross it not less than forty times, with the water frequently up to our shoulders. So great is its impetuosity, that we were obliged mutually to support ourselves, to prevent being carried away by the current. We marched in our wet clothes during the rest of our sad route. The long soaking, joined to my great fa- tigue, swelled my limbs. All the nails of my feet ean off, and the blood stained my moccasins. Four times I found my strength gone, and I certainly should have perished in that frightful region, if the courage and strength of my companions had not roused and aided me in my distress."
DeSmet describes an interesting eustom. His party came over the Portage in May, and "saw Maypoles all along the old encampments. Each traveler who passes there for the first time selects his own. A young Canadian, with much kind- ness, dedicated one to me, which was at least 120 feet in height, and which reared its lofty head above all the neighboring trees. Did I deserve it? He stripped it of all its branches, only leaving at the top a little crown; at the bottom my name and the date of the transit were written."
"After so many labors and dangers," continues the missionary. "we deserved a repast. Happily, we found at the Encampment all the ingredients that were necessary for a feast a bag of flour, a large ham, part of a reindeer, cheese, sugar and tea in abundance, which the gentlemen of the English company had charitably left behind. While some were employed refitting the barge, others prepared the dinner; and in about an hour we found ourselves snugly seated and stretched out
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around the kettles and roasts, laughing and joking about the summersets on the mountains, and the aeeidents on the Portage. I need not tell you that they de- scribed me as the most elumsy and awkward traveler in the band."
From St. Paul's station, near Colville, Father DeSmet penned a continuation of this interesting narrative. After the feast which he has just deseribed, the party launehed the barge and shot rapidly down the swollen eurrent of the Colum- bia. "Guided by an expert Iroquois pilot, and aided with ten oars, the boat darted over the boisterous surface" of Martin's rapids, and at sunset they were at the Dalle of the Dead, where "the waters are compressed between a range of perpen- dieular roeks, presenting innumerable erags, fissures and eliffs, through which the Columbia leaps with irresistible impetuosity, forming, as it dashes along, frightful whirlpools, where every passing objeet is swallowed and disappears." . By means of two long ropes, the barge was lowered through this frightful trough, and the party eneamped for the night at its foot. For details of the tragie ineident which imparted to this streteh of the river a name so sad and shoeking, the reader is di- reeted to the chapter wherein an aeeount is given by Ross Cox of the disastrous fate which befell a party that turned baek from the mouth of the Canoe river in 1817.
May Il the party resumed its voyage at early dawn, and that evening eneamped at the entrance to Upper Arrow lake (an extended dilation of the Columbia river).
"This beautiful sheet of erystalline water, whilst the rising sun was tinting the tops of a thousand hills around, eame most refreshing to the eye. It is about thirty miles long, by four or five wide. Its borders are embellished by overhanging preei- piees and majestie peaks, which, rearing their white heads above the elouds, look down like venerable monarchs of the desert upon the great forests of pines and eedar surrounding the lake. The two highest peaks are ealled St. Peter and St. Paul."
Here the father found twenty Indian families, belonging to the mission of St. Paul, eneamped on the shore of the lake, and gladly aeeepted their pressing invi- tation to visit them. "It was the meeting of a father with his children, after ten months of absenee and dangers," wrote the priest, adding a belief that "the joy was mutually sineere. The greater part of the tribe had been converted the past year at Kettle Falls. These families were absent at that time. I passed, there- fore, several days among them, to instruet them in the duties and practices of religion. They then received baptism, with all the marks of sincere piety and gratitude. Gregory, the name of their chief. who had not eeased to exhort his people by word and example, had the happiness to receive baptism in 1838, from the hands of the Rev. Mr .. now Archbishop, Blanehet. The worthy and respectable chief was now at the height of his joy, in seeing at last all his children brought under the standard of Jesus Christ. The tribe of these lake Indians are a part of the Kettle Fall nation. They are very poor, and subsist principally on fish and wild roots. As soon as we shall have more means at our disposal, we will supply them with implements of husbandry and with various seeds and roots, which, I have no doubt, will thrive well in their country."
With no desire to draw invidious comparison, but as a direet historieal state- ment, the faet is conspicuous that the Catholie missionaries adopted and main- tained, from the beginning, a theory and an attitude differing fundamentally from
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those which controlled and animated the Protestants. Freely and almost without reserve, they admitted into full communion their Indian converts, dispensing, with unstinted hand the sacraments of the Roman church, and carefully avoiding an appearance of patronage or an air of superiority. Better had it been if Whitman, Spalding, Walker and Eells had been less exacting in theological standards (as distinet from morals) ; had relaxed their austere New England doetrines, and adopted towards their untutored wards a bearing of eloser brotherhood, instead of maintaining, down to the very close of their missions, a policy of holding them under probation or tutelage. As the years rolled by, and the Cayuses saw them- selves permanently denied full communion, a spirit of sullen resentment developed ; and the belief intensified that they were being exploited in a commercial spirit, and the missionaries were only fore-runners of an immigration that threatened the very existence of the Indian tribes.
Explanatory of the origin of the name, Arrow lake, the author recalls the put- ting forward, a few years ago, by a contributor to a Spokane newspaper, of an erroneous theory that the first white men to pass through that region heard an Indian legend. that the Great Spirit, while hunting one day, had emptied into these lakes his quiver of gigantie arrows ; and in substantiation of this fantastie idea, huge shafts of the forest. stripped clean of limbs and silvered with years of weather, imbedded in the lake bottom and leaning at a sharp angle above the surface of the water, were shown in proof of the truth of the legend. Father DeSmet gives the true origin of the name:
"We passed under a perpendicular roek, where we beheld an innumerable num- ber of arrows stieking out of the fissures. The Indians, when they ascend the lake, have a custom of lodging each an arrow into these ereviees."
In his "Fur Hunters," Alexander Ross writes of rude paintings in red upon a smooth and perpendicular roek on the shore of the lower lake. Against these paint- ings, says that author, Indians passing below in their canoes shot arrows in a spirit of defiance against a neighboring warring tribe. From the make of these arrows the natives could tell what tribes had recently passed.
Passing through the Arrow lakes, and floating on the swift current of the Col- umbia, the missionary came to the Little Dalles. "Our barge was in great danger in the Dalle, some miles above Colville," he writes. "I had left it, to go on foot, to avoid the dangerous passage. The young boatmen, notwithstanding my remon- stranees, thought they could pass in safety. A whirlpool suddenly arrested their course, and threatened to bury them beneath its angry waters. Their redoubled efforts proved ineffectual,-I saw them borne on with an irresistible foree to the engulfing eenter -- the bow of the boat deseended already into the abyss and filled. I was on my knees upon the rock which overhung this frightful spectacle, sur- rounded by several Indians ;- we implored the aid of heaven in favor of our poor comrades-they seemed to be evidently lost-when the whirlpool filled, and threw them from its bosom. as it reluctantly yielded up the prey which it had so tena- ciously held. We all gave heartfelt thanks to Almighty God for having delivered them from a danger so imminent."
At this point in his narrative the missionary digresses into a comprehensive deseription of the surrounding country: "The mouth of the river MeGillivray. or Flatbow (the Kootenai of the present day). is near the outlet of the lower lake.
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It presents a beautiful situation for the establishment of a future reduetion or mission, and I have already marked out a site for the construction of a ehureh. About twenty miles lower we passed the Flathead or Clark's river (the Pend d'Oreille), which contributes largely to the Columbia. These two beautiful rivers derive a great portion of their waters from the same chain of the Rocky mountains from which a great number of the forks of the Saskatchewan and of the Missouri are supplied. For a distance of about thirty miles from their junetion with the Columbia, are they obstrueted with insurmountable falls and rapids. Among the many lakes connected with the Flathead river, three are very conspicuous, and measure from thirty to forty miles in length, and from four to six in width. The Flathead lake receives a large and beautiful stream, extending upwards of a hun- dred miles in a northwestern direction, through a most delightful valley, and is supplied by considerable torrents, coming from a great cluster of mountains, con- neeted immediately with the main chain, in which a great number of lakes lie em- bedded. Clark's fork passes through Lake Kalispel. Lake Roothan is situated in the Pend d'Oreille and Flatbow mountains, and discharges itself by the Black- Gown river into the Clark, twenty miles below Kalispel lake."
Lake Roothan finds frequent mention in Governor Stevens' reports as lake "Rootham," and is so printed on old government maps. It is now known as Priest lake, and the "Blaek-Gown river" of DeSmet is the Priest river of the present day. The lake was named by the Jesuits in honor of the then father general of their order.
"Towards the end of the month of May," continues the narrative, "I arrived at Fort Colville. I found the nation of Shuyelphi or Kettle Fall already baptized by the Rev. Father Hoeeken, who had continued to instruet them after my depart- ure in the month of August last year. They had built, to my great surprise, a small frame church, so mueh the more beautiful and agreeable to my eyes, as being their first attempt at architecture, and the exclusive work of the Indians. With a laudable pride they conducted me, as in triumph, to the humble and new temple of the Lord, and in favor of that good people, and for their perseverance in the faith, I there offered the august sacrifice of the altar.
"The arrival of the good Father Nobili at Colville filled us with great joy and consolation. He had made missionary exeursions over the greatest portion of New Caledonia. Everywhere the Indian tribes received him with open arms, and took great eare to bring their little children to be baptized. Having made a retreat of eight days in the Reduction of St. Ignatius, and after a month of repose and prep- aration for a second expedition, he returned with renewed zeal and fervor to his dear Caledonians, accompanied by several laborers, and supplied with a dozen horses, loaded with implements of agriculture and carpentry.
"Father Nobili and myself were most hospitably entertained during our stay at Fort Colville. The kindness of the Honorable Mr. Lewes and family I shall never forget. Truly and deservedly has Commodore Wilkes stated, 'That the lib- erality and hospitality of all the gentlemen of the Honorable Hudson's Bay eom- pany are proverbial.' "
CHAPTER XV
CATHOLIC MISSIONS-CONCLUDED
OVERLAND JOURNEY FROM OLD WALLA WALLA TO THE SPOKANE-DESMET TAKES A FRIENDLY INDIAN PIPE-FROM THE SPOKANE TO COLVILLE-TRIP FROM SPOKANE TO THE COEUR D'ALENE MISSION-A SUMMER ENCAMPMENT DESCRIBED-TAKING "POT LUCK" WITH INDIANS-SUPERSTITIONS OF THE COEUR D'ALENES-THEY WOR- SHIP A WHITE MAN'S SPOTTED SHIRT AND BLANKET- MISSION EFFORTS OF AN IRO- QUOIS CHIEF-FATHER POINT'S LABORS AMONG TIHIS TRIBE- GOVERNOR STEVENS HOSPITABLE RECEPTION AT THE OLD MISSION-MISSIONARIES TAKE THE OATH OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE U. S .- CAPTAIN M'CLELLAN AMONG THE YAKIMAS-ST. MICH- AEL'S MISSION NEAR HILLVARD-FATHER CARUANA AMONG THIE SPOKANES.
F ROM Colville DeSmet descended the Columbia in one of the barges of the Hudson's Bay company, stopping at Fort Okanogan, where he adminis- tered baptism to forty-three persons. From Vancouver he set out in July on a return to the interior, and under date of July 26, 1846, in a letter from St. Ignatins, on the lower Pend d'Oreille river, thus records the incidents of an over- land journey from old Walla Walla on the Columbia:
"The eighth day after my departure from Fort Vancouver, I landed safely at Walla Walla. with the goods destined for the different missions. In a few days all was ready, and having thanked the good and kind-hearted Mr. McBean, the superintendent of the fort, who had rendered me every assistance in his power, we soon found ourselves on the way to the mountains, leading a band of pack mules and horses over a sandy, dry plain, covered with bunch-grass and wormwood."
In fair weather this William B. McBean could be kind and hospitable to a degree ; but when, in his defense, all is said that may be said, the distressing fact remains that he behaved badly when begged for suceor and defense by survivors of the Whitman massacre. Thwaites, editor of "The Jesuit Relations and Allied Docu- ments." says that MeBean was an educated half-breed, who succeeded Archibald Mckinley at Fort Walla Walla in 1815. "He attained an unpleasant notoriety in connection with the Whitman massacre, because of his Catholic proclivities, and his tardiness in aiding the survivors; but most of the charges against him were unfounded. In New Caledonia he had a reputation for being despotie and wily, also somewhat fanatical in religious matters."
With all the deep ardor of a lover of nature, Father DeSmet enjoyed his life on the trail-afloat on rushing mountain river, by campfire beneath the solemn pines, or out upon the free and starlit prairie. "We encamped for the night," re-
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sumes his narrative, "in a beautiful little meadow, watered by the Walla Walla river, where we found abundance of grass for our animals. These were soon un- loaded and left free to graze at leisure. We next made a fire, put on the eamp kettle. stretched the bed, consisting of a buffalo robe, and smoked together the friendly Indian pipe, whilst supper was preparing. We found ourselves at home and perfectly at ease in less than a quarter of an hour. The evening was clear and beautiful- not a cloud-our sleep, sound and refreshing, prepared us for an carly start at dawn of day."
Here was a spectacle-a priest of God puffing at an Indian pipe and unbluish- ingly proclaiming the enjoyment of it-that would have seandalized the zealous Parker, forerunner of Whitman and Spalding in the lone land where rolls the Ore- gon. Parker detested the incense of the pipe, inveighed against its use by trapper and Indian, and often gravely admonished the Indians against this sin. Like DeSmet, he was brave, and zealous, and a lover of wild nature too; but unlike DeSmet, he seemed not to know when to unbend, or when to look with indulgent eye on a practice which had long been dear to the Indian heart.
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