“Those who attempt to reason us out of our follies begin at the wrong end, since the attempt naturally presupposes us capable of reason.”—Goldsmith.
“Those who attempt to reason us out of our follies begin at the wrong end, since the attempt naturally presupposes us capable of reason.”—Goldsmith.
Nature made bounteous provision for the wants of the aboriginal inhabitants of British Columbia. The seas and rivers were teeming with fish—salmon of several kinds, halibut, cod, and sturgeon, and among smaller fish, herring, oolachan, smelts, and trout; the beaches and shallows afforded large sea crabs, clams, cockles, and oysters. The plains, valleys and mountains abounded in wild animals of many kinds—elk, moose, cariboo, deer, mountain sheep and goats, bears of different colors, and numerous smaller fur-bearing creatures. The forests, the sky and the lakes and streams were alive with members of the feathered tribe—swans, geese, ducks of several varieties, and, besides all these, the Indians were not averse to eating eagles and gulls, if necessity demanded.
Besides laying in large stores of dried meats and fish, the natives gathered large quantities of wild berries, of which there were several varieties, and dried them for their winter supplies. There were many other kinds of food, such as the inner bark of the spruce tree, many kinds of roots, wild potatoes,wild onions, wild rice, sea-weed, fish, eggs or spawn, crab apples and nuts.
The people had three common ways of cooking their food: by boiling, steaming, and broiling before the fire.
To cook a quantity of provisions in one of their big tubs or boxes—for they had no pots in those days—they poured in water sufficient to cook the quantity needed, and then red hot stones, lifted with a pair of wooden tongs, were dropped in to make it boil. When salmon or other fish were to be cooked, they usually cut off the heads and tails, and kept up the boiling process until all was reduced to a broth, when it was ladled out into dishes or long troughs and set before the people. Think of seven hundred salmon cooked in this way for a single feast!
To prepare food by steaming, a large fire was first kindled on a bed of cobble stones. When the wood had burned out, the stones being very hot, layers of green grass or sea-weed were laid on the top of the stones and kept damp with water. The clams, mussels, or other shell fish—if salmon, cod, halibut or sturgeon, usually only the heads and tails were thus prepared—whatever they wished to cook, were placed upon the grass, a little water was poured upon the top, and the whole was closely covered with mats, leaves, or boughs to keep in the steam. This is much the best means of cookingclams or other shell fish. They are delicious when cooked after this fashion.
When it was desired to broil the salmon, birds, venison or other wild meats, a stick the size of a broom handle, about four feet long, was split part way down, and the meat or fish was put into the split, while little sticks were placed crossways to keep the food spread. The stick was then tied at the split end, while the other end, already sharpened, was driven into the ground by the hot camp-fire, the flat side being kept towards the fire. The oil or gravy was caught in a clam shell or other dish and poured back upon the meat while cooking. Salmon never tastes better than when cooked in this manner. Often when travelling by canoe have we had deer, bear or mountain-goat meat, ducks or geese, and even porcupine, eagle or gulls, cooked in this way. The latter is quite palatable when you are worn with travelling and the larder has become nearly exhausted.
It has been said, “It is always a feast or a famine with a native.”
Whether that is true or not, certain it is that the natives of the Pacific Coast have a great variety of feasts. Indians, wherever you find them, are very hospitable to strangers—the travellers and miners of this vast country would all testify to this. They are most generous, even reckless, with their food. If you are invited to a feast among them the food is piled up before you, and after having satisfiedyour appetite you are expected to take away all you cannot eat. If the visitor is a chief or important person, what he has left is sent home by messenger to his family. If he be any ordinary guest, he sweeps off what remains—which is usually much more than he has eaten—into a corner of his blanket or his shirt, and carries it away. If the feast be of whale’s blubber, porpoise, fish of similar kind, or venison, bear or mountain goat, it is cut up into slices and strung on a sharp stick, or carried in his hand to the rest of his family.
At a big feast there are always several masters of ceremonies and a number of waiters in attendance. These never sit down while the eating is going on, though often a feast will last for six or seven hours, having as many courses. There are numerous small, every-day feasts where neighbors call upon each other in a happy, social way.
One of the greatest offences to an Indian is to refuse to accept an invitation which he has given you to eat with him and his friends.
With most feasting is usually associated dancing and other merriment.
The readiness with which the Indians pick up our beautiful hymn tunes and learn to play our musical instruments has been remarked. Indeed, these people are naturally very musical, and in their heathen state were passionately fond of singing their own native melodies. Of songs they had a great variety: war songs, marriage songs, songs forfeasts and public gatherings, mourning songs for the dead, songs when the fish came, dancing songs, canoe songs, and many others. When we asked the old dance-song maker where they got their music, he replied:
“We get it from the wind in the trees, from the waves on the sea-shore, from the rippling stream, from the mountain side, from the birds, and from the wild animals.”
As for musical instruments, we are all familiar with the simple Indian drum, made by stretching a deerskin tightly over a hoop. Besides this they used as a drum a big square box, painted in different colors, with figures of birds and animals upon it.
When the drummer was at work crowds would, accompany him, beating time with sticks upon boards. The sound was weird in the extreme, if heard at the dead of night, coupled with the shouts of the heathen dancers.
Besides the drums were rattles of various shapes, used by the chiefs and conjurers, and pipe whistles—indeed, whistles of many kinds, imitating birds and animals—some of which were used by the hunters in pursuit of game.
With much of their music is associated their pagan dancing. There are professional dancers among the tribes, who as a rule are identified with the clans of the medicine men. The heathen dances are very fascinating to the heathen mind, and in nothing is the “backsliding” of the Indian more noticeable than in his return to the dance.
At the dancing season certain persons become possessed, or as the An-ko-me-nums say, “the you-an, or dance-spirit, is on them.” They dream dreams and see visions, and move about in a hypnotic state, unable, or at least declining, to work, and roaring out at intervals a sort of mournful sobbing, “Oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.” Then they go from house to house, hunting up every kind of food they can get hold of, and gorging themselves many times a day. At night these dancers, all daubed and plastered with grease and paint, would gather in the large houses, where the people were assembled, and work themselves up into a frenzy, prancing up and down and round about, performing numerous contortions. Then they would break out in song, or in monotonous recitation relate their dreams and visions and tell many weird tales. Then round and round, and up and down again, they would prance, until they dropped from sheer exhaustion, or fell, perhaps, into the fire, and another took their place. All this time the onlookers watched and listened to the chanting and the story, or screamed and pounded in frantic accompaniment to the dancing.
The heathen dance is certainly demoralizing, and, like everything of heathenism, is of the devil.
Early in my stay at Nanaimo four or five of the leading chiefs came to me with the proposition that if I would allow them to go on with their potlatching and wild dancing every day in the week, they would come to church and rest on Sunday.
“No; you had better stop all your heathenism,” was my answer.
Nothing daunted, they came back again later. Now they would all be good on Sabbath and stand by me if they could dance. It was not very bad, and they had to keep up a little of what their fathers told them. And if I would not speak against it or pray against it they would all be good soon and would have all their children go to school.
“No, I cannot have anything to do with the old way, the dance, the potlatch, etc., it is all bad,” I said.
Then they whispered to each other, “Oh, he is like a post; you cannot move him.”
To give an idea of the scenes witnessed on these dancing occasions: Old Sna-kwe-multh, a man who had been taken a slave by some northern tribe, but who had found his way home, wished to demonstrate his bravery. At a great feast he came rushing in half naked and danced before the people. As his frenzy increased he slashed at his thighs with some kind of sharp instrument, and then with both hands caught up his own blood and drank it, to prove himself a brave.
A number of white men, who had been witnesses of the shameful scene, ran out and cried, “The devil is in the man.”
I denounced the custom and pleaded with them to give it up. Speaking to the old Chief Squen-es-ton, I said, “You must stop it. It is of the devil.”
“Oh,” said he, “the white man’s dance worse than the Indian’s dance.”
“How do you make that out?” I said.
“Oh, Indian man, alone, dance all round the house and sit down. And then Indian woman she dance all round and she sit down. But white man take another man’s wife and hug her all round the house.”
What could I say to the argument? What would you have said?
Of the many evils of heathenism, with the exception of witchcraft, the potlatch is the worst, and one of the most difficult to root out.
At one time its demoralizing influence was so manifest that the Government passed a law prohibiting it, but this excellent law was seldom properly enforced.
“Potlatch”—the word is from the Chinook and means “to give.” Literally the idea is the giving away of everything a man possesses to his friends. In return he gets nothing except a little flattery, a reputation for generosity, and poverty.
“Tlaa-nuk” is the An-ko-me-num word, and it suggests something more than “a giving,” or a feast, or an entertainment, or a ceremony, for it is all of these and more. It is a system of tribal government which enforces its tyrannical rule upon all, and overrides all other laws of the nation or the individual.
Its outward manifestation of the heathen feast and dance, with the giving of gifts to all present, isbad enough, but this is as nothing to the unseen influence behind it all.
The potlatch relates to all the life of the people, such as the giving of names, the raising into social position, their marriages, deaths and burials.
A man desires, or thinks himself entitled to, some coveted position, property or distinction, and for years, perhaps, makes preparation to secure it. This can only be done by the law of “tlaa-nuk” (potlatch), and so when ready he calls together from far and near his friends and relatives, when, after much feasting and dancing and speech-making, he gets up on a high platform and proceeds to give away all that he possesses.
The ambition of an Indian to be thought greater, richer and more influential than any of his neighbors leads him not only to give away a large part of his goods—which, as a matter of fact, he expects returned with interest on some future occasion, at another such gathering—but wantonly to destroy very much in such a manner that it can never be restored. For instance, think of a man taking a fine large canoe, valued at, perhaps, one hundred and fifty dollars, and smashing it into pieces; or of another seizing a number of beautiful new guns or rifles and bending and breaking them so that they would be utterly useless; or of another setting fire to piles of food and of goods. Some few years ago, at one such gathering, the poor, foolish creatures took rolls of new bills, the product of their summer’s work, and threw them into the fire.
I knew a man at Nanaimo who, together with hiswives and children, worked for years saving and getting together much property; and then a great potlatch was given, and everything went, to the last stitch of clothing, and he and his family were left practically naked to face the winter, without any provisions. His children nearly starved, while he contracted a cold which led to consumption, from which he died.
Some time ago it was rumored that the law against the potlatch was to be repealed. This drew a strong protest from several quarters, among them from some of the Indians themselves.
About that time the following letter, which explains itself, appeared in the local press, signed by an Indian whose identity was vouched for by a gentleman who knew him well:
“Having heard that in the last session of the provincial parliament a resolution was passed asking Dominion Government to reconsider the potlatch question with a view to repealing section 114, and that there is to be an inquiry as to the evils of the potlatch, we should like to tell the public what the potlatch is.
“Really and truly it is destruction to life and property, as we shall show. The first is that the women go from home to other places for immoral purposes, to get money or blankets to give away, or potlatch, as people call it. The second is that they sell their daughters to other men as soon as possible, sometimes twelve or thirteen years old, marriage they call it; the people do not care so long as they get blankets to potlatch with. And thethird is that they hate each other so much because of their trying to get one above the other in rank, as it is according to how many times they potlatch that they get the rank, and keep it, too. If they could they would even poison one another. Even now they think they kill one another by witchcraft, with intent to kill, and they believe that they do kill. A man does not care for any relatives when the potlatch is in question. The potlatch is their god; they will sacrifice everything to it—life, property, relatives, children, or anything, must go for him to be a ‘tyee’ (chief) in the potlatch.
“A man after giving a potlatch will sit down, his children, too, without knowing where he is going to get his food and clothes, as he has given away everything, and he has borrowed half of it, for which he has to pay back double. And another thing is, when they are mad with one another they will break canoes or tear blankets or break a valuable copper, to shame their opponent. The potlatch is one fight, with quarrelling and hating one another.
“And another is the desecration of the dead. The hamatsa, or medicine man, when he first comes from the woods, carries a dead body in his arms, professing to have lived on such things when in the woods, and as soon as the hamatsa comes in the house the other hamatsas all get up and go and tear the body to pieces among them like dogs; besides all this they bite the arms of one another; and the other thing is that when a man gets ill hethinks he is witchcrafted, and then his relatives will go and take the dead body that they think he is fixed with: they cut and mutilate it to undo the work that they think has been done to him. We have just heard of such a case from Kurtsis, of a woman’s dead body having been taken out and cut, to undo the work that they think has been done to a certain man. All these things are pure facts, and we are prepared to prove them if need be, and could tell other evils, but we are afraid of tiring the public.”
The Indians are passionately fond of gambling. In olden times they gambled, not with cards, but usually with round wooden pins about three inches long, or with shells and pebbles.
The gamblers would sit opposite each other on the grass or in the large houses, and a great crowd would gather on both sides, making a rattling noise with short sticks on boards, and singing to work themselves up for luck, or “power,” as they called it. The gambling would go on night and day, almost week in and week out, until they had not a shred of clothes left. Money, muskets, canoes, horses, and sometimes the houses over their heads, they would stake on a chance.
The story is told of one old man among the Kling-gets who gambled away everything he had. Then, with the hope that he would have a lucky day sometime, he put himself down and gambled away for days, still losing, until his wife, seeing that he was “going,” persuaded him to stop. She had to pay two hundred blankets to buy him back.
The gambling passion still lives with them, and now some of them have adopted the methods of their white brothers—they were always fond of imitating him, even to their own hurt—and are going deeper and deeper into sin.