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Woods boasted that she was a terror to Indians, she had been very apprehensive of danger since the Whitman colony massacre. She talked bravely and acted bravely according to her view of moral courage, but with a fearful heart. She dreaded the approaching Potlatch, and the frenzy that calls for dark deeds if the dance of the evil spirits should conclude the approaching feast.
"Among the Injuns. A friendly Injun told husband in secret that there would be no more seen of the log school-house after the Potlatch." "Don't fear, mother; the chief and Benjamin will protect that." "But that isn't all, Gretchen. Oh, I am so glad that you have come home! There are dark shadows around us everywhere. I can feel 'em can't you?
She say I have no right here; she have no right here; the land all belong to Umatilla; then to me; I no have her here. Look out for the October moon Potlatch dance pil-pil." "I will be a friend to you, Benjamin." "Yes, Boston tilicum, we will be friends." "And I will teach you how to be noble like a king. You felt good when I was kind to you?" "Yes, Boston tilicum." "And when the music played?"
The curious custom of the "potlatch" a man invites his friends and neighbors to a gathering and makes them magnificent presents, his reputation being great in proportion to the extent of his gifts appears to be a device for laying up property; the host in his turn receives presents from friends and neighbors.
The tall schoolmaster bowed. "Potlatch shall no harm you. Klahyam klahhye am!" Mrs. Woods hurried homeward and tried to calm her excited mind by singing a very heroic old hymn: "Come on, my partners in distress, My comrades in the wilderness, Who still your bodies feel." The blue skies gleamed before her, and overhead wheeled a golden eagle.
And when he was very old, being greatest of chiefs and richest of men, he gave a potlatch. Never was there such a potlatch. Five hundred canoes were lined against the river bank, and in each canoe there came not less than ten of men and women. Eight tribes were there; from the first and oldest man to the last and youngest babe were they there.
It was a touch of poetic sentiment, but these Indian races of the Columbia lived in a region that was itself a school of poetry. The Potlatch was sentiment, and the Sun-dance was an actual poem. Many of the tents of skin abounded with picture-writing, and the stories told by the night fires were full of picturesque figures.
"Now, that is A, B, and that is C. Try to remember them, and I will come soon and talk with you again." "You wah-wah?" "Yes," said Mr. Mann, doubtful of the Indian's thought. "She wah-wah?" "Yes." "You heap wah-wah. You good. She heap wah-wah. She no good. Potlatch come; dance. She wah-wah no more. I wah-wah." Mr. Mann was pained to see the revengeful trend of the Indian's thought.
Often at evening, when the day's work had been hard, she would take her violin, and a dream of music would float upon the air. She played but one tune at last as she grew serenely old. That tune recalled her early German home, the Rhine, her good father and mother, and the scenes of the great Indian Potlatch on the Columbia. It was the Traumerei.
There is little difference as regards thrift between wasting one's substance in a "potlatch," which is a feast for all comers, and wasting it in drunkenness, which is a feast for the liquor sellers, save that one is barbarous and the other civilised, as the terms go.
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